Relational systems navigation

The ability to read, navigate, and steward the relational system through which organisational behaviour, meaning, and adaptive capacity actually emerge.

Leaders with strong relational systems navigation understand that formal structures describe accountability, but relationships determine behaviour. They look beyond reporting lines, role descriptions, and governance charts to the informal networks of trust, influence, and interpretation that shape how work is coordinated and how meaning forms as it moves through the organisation.

Rather than treating the organisation as a collection of discrete units, these leaders perceive patterns of connection. They notice where influence concentrates, where information slows or mutates, where informal brokers stabilise coordination, and where hidden dependencies quietly shape outcomes. They recognise hubs, bridges, and edge nodes, and understand how these relational roles affect learning, coordination, and resilience.

Relational systems navigation shifts leadership attention from managing hierarchy to stewarding connectivity. It frames leadership not as control over structure, but as stewardship of the relational fabric that enables collective sensemaking, coordination, and adaptation under conditions of uncertainty.

“The hierarchy is a map we use to assign accountability. The network is the terrain in which behaviour actually forms.” – Unknown

Why relational systems navigation matters

Relational systems navigation matters because, in complex organisations, outcomes are not produced by formal decisions, but by how those decisions are interpreted, prioritised, and acted upon through relationships. Strategy rarely fails at the point of intent. It fails as it moves through the relational system, where meaning is negotiated, effort is redistributed, and trust either accelerates or constrains action.

When leaders lack this capability, their only reliable levers are structure, escalation, and personal intervention. Over time, this concentrates dependency, slows coordination, and quietly degrades the system’s capacity to act without senior involvement. Leaders become the bottleneck through which judgement must pass, rather than the conditions under which judgement can distribute.

When leaders develop relational systems navigation, leverage shifts. They can intervene where meaning forms and coordination stabilises, strengthening the network’s ability to sense, align, and act without escalation. Decisions travel further, misinterpretation surfaces earlier, and fewer issues require senior arbitration.

Under pressure, the difference becomes visible. Judgement moves closer to the work. Alignment becomes emergent rather than enforced. Resilience becomes structural rather than heroic.

Most importantly, relational systems navigation increases leadership impact without increasing control. Change sticks more easily, coordination becomes lighter rather than heavier, and the organisation becomes more adaptive to volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.

“We retained the stability of the hierarchy, but moved with the speed of a network when needed.” — General Stanley McChrystal

What good and bad looks like for relational systems navigation

What weak relational systems navigation looks like (Hierarchy reflex)	What strong relational systems navigation looks like (Network stewardship)
Cascade reliance: Assumes alignment will travel cleanly through formal reporting lines.	Influence mapping: Identifies who others actually listen to and engages them early.
Structure-first thinking: Defaults to roles, governance, and escalation to resolve friction.	Relationship-first thinking: Works first through trust, access, and informal coordination.
Centrality comfort: Becomes the quiet hub for information and decisions “to keep things moving”.	Intentional de-centering: Connects others directly and steps out of the middle.
Informal blindness: Treats corridor conversations and chat channels as peripheral noise.	Sensemaking awareness: Treats informal conversations as where meaning actually forms.
Silo normalisation: Accepts cross-boundary disconnect as structural reality.	Structural hole bridging: Actively connects groups that should be coordinating.
Connector overload: Repeatedly relies on the same dependable individuals.	Relational load stewardship: Protects and redistributes invisible coordination work.
Edge dismissal: Discounts peripheral or unconventional perspectives.	Edge scanning: Actively attends to weak signals and emerging ideas at the boundaries.
Task fixation: Focuses on delivery without noticing whether people are relationally set up to succeed.	Coordination design: Ensures people have trust, access, and context to deliver.
Authority default: Uses positional power to resolve relational friction.	Social capital leverage: Moves through credibility, trust, and influence rather than escalation.
Homophily bias: Builds relationships mainly with similar thinkers.	Difference seeking: Builds links across discipline, geography, and perspective.
Static mental model: Sees the organisation as fixed roles and boxes.	Dynamic relational model: Sees shifting flows of influence, meaning, and coordination.

