Living with Disruption: Holding Change without an End Date

Change doesn’t follow neat start-to-finish plans. Treating it like a project may create activity, but it often gives a false sense of progress while deeper shifts remain untouched.

Runtime: 48 mins, 29 secs.

In this panel discussion, we explore how leaders can move beyond managing change as an initiative to holding it as a living system.

We looked at why the “change-as-a-project” mindset is so persistent - how our need for certainty and control, reinforced by organisational structures, keeps us seeking neat plans and milestones. Yet this approach often creates movement without progress, adding to fatigue and missing deeper shifts.

The conversation turned to what it means to lead in ongoing disruption: to hold structure and flexibility, action and reflection, certainty and emergence - all at once.

Rather than adding more tools, we discussed how leaders can build the meta-skills that make change sustainable: sensing energy, holding paradox, and seeing the organisation as an ecosystem rather than a machine.

We’d love to hear how change is being held in your organisation. Is it still managed like a project, or are you experimenting with new ways of engaging with it as a continuous condition?

Step into the conversation