Leading in two worlds: why the formal organisation is only half the picture
Most leaders were trained to navigate one world.
The world of structure and strategy, of plans and performance metrics and delivery milestones. It’s tidy, logical, and reassuringly linear and familiar.
We call this the formal organisation: the structure, systems, and processes that define roles, allocate resources, and drive accountability.
But this is only half the picture.
In practice, organisations are made of people. And people don’t operate by flowcharts.
They bring emotion, history, hopes, habits, fears.
They navigate relationships, unspoken norms, and invisible loyalties.
They respond to energy, context, and meaning, not just instructions.
This is the informal organisation: the living, breathing network of human dynamics that lives underneath the org chart.
Ignore it, and you miss the engine room where real change happens.
Attend to it and everything begins to shift.
Two systems, two logics
The formal and informal organisations are different systems which follow radically different rules.
The formal system is linear, rational, reductive, and analysable. The whole is the sum of its parts. It can be mapped, measured, modelled.
The informal system is non-linear, emergent, relational and complex. The whole is more than the sum of its parts. It resists control, but it can be cultivated.
Most leaders lean into the formal system because it feels safer. It offers the comforting and familiar sense of order, predictability, and control.
But in a world of complexity and constant change, this sense of safety becomes a trap.
Why the informal system matters more than ever
In stable conditions, leading through task, structure, logic and analysis might be enough.
- You make a plan
- You assign roles
- You track performance
But complexity disrupts all of that. Complexity doesn’t play by the rules.
Suddenly, the plan doesn’t survive contact with reality. The problems are cross-functional. The solutions are emergent. What determines success isn’t just what’s written down, but on how people show up, relate, and respond in the moment.
In other words, in complexity, the informal organisation comes to the foreground.Yet most leadership teams are not equipped to navigate it.
Their sight is fragmented. Their relationships are strained. Their ways of working are brittle. And when things go wrong, they fall back on what they know: content, control, and command.
But that’s not what complexity needs.
Ambidextrous leadership: balancing two worlds
At Living Systems, we teach leaders to hold both systems and both leadership styles, which a world of complexity demands.
We call this ambidextrous leadership:
- On one hand, you need directive leadership – clarity, focus, decision-making, pace
- On the other, you need collective intelligence – listening, inquiry, facilitation, co-creation
In a complex world, neither is sufficient alone. The art is in the balance.
Too much control? You crush emergence.
Too much process? You lose direction.
The real challenge? Many leaders are overdeveloped in the formal system and underdeveloped in the informal.
They know how to analyse a structure, but not how to work with emotion or repair a relationship. They know how to assign tasks, but not how to facilitate dialogue. They know how to drive delivery, but not how to generate adaptive capacity.
This imbalance isn’t just personal. It’s systemic. It shows up in offsites, in meetings, in how decisions are made, and in how trust is lost, and the missed opportunities to truly lead together.
So what does leadership take?
Leading in two worlds requires more than theory. It requires practice. Specifically, it requires capacity across three dimensions:
- Head → Whole system sight: seeing the organisation as it really is, not just as it appears on the chart.
- Heart → Relational intelligence: staying in connection, even in tension. Building trust, working with conflict, and staying in dialogue when it’s hard.
- Hand → Collective agility: knowing how to work with the group process, especially when things get stuck or messy. Moving as a system, not a set of silos.
Most leadership teams over-index on “head” content and underinvest in the heart and hand. They seek alignment before understanding. They avoid conflict instead of working through it. They over-plan meetings instead of learning how to adapt in real time.
That’s why offsites so often disappoint. Not because leaders aren’t trying, but because they’re trying to lead in one world, when the reality of work demands two.
Leading differently starts here
The good news is this: the capacity for ambidextrous leadership to lead in two worlds can be learned.
It begins with seeing the whole system, including the parts you’ve been conditioned to ignore and recognising where you’ve been blind. It deepens by practising new ways of thinking, relating, and acting together.
It flourishes when teams learn not just how to solve problems together but learn how to stay present in the uncertainty long enough to find what really matters. And it transforms how leadership shows up: wiser, braver, more adaptive.
That’s what Living Systems offsites are designed to do.
We don’t separate the “hard” and “soft” sides of leadership, we integrate them and we show how they work together. We don’t simplify the problem of complexity, we increase your capacity to meet it. We help leaders grow into the ones their organisations need now: one that is aware, relational, and adaptive.
Because leading in two worlds isn’t a luxury anymore. It’s a necessity.
Let’s start.
Transformation starts here…
The future belongs to organisations that unlock the power of Collective Intelligence — feeling, thinking, and acting as one. Are you ready to build that capacity? Start the conversation with us.