Fragmentation to Flow: Shaping Attention
In complexity, our challenge isn't decision-making — it's attention-shaping.
In a world that rewards speed and certainty, the impulse to act can eclipse the opportunity to pay better attention. In dynamic, interdependent systems, clarity doesn't come from control - it comes from perspective.
Leadership begins when we slow down long enough to notice the patterns that are shaping what's going on, beneath the noise of urgency and opinion.
The Alchemy of Connection
Fragmentation happens when different parts of a system hold vital but disconnected perspectives. It creates fractures in will, focus, coherence and approach. In complex systems, leadership is less about control and more about connection — creating the conditions for the system to see itself, make meaning together and surface new insight.
Recently, I facilitated a cross-agency collaboration on a high-stakes policy reform. Each group brought essential perspectives - operational, clinical, community, financial, and cultural. Without connection, those perspectives created friction with no possibility for new collective insight.
The instinct is often to push for alignment. But pressure, without a container to hold it, collapses perspective.
Embodied Presence in Action
So instead, we slowed down to create the container by strengthening the quality of connections. We created space for the system to see itself — not just its parts, but the relationships and hidden dynamics shaping the stuckness. Drawing on principles from my Strategy + Sensemaking Lab, we moved the group from defending positions to noticing patterns. From explanation to connection.
As Fritjof Capra reminds us, "The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems."
New paths forward don't emerge from silos — they emerge when the system can see itself.
What shifted wasn't the complexity — it was how the group related to it. They moved from fragmentation & disconnection towards coherence. From polarisation to creative tension. New insights surfaced — not because someone had the answer, but because shared seeing enabled shared sensemaking.
These are core move in complexity:
From driving action → to shaping attention
From knowing → to noticing
From individual expertise → to collective insight
As Margaret Wheatley writes, "It's not the parts, but the relationships that create the whole." The work of leadership in complexity is to stay in relationship - especially through the conflict and discomfort that can arise when multiple perspectives are surfaced and explored.
Growing New Leadership Capacities
To lead adaptively, as Ron Heifetz reminds us, is to "get on the balcony" — to observe patterns and begin to make meaning with others.
This is the work of Unbounded Leadership — developing the capacity to see differently, so we can lead with more depth, connection and adaptability.
An Invitation to See More
If you're navigating a world that is feeling increasingly brittle, anxious, non-linear, and incomprehensible - the BANI world Jamais Cascio coined, I invite you to
Consider what perspectives might be disconnected or unseen in your current challenges
Explore how different ways of seeing might reveal new possibilities
Sometimes, the most powerful strategy isn't doing more. It's seeing more.