“Networking is not about fishing with a net; it’s about nurturing an ecosystem.” — Adam Grant

Barriers to relational systems navigation

Hierarchy as safety: Formal structure provides psychological safety. Reporting lines, roles, and escalation paths feel solid under pressure, so leaders retreat into them when uncertainty rises. In doing so, they stop sensing how coordination is actually happening and begin acting on representations of the organisation rather than on the organisation itself.

The cascade illusion: Leaders assume that intent travels cleanly through formal communication channels. Announcements, briefings, and slide decks are treated as vehicles of alignment. Meanwhile, meaning is being reshaped in informal conversations, and resistance is forming long before it appears in performance metrics.

Centrality addiction: Being “in the loop” feels like leadership. Leaders unconsciously position themselves as the routing point for decisions, information, and coordination. Over time, the system becomes dependent on their presence, reducing distributed judgement and making the organisation slower and more fragile.

Efficiency bias against connection: Connection is misclassified as inefficiency. Time spent building relationships, sensing sentiment, or weaving networks is seen as secondary to delivery. Leaders optimise away the interactions the system depends on, and then wonder why alignment collapses under pressure.

Influence blindness: Leaders equate visibility, authority, or confidence with influence. They overlook quiet brokers, stabilisers, and translators who actually hold coordination together. These people quietly accumulate relational load until they disengage or burn out, taking system capacity with them.

Politics avoidance: To avoid appearing political, leaders withdraw from informal networks altogether. In doing so, they leave informal influence unexamined rather than neutral, allowing shadow power, silos, and misalignment to grow unchecked.

Local optimisation comfort: Accountability is managed vertically. Leaders optimise functional performance while assuming horizontal coordination will emerge naturally. This fragments the relational fabric between teams, creating structural holes where meaning distorts and effort dissipates.

Reset reflex in change: New leaders assume networks can be rebuilt quickly. They remove long-standing connectors, redefine roles, and reorganise structures without recognising the trust and coordination capacity being severed. The organisation loses its nervous system while believing it has “streamlined”.

Distance delusion: Leaders believe dashboards, reports, and cadence calls reflect system health. They confuse information flow with relational health and lose visibility of how work is actually coordinated on the ground.

Clarity as closure: Leaders push for clarity prematurely to escape ambiguity. In doing so, they lock in interpretations before the system has stabilised shared meaning, creating misalignment that later appears as resistance or execution failure.

“Viable and productive social networks in organizations result in many positive outcomes for organizations. Thus, leaders should intentionally desire to build the strength of social networks within their groups and organizations.” — Daniel A. Novak

Enablers of relational systems navigation

Network sensing: Leaders deliberately track where coordination, trust, and influence actually sit. They notice who resolves issues, who others check with before acting, and where meaning forms first. This keeps leaders working with the real organisation, not the org chart.

Decentring leadership: Leaders prevent themselves from becoming the routing point for decisions and information. They connect people directly, step out of the middle, and design for lateral coordination rather than vertical escalation.

Influence mapping: Leaders continuously test assumptions about who shapes opinion and momentum. They identify trusted brokers and quiet stabilisers and engage them deliberately in change, rather than relying on formal cascades.

Relational load management: Leaders recognise and protect the individuals who quietly carry coordination, translation, and emotional load. They redistribute this work early to prevent burnout and preserve system capacity.

Boundary bridging: Leaders actively connect groups that depend on each other but do not naturally coordinate. They treat cross-boundary disconnect as a performance risk, not a cultural issue.

Edge sensing: Leaders track weak signals and emerging ideas from the periphery. They create simple routes for edge insight to influence core decisions.

Meaning shaping: Before issuing direction, leaders check how intent is being interpreted and intervene early to prevent distortion, misalignment, and silent resistance.

