by Katherine Handy-Woods & Dr Gillian Shapiro
Wherever you live, whatever your role, you can likely feel it.
The uncertainty of these times isn’t abstract — it’s lived. It shows up in stretched teams, shifting priorities, and a sense that the ground is moving faster than our ability to respond.
So the questions become:
- How do we navigate this?
- What actually works now?
- Where do we find something more solid than another quick fix?
When familiar methods stop working
In many organisations, the default response to challenge is still familiar:
New strategies.
Rebranding.
Revised narratives.
Another change programme.
These approaches are not inherently wrong. They have worked — in more stable, predictable contexts.
But in today’s environment, they are often insufficient.
At best, they create limited movement.
At worst, they increase pressure — adding workload while widening the gap between what is said and what is actually experienced.
Why?
Because they tend to operate at the level of structure, process, and messaging — without shifting the underlying patterns of behaviour and interaction that drive outcomes.
As a result, the system reorganises… but the same dynamics persist.
In other words:
If we don’t work with the relational system, we don’t change the system.
A different way forward: relational work
“Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else.” Margaret Wheatley (Turning to One Another, 2002)
There is another way of working — one that is both deeply human and rigorously grounded in behavioural science*.
Relational approaches shift the focus from:
- What we do → to how we work together
- What we say → to what we actually experience in interaction
- Predicting and controlling → to sensing and responding
This is not “soft” work. It is hard because it requires us to look at ourselves and how we are showing up.
Relational work is precise, demanding, and highly practical. It delivers results in the everyday and at strategic levels: in relationships, conversations, and patterns of interaction.
What this looks like in practice
These are some of the principles we hold in our relational practice:
- The system holds the answers
Solutions are not imposed by experts and leaders — they are surfaced through the people doing the work - Difference is a resource, not a problem
Diverse perspectives are engaged, and synthesised into collective wisdom. - Conversation is the primary mechanism of change
Through various methods, teams surface assumptions, tensions, and possibilities. Through dialogue these are explored and expanded. - Patterns are made visible
Teams begin to see how they are co-creating current outcomes and in seeing how they are, become something new. - Adaptive change happens through experience
Not just insight, but experimentation and iteration - Change is cyclical, not linear
Progress emerges through ongoing adjustment, not one-off interventions
And importantly — it feels different
This work cannot be reduced to a set of tools or steps. It is a completely different way of seeing the world with fundamentally different mental models and theories from conventional business theories.
What leaders often notice first is a shift in experience:
From pressure → to possibility
From pushing the new → to ending the old
From fragmentation → to wholeness
There is still challenge. There is still accountability.
But the energy changes — because people are working with the system, not against it.
If something isn’t working…
“The quality of our relationship determines the quality of our results.” Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, 1994)
If you are:
- Facing a complex challenge that isn’t shifting
- Seeing repeated patterns despite new initiatives
- Experiencing growing pressure with diminishing return
Then it may not be a strategy problem.
It may be a relational one.
A different starting point
Relational work doesn’t begin with a plan.
It begins with a conversation — one that is real enough to surface what is actually happening, and skilled enough to work with it.
That is where change starts.
If this resonates, let’s talk.
e-mail enquiries@meetingmagic.co.uk to set up a convenient time to talk.
*Systems Theory (Kurt Lewin); Complexity Science (Ralph Stacey; Dave Snowden; Glenda Eoyang); Gestalt Organisational Development (Edwin Nevis, Sonia Nevis, MaryAnn Rainey)