Systemic organisational consulting: what it means

Systemic organisation theory understands an organisation as a social system whose basic element is communication. The most important communicative event is the decision. Every perception and every piece of information has to pass through the eye of the needle of communication before the organisation can use it. The starting point for observation and intervention is therefore not primarily individual people. It is the established observation and evaluation grids and the communication routines with which information is gathered and condensed into decisions.

To remain able to act, every organisation selects which environments it considers relevant. Its routines preferentially confirm its own picture of the world and filter out deviating signals. The unexpected is reinterpreted as the expected. An organisation sees what it sees, and as a rule it does not see that it does not see what it does not see. It therefore cannot be steered linearly from outside, nor changed at will.

First-order change is constantly happening. Organisations take up signals from the environment in an unsteered way and adapt their routines. Even rigidity as it is experienced is the result of constant adaptation. This is what the term dynamic stability stands for. Second-order change deals with a specific occasion and then follows newly created routines. Similar problems are dealt with using the means that have proven themselves in the past. The pattern is called more of the same.

In third-order change, the organisation learns to observe how it has dealt with change so far. It asks what it learns about itself when it produces such problems, and whether its own solution patterns need to be renewed. In short, it is about changing the way it changes. Expert consulting and classic process consulting operate at the second level. Systemic organisational consulting aims at the third.

External consulting makes sense when blind spots need to be uncovered, when established patterns block further development or when leadership itself has to become the subject. The same applies when conflicts, competing goals or internal politics block decisions and neutrality is needed. Outsiders are not part of internal politics. They can voice uncomfortable truths and unsettle routines and things taken for granted.

There is also process leadership beyond day-to-day business. Insiders are often under operational pressure. Outsiders create focus and structure and keep a change stable over time. They can establish new connections, roles and decision paths across units because they are not caught in established patterns of cooperation. They design reflection so that the organisation arrives at new insights itself.

The starting point is the question of which developments are relevant for the company and where existing patterns reach their limits. Strategy, organisation, culture, people and leadership are considered together.

A transformation architecture links the topics to be worked on with suitable forms of communication and decision-making. The DVVision programme shows how this can be implemented in a group of companies.

Every organisation has its own learning history in dealing with signals for change. Essentially this includes its strategic focus, its business model, its problem-solving patterns and frames of observation, its decision routines, the way it presents itself internally and externally, its patterns of learning and change and a particular leadership culture. With every intervention it must be examined carefully what in this history continues to serve as a resource and where a learning tradition must be deliberately interrupted.

This leads to a basic rule. Changes to structures, routines, processes and values always require decisions by the organisation itself, arrived at in its own communication processes. Consulting can unsettle, point out differences from internal routines and enable reflection. It cannot carry a change into the organisation.

The aim of the transformis approach is for an organisation to recognise changes early and increasingly shape its development under its own steam. Consulting is meant to help anchor this capacity in the organisation.

Organisations are not trivial machines. Changes usually fail at the social level and rarely at the factual level. Many initiatives are neatly derived from key figures and promise significant improvements with compelling logic. They still fail because the relationship level and group dynamics are left out. Fear of loss and failure, rivalries and claims to power have a decisive influence on the process, even when people act as if they did not exist.

Systemic consulting therefore names the spoken and unspoken patterns of communication and decision-making that stand in the way of a necessary change. For management and owners this shifts the perspective. Alongside structures, processes and key figures, what counts are the conditions under which decisions, responsibility and implementation actually become effective.

The systemic perspective links the subject-matter task with the way an organisation makes decisions and processes knowledge. A strategy project therefore does not only ask about the best positioning on paper. It also asks who brings in information from the market and customer contact, how conflicting goals are discussed and which routines can carry a new direction. Systemic consulting examines concrete situations with those involved instead of attributing general characteristics to the organisation.

The observations give rise to hypotheses that are tested as the work proceeds. A suitable architecture connects the relevant people, topics and decisions. Consulting has fulfilled its purpose when the organisation can increasingly achieve the necessary understanding and development itself. This may concern a single interface or a comprehensive transformation. The assignment sets the boundary.

In part 1 of the video series “Systems theory & practice” from 2022, Laura Wruck and Robert A. Sedlák explain the approach with an image. A coffee machine is a trivial system: coffee beans and water go in at the top, and you know exactly what comes out at the bottom.

A given input always produces a given output. A company, by contrast, is a complex social system. It organises itself, refers to itself to a high degree and cannot be changed from the outside. Reactions to measures repeatedly bring surprises that nobody saw coming.

This leads to a way of working. Consulting starts with humility and appreciation for what has been achieved and what exists in the client system. The consultants listen and look for patterns and blind spots. They do not bring ready-made concepts. They develop them together with the client in what are known as consulting systems, so that they do not end up in a drawer later on. For change to gain energy, it needs an accepted gap between the current and the desired state, and a sense of urgency.

In the third mode, the consultants keep the factual, social and time dimensions in view at the same time. Which goals do the individual actors pursue, and what are the relationships like? Is now the right moment to pick up the pace, or do those involved still need time to process the changes so far?

Because reactions cannot be calculated, constant observation, reflection loops and the courage to adjust the approach are needed. transformis therefore also supports implementation and communication until the organisation can manage such change processes on its own.

Robert A. Sedlák founded SEDLÁK & PARTNER with two former employees. In the first ten years the focus was on total quality management, followed by leadership development and change management. The work had an impact. At the same time it became clear that other approaches were needed to anchor necessary changes in companies for the long term.

In the early 2000s, Robert A. Sedlák studied the systems theory of the sociologist Niklas Luhmann in depth. In the years that followed, the company converted all of its consulting services to this foundation. How this shows in leadership practice is described in the article Systems theory in practice.