Distributed judgement: Leaders design conditions that allow decisions to be made close to the work by strengthening access, trust, and context rather than escalating upward.

Difference seeking: Leaders deliberately maintain relationships across functions, disciplines, and viewpoints to avoid narrow sensemaking.

Relational mapping: Leaders periodically make coordination and influence visible through simple mapping to surface hidden dependencies and risks.

“In organizations, formal structures alone cannot explain how influence and coordination happen; relational ties and networks are central to meaning-making and adaptive work.” — Kristin L. Cullen-Lester

Self-reflection questions for relational systems navigation

When coordination slows or change loses momentum, do you default to structure and escalation, or do you examine how influence and trust are actually shaping behaviour?

Who are the two or three people others check with before acting, and how deliberately are you working with them?

Are decisions and interpretation increasingly flowing through you, or is judgement moving closer to the work over time?

Which cross-boundary relationships in your organisation are currently fragile, missing, or overloaded?

Where are the quiet brokers, translators, or stabilisers carrying invisible coordination and emotional load?

Whose perspectives consistently shape how issues are framed in your leadership team, and whose are systematically missing?

How often do you step out of the middle of coordination rather than stepping in?

Where might meaning be mutating or stalling before it becomes visible as resistance or delay?

If one trusted connector left tomorrow, what coordination capacity would quietly disappear with them?

Is your leadership making the organisation more dependent on you, or more capable without you?

“In the short run, actors make relations, but in the long run, relations make actors.” — John F. Padgett & Walter W. Powell

Micro-practices for relational systems navigation

1. Map advice flows

Once or twice a year, run a short team mapping exercise. Ask everyone to write down who they go to first for advice, interpretation, or problem-solving when they are uncertain. Do not use titles. Focus on real consultation behaviour.

Create a simple visual map showing who points to whom. Look for repeated patterns. Notice where many arrows concentrate and where connections are sparse or missing altogether. These reveal hidden dependencies, fragile coordination, and quiet silos.

Use the map with the team to discuss load, risk, and resilience. Protect heavily relied on individuals, deliberately strengthen weak connections, and agree one or two actions that will make coordination less dependent on a few people.

2. Decentralise judgement deliberately

Notice where decisions and questions routinely escalate to you. Rather than absorbing this flow, redirect judgement to the closest credible owner and state publicly where authority now sits.

Over time, reinforce lateral coordination and reduce dependency on senior escalation. This increases speed, strengthens distributed intelligence, and prevents the organisation becoming leader-dependent.

3. Protect and multiply connectors

Identify the people who quietly stabilise coordination across boundaries by translating meaning, resolving friction, or holding informal networks together. Meet with them to understand what relational load they are carrying.

Reduce unnecessary pressure and deliberately develop at least one additional connector by pairing, rotating liaison roles, or sharing coordination responsibilities. This builds redundancy into the relational system and prevents burnout removing critical system capacity.

4. Bridge one critical boundary

Identify the cross-team boundary that is currently generating the most rework, delay, or misalignment. Treat this as a system risk rather than a cultural issue.

Create a simple recurring connection focused on upcoming dependencies and shared expectations. Keep it lightweight and practical so alignment stabilises before issues escalate.

5. Intervene in meaning formation

Before major decisions or change announcements, test how the issue is already being interpreted in different parts of the organisation. Notice emerging concerns, assumptions, and narratives.

Use this insight to adjust timing, language, and framing so shared meaning stabilises early. This reduces silent resistance and avoids corrective effort later.

6. Scan the edge for adaptive signals

Create a standing space in leadership meetings for edge signals. Each month invite one person from outside the core leadership group to surface emerging risks, constraints, or anomalies they are seeing.

Use these signals to test assumptions and inform decisions. This strengthens organisational sensing and prevents narrow leadership perspectives from locking in brittle choices.

This page is part of my broader work on complexity leadership, where I explore how leaders navigate uncertainty, sense patterns, and make decisions in complex systems.