Designing for Disruption: How Organizations Thrive in Change
What if your organization stopped fearing disruption and started designing for it?
In today’s world, disruption is the new baseline. But resilient organizations don’t see it as a setback; they recognize it as the context in which growth and innovation happen. They do so because they are designed to evolve - flexible, adaptive, and ready to turn change into opportunity. They uncover disruption’s hidden possibilities and use them to spark transformation.
And mindset matters: a McKinsey study shows that companies that adopt a growth mindset are 2.4X more likely to outperform their peers [1].
In SOVA’s recent post, How Resilient Organizations Will Pivot For The Future, we shared five foundational beliefs that help organizations become more adaptive, innovative, and resilient in the face of change:
Change is not a threat, it’s a catalyst.
Creativity is an inherent, human trait.
Purpose drives success.
Collaboration beats control.
Learning is continuous and collective.
In our follow-on series, we’ll explore practical ways to apply each belief to your organization’s culture and ways of working.
In this post, we focus on the first belief: Change is not a threat, it’s a catalyst.
This viewpoint holds particular weight today. The world is experiencing a convergence of economic, political, and ecological crises, and leaders are navigating increasingly complex and unpredictable environments. Now more than ever, we need purposeful and resilient organizations to carry us into the future.
Organizations that embrace change as a natural and necessary force are better equipped to handle shocks and respond quickly. Seeing disruption as an opportunity sparks curiosity and agility, enabling teams to proactively adapt and drive transformation even in uncertain times.
Resilient organizations are designed to evolve. They embed flexibility into their DNA and see change as fuel for growth. This approach creates the “evolution-friendly conditions that influence the trajectory and speed of change” according to the Regenesis Institute [2].
So how can organizations create evolutionary conditions? It begins with three key design shifts:
Adopt a living-systems mindset
Recognize employees as creative, autonomous contributors
Embrace distributed approaches and self-organizing teams
Below, we unpack each shift and share practical steps to bring them to life.
1. Adopt a living-systems mindset
It starts by reimagining the very nature of organizations themselves. Too often, they’re seen as machines - built from standardized parts, optimized for efficiency, and managed through control. But this metaphor is limiting. Organizations aren’t machines with interchangeable parts; they’re living systems of people and relationships, nested within larger ecosystems of industry, society, and planet [3].
Unlike machines, living systems thrive on adaptability, interdependence, and evolution. They create value not through rigid control, but through connection and collaboration. While machines wear themselves out, living systems renew themselves naturally. The result is greater resilience in hardship, stronger stakeholder engagement and trust, more innovation, and value that benefits all.
A living systems approach draws from nature and indigenous wisdom, integrates insights from Living Systems Theory and complexity science, and bridges fields such as ecology, leadership and organizational development, and regenerative economics and business design.
How to start adopting a living systems mindset:
Map your ecosystem impact: Understand how your organization contributes uniquely to the broader network of people, communities and industries it interacts with.
Reframe your perspective: Identify and shift how you think about and describe the organization, from machine-like “efficiency” to living “vitality.”
Listen and adapt continuously: Talk to employees, customers, and partners regularly to surface insights and adjust strategies in real time.
Case Study: How Patagonia Shifted From Apparel Brand to Environmental Leader
When Patagonia shifted from seeing itself as just an apparel company to recognizing its place within the broader environmental movement, it sparked a profound internal transformation. This systems-wide perspective helped the company stay relevant, avoid bankruptcy, and pioneer a new model of purposeful business. Guided by its mission, “We’re in business to save our home planet,” Patagonia is known not only for innovative, circular products but also for protecting its purpose through a trust that directs all profits not reinvested back into the company toward environmental causes. Today, it stands out as both an apparel leader and a global icon of values-driven business.
2. Recognize employees as creative, autonomous contributors
Once the organization itself is seen as a living system, the next step is recognizing the people within it as creative, autonomous contributors who bring that system to life. Just like an organization is not a machine, an employee is not an interchangeable part. Traditional management often reduces humans into roles and hierarchies that strip away their complexity and potential. But when people are trusted as self-directed leaders of their own work and lives, creativity flourishes.
