Working with complexity: Building relational foundations for systemic change

Managing change in complex settings takes more than better plans or new tools. It starts with building the relational foundations that enable collaboration, learning, and adaptation to develop and strengthen. This post explores how these foundations support systemic change, and how different approaches to relational, adaptive practice can help guide more sustainable and inclusive pathways forward.

Navigating systemic change — across communities, organisations, and partnerships — requires more than technical expertise or strategic plans. In fields as diverse as climate adaptation, biodiversity restoration, sustainable development, and social equity, real progress depends on shifting not only structures, but also mindsets, relationships, and ways of working. Complexity is the norm, not the exception, and addressing it demands new ways of working that foster collaboration across diverse actors and perspectives.

Recent initiatives — from global assessments like the IPBES Nexus and Transformative Change reports to systems-focused guidance such as UNDP’s Navigating Complexity in Food Systems — reinforce a consistent message: sustainable transitions are relational, adaptive, and systemic, not purely technical or linear. A curated selection of these and other resources can be found on the Insights for Change: Global Reports page.

As explored in earlier posts on breaking silos and systems thinking and systemic design, today’s challenges are deeply interconnected. While complex issues such as catchment management, food systems, and community resilience demand place-based action, broader systemic challenges like climate change and institutional transformation also require inclusive, collaborative, and adaptive approaches across multiple levels. Addressing them involves bridging sectors, institutions, and scales — and working relationally across diverse histories, worldviews, and priorities.

In the sections that follow, I explore how a shared focus on relationships, mindsets, and systemic awareness runs across a family of change frameworks. To illustrate these ideas in practice, I draw particularly on five focal areas that have been used to guide adaptive, inclusive change efforts — including those outlined in a resource developed collaboratively in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Five areas of focus for navigating change

Different frameworks offer different approaches, but many share a common thread. Frameworks such as The Fifth Discipline, the Reinventing Organizations Map, and Theory U, emphasise that sustainable change depends not just on technical solutions, but on shifts in relationships, mindsets, and shared purpose. A guide to just transitions | He puka arataki whakawhitinga tika also builds on this focus, offering practical areas of orientation for collaborative, adaptive change.

Drawing on this shared orientation, A guide to just transitions identifies five focal areas that help orient collaborative change efforts: foundation building, connecting, planning, acting, and adapting. I had the privilege of contributing as part of the large and diverse team of authors and practitioners who developed the guide, coordinated through Motu Research. This project brought together people from a wide range of disciplines and communities, each offering different perspectives and expertise. The collaborative spirit behind the guide reflects its key message: that building sustainable, inclusive change is a shared effort that draws strength from diversity and collective learning.

While originally framed in the context of place-based and regional transitions, these areas offer useful orientation points for change processes at many levels — from organisational and sectoral transformation through to broader system change.

• Foundation building focuses on developing shared understanding by acknowledging context, history, inequity, and values — and creating a collective sense of purpose and direction. This ongoing process creates space for dialogue about what matters most and strengthens later efforts at connection, planning, action, and adaptation.
• Connecting focuses on building and nurturing relationships across diverse actors and perspectives. It includes developing leadership groups, facilitating inclusive dialogue, and caring for the relational health of collaborations. Trust and collaboration are strengthened through intentional, ongoing relationship-building that enables genuine participation and shared ownership.
• Planning involves designing inclusive processes that foster broad participation in decision-making, develop shared visions and values, and support systemic understanding of the issues at hand. Effective planning provides enough structure to guide action while remaining flexible for learning and changing circumstances. Communication helps align intentions and efforts across the system.
• Acting moves the work into practical steps: making collective decisions, considering different pathways, co-designing and implementing solutions, and securing resources. Meaningful action is rarely about executing a fixed plan. It often involves phased, iterative development — testing ideas, learning by doing, and adjusting strategies in response to feedback and changing contexts.
• Adapting acknowledges that change in complex settings is never straightforward or static. It requires remaining agile, monitoring progress, evaluating outcomes, and adjusting approaches as needed. Sometimes adapting means recognising when to end or renew initiatives. Adaptability is a critical strength that enables systems to learn and evolve over time.

While these areas can be described separately, in practice they are closely connected. Change processes often move back and forth between foundation building, connecting, planning, acting, and adapting — deepening relationships, learning, and system understanding at each turn. Recognising this dynamic rhythm helps avoid the trap of rigid, stepwise planning models that underestimate the complexity and emergent nature of real-world change.

Why shared foundations matter in complex change

In complex change settings, foundation building is critical but often overlooked. There is often an understandable urgency to move quickly into planning and action. Yet without a shared foundation in context, history, and values, collaboration risks being shallow, fragile, or contested as the work unfolds.