And unlike machine parts, people thrive on autonomy, collaboration, and the freedom to experiment. They also have the capacity to learn, grow, and self-organize without top-down control. After all, we spend a significant portion of our lives outside of work making our own choices and shaping our paths. Recognizing employees as creative, autonomous individuals unlocks their full potential and expands an organization’s ability to innovate, adapt, and drive needed change.
How to start activating the creative, autonomous potential of employees:
Spot and remove barriers: Examine and let go of existing management norms that stifle employee autonomy and intuition.
Shift your mindset: See employees as collaborators and innovators, not just “resources” to manage.
Coach to unlock potential: Adopt a coaching approach that develops capacity to lead and confidence to execute, instead of controlling every decision and outcome.
Case Study: How World Central Kitchen Responds to Crisis Through Empowerment & Autonomy
World Central Kitchen (WCK), founded by Chef José Andrés, exemplifies an organization that treats its employees and partners as creative, autonomous contributors. WCK is first to the frontlines, providing fresh meals in response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises. WCK's operational model emphasizes adaptability and local empowerment, encouraging staff to make real-time decisions tailored to the unique needs of each crisis situation. This approach has enabled WCK to swiftly mobilize and deliver over 500 million meals worldwide, often in challenging and high-risk environments. By fostering a culture of trust and initiative, WCK not only executes operationally to address immediate food insecurity but also extends its approach to its ecosystem of stakeholders by building resilient, community-driven solutions to hunger.
3. Embrace distributed approaches and self-organizing teams
Once employees are trusted as creative, autonomous individuals, it is a natural next step to distribute authority where work gets done. This allows leadership to emerge from the ground up and makes the organization more proactive in its efforts to adapt to change.
When authority is concentrated at the top, decision-making slows. By distributing authority and enabling self-organizing teams, organizations unlock the collective intelligence of their (creative, self-driven, capable, confident) people. Self-organization doesn’t mean lack of leadership, it means leadership emerges naturally where expertise and creativity live. The key shift is moving from control to trust, from directing every move to designing systems where autonomy and accountability go hand in hand [4].
How to start supporting distributed authority and self-organizing structures:
Flatten hierarchy: Identify where management slows down decision-making and experiment with reducing approvals.
Decentralize decisions: Empower teams to make business decisions by trusting the experience of those closest to the work and to the customer.
Share information openly: Make operational and financial information accessible so everyone has the opportunity to lead with clarity and accountability.
Case Study: How Buurtzorg Reinvented Healthcare With Self-Managing Teams
Buurtzorg is a Dutch healthcare organization founded in 2006 that has revolutionized community care through a nurse-led, self-managing model. Guided by the principle “Humanity over Bureaucracy,” small teams of 10–12 nurses are empowered to autonomously manage patient care, make decisions, and collaborate closely with patients, families, and community resources. This decentralized approach has led to better health outcomes with fewer hours of care, higher patient satisfaction, reduced costs, and increased employee engagement, demonstrating the power of self-organizing teams in a large, complex system. Today, Buurtzorg operates in 24 countries with over 10,000 health care professionals.
The path forward
Taken together, these shifts - from mechanistic models to living systems, from managed resources to autonomous creators, and from centralized control to distributed leadership - expand an organization’s capacity to turn disruption into a catalyst.
The practical steps outlined above are just a starting point. Real transformation happens when these beliefs are systematically and holistically woven into the fabric of how teams work, learn, and grow together.
SOVA Strategies helps organizations bring these principles to life through proven frameworks that integrate regenerative ways of working across teams. Whether you’re starting with a single shift or leading a full cultural transformation, we partner with you to unlock your organization’s full potential.
Stay tuned for our next article, where we’ll explore creativity as an inherent human trait and how organizations can nurture it to thrive in a constantly changing world.
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[1] Birshan, M., Cvetanovski, B., et al. “Choosing to grow: The leader’s blueprint.” McKinsey, 2022.
[2] Mang, P. & Haggard, B. & Regenesis. Regenerative Development and Design: A Framework for Evolving Sustainability. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2016.
[3] Hutchins, G. & Storm, L. Regenerative Leadership: The DNA of Life-Affirming 21st Century Organizations. Wordzworth Publishing, 2019.
[4] Sanford, Carol. The Regenerative Business. Nicholas Brealey Publishing, 2017.