Foundation building is about creating the conditions where collaboration can take root and grow. It involves acknowledging the histories and inequities that shape present realities, appreciating different worldviews and cultural perspectives, and building a collective sense of why change is needed.

This relational groundwork is not about forcing everyone into alignment. Rather, it creates enough shared understanding to allow people to move forward together while holding their differences with respect. It strengthens the resilience of collaborations, helping them navigate inevitable tensions, surprises, and shifting dynamics as the work progresses.

Foundation building is not a single early step to be “completed” and left behind. As new actors become involved, contexts shift, or deeper layers of complexity emerge, returning to reflect on shared purpose, values, and understandings is often necessary. It becomes a sustaining thread that runs through all stages of complex change work.

Underlying principles for managing change amid complexity

While the five focal areas provide a practical orientation for navigating change, deeper principles strengthen this work across different settings. These principles reflect the realities of working relationally, systemically, and adaptively — and help ensure that transitions are not only effective, but also inclusive, grounded, and enduring.

Below, I outline six key principles, each linked to a Learning for Sustainability resource page where you can find tools, guides, and examples to support practice.

• Inclusive collaboration
  Effective change ensures diverse voices are engaged meaningfully. Building inclusive collaborations requires attention to how relationships are formed, how decisions are made, and how resources are shared. Practices like co-design, shared facilitation, and intentional relational work foster ownership, trust, and resilience. (See: Managing collaboration and engagement)
• Adaptive learning
  In complex environments, change rarely unfolds predictably. Embedding feedback loops, creating space for reflection, and treating adaptation as a core strength are critical. Structured reflection cycles and experimental piloting help initiatives remain responsive and resilient. (See: Social learning: supporting change in complex settings)
• Valuing diverse perspectives
• Change is enriched by recognising and respecting multiple ways of knowing and understanding. Different worldviews, knowledge systems, and lived experiences offer essential insights into both challenges and opportunities, deepening systemic understanding and supporting more inclusive outcomes. (See: Values and behaviours in sustainability and development)
• Working thoughtfully with power
  Power dynamics shape collaborative efforts — sometimes openly, often invisibly. Developing awareness of how power operates, surfacing tensions respectfully, and supporting transparency and equity can strengthen relational foundations. Participatory facilitation and reflective leadership practices help collaborations work more consciously with influence and decision-making. (See: Managing participation and engagement)
• Connecting action across levels
  Change needs to connect across scales — from local initiatives to wider organisational, sectoral, and policy systems. Recognising the nested nature of systems helps initiatives build coherence and leverage across different layers. (See: Multi-stakeholder processes)
• Honouring time and change
  Complex change unfolds across long arcs of time. Working adaptively involves honouring both the histories that shape present realities and the futures that current actions are helping to create. Practices like backcasting, legacy-building narratives, and intergenerational reflection help ground change in longer-term stewardship and learning. (See: Adaptive management: learning by doing)

Final reflections: Holding space for change to emerge

Managing change in complex settings is not about imposing solutions or following a rigid plan. It is about cultivating the conditions where collaboration, learning, and adaptation can flourish. Focus areas like foundation building, connecting, planning, acting, and adapting provide helpful orientation, yet it is the underlying relational and systemic practices that sustain real change over time.

Although frameworks use different language and methods, they share a deeper consistency. Each, in its own way, recognises that building relational foundations — listening to context, surfacing diverse perspectives, and developing shared purpose — is critical before structured change efforts can succeed. Frameworks then serve as supports for adaptive practice, not as prescriptions to be applied without regard to history, values, or relationships.

In complex settings, managing change is not about choosing a single framework in advance. It begins with listening carefully — building relationships, understanding histories, appreciating diverse perspectives, and creating space for shared purpose to emerge. From these foundations different frameworks and approaches can be brought into play to support the work as it unfolds.

Other operational models — such as Kotter’s 8-Step Process, McKinsey’s 7-S Framework, or the ADKAR model — can offer valuable tools for particular phases of organisational transition. A government agency, for example, might use Kotter’s steps to mobilise momentum, McKinsey’s framework to align structure and culture, or the ADKAR model to support individual and team-level adoption of new ways of working. However, the effectiveness of any framework depends on the relational and systemic foundations that enable genuine collaboration, learning, and adaptation.

In an era where climate transitions, biodiversity loss, social inequities, and institutional silos all intersect, the need for inclusive, systems-oriented change has never been greater. As practitioners, facilitators, and collaborators, our task is not to control complexity, but to work thoughtfully within it — holding space for diverse perspectives, supporting adaptive learning, and helping nurture pathways of change that are grounded in values, relationships, and collective resilience.

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[* Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay]