The Iceberg Model is one of the most recognisable frameworks in organisational life. Its visual simplicity makes it easy to grasp. Events appear above the waterline. Beneath them lie patterns, structures and mental models. The model suggests that if we can explore what lies below, we will understand what is really going on.

This framing has strong appeal. It offers a sense of depth without demanding much disruption. It provides a logic that events are caused by behaviours, that structures shape behaviours and that structures are built on beliefs. Follow the chain, trace the cause and resolve the issue. It looks like systems thinking, yet it often serves as a comforting reduction that makes the complex feel solvable.

That comfort creates a certain posture. The Iceberg encourages leaders to act as observers who stand outside the system. It suggests that understanding should come before action and that insight is the path to change. In reality, the moment we step into a conversation by listening or questioning or naming what others avoid, we are already influencing the system.

This article does not discard systems thinking. It questions one of its most popular illustrations. The Iceberg may offer value in stable and predictable contexts. But in environments shaped by feedback, uncertainty and human dynamics, it falls short. It invites depth when what is needed is presence. It tells us to go lower when the real work is to move closer.

The goal is not to uncover more layers. It is to lead from within the system rather than above it.

Complexity does not behave like an iceberg

The Iceberg Model assumes that systems behave in layers. Those beliefs sit at the base, shaping structures, which in turn influence behaviours and produce visible events. This suggests that the organisation can be understood through a kind of vertical logic. The deeper we go, the closer we get to the cause. But complexity does not behave this way. In complex systems, a surface event can reshape the underlying assumptions just as quickly as the other way around. There is no fixed bottom to find. The system is always in motion.

One of the defining features of a Complex Adaptive System is emergence. Outcomes arise from the interaction of many elements, not from a single directive or plan. No part of the system holds the full picture. What becomes visible is shaped by local interactions, timing, and feedback. This means that causality is not stable or predictable. It shifts depending on context. What worked yesterday may stall today. Influence travels in all directions.

Self-organisation is another key principle. In a CAS, order does not come from above. It arises from people making decisions in response to what they see and sense around them. Local autonomy matters. So does informal coordination. Often what appears to be strategic alignment is actually adaptive behaviour at scale. The people in the system are adjusting to one another, not following a fixed design. This challenges the idea that better control leads to better outcomes.

Finally, in complexity, change is not implemented. It is discovered. Each action is an intervention. Each intervention shifts the conditions. Strategy becomes less about execution and more about iteration. Plans serve as starting points, not endpoints. The work is to stay close to the system. To listen for what is shifting. To respond in ways that keep learning in motion. This requires attention over certainty, and participation over prescription.

The cost of searching for “the bottom”

The deeper flaw in the Iceberg Model is not conceptual but relational. It encourages leaders to adopt a posture of detachment. To stand outside the system and study it from a distance. This makes the leader an observer rather than a participant. It places analysis before engagement.

In a complex adaptive system, this stance creates distortion. Observation is never neutral. The presence of the observer shifts the dynamics of the system. A question asked, a diagram drawn, even a glance can change the tone of a conversation. The idea that we can map what is happening without affecting it is a comforting myth. Leadership cannot be cleanly separated from the system it seeks to understand.

The search for a root cause reinforces this illusion. In complexity, there are few singular causes. There are patterns of interaction that reinforce themselves over time. What matters is not one initiating factor but the loops of behaviour, belief, and structure that sustain current outcomes. These loops are rarely visible all at once. They are held in relationships, habits, and shared expectations. Naming them may bring clarity, but it does not necessarily create change.

Tools like Causal Loop Diagrams can help illuminate some of these patterns. They can support teams in seeing how actions reinforce or balance one another. But like the Iceberg, these tools are only partial. They offer perspective, not resolution. They are most useful not when they claim to reveal the truth of the system, but when they support inquiry. The real work is not in drawing the loops. It is in staying with them long enough to notice where the grip might loosen.

Searching for the bottom assumes the system has a centre, a core, a place to intervene. Complexity rarely gives us that. What it does offer is the chance to see the system from within. To recognise how we are shaping it, even as we try to understand it.

A more useful shift: from depth to participation

If the Iceberg Model invites us to dig, complexity asks us to stay present. The shift is not from structure to chaos, but from searching for causes to co-creating conditions. From assuming that systems can be fixed from above, to noticing where they are already moving from within.

This is not a call to abandon structure. It is a call to shift our stance. To treat leadership less as excavation and more as participation. Less as diagnosis and more as design in motion. What follows are five practices that support this shift. Not as a new framework to adopt, but as a way to orient ourselves differently inside complexity.

Stop hunting for the root cause. Start looking for readiness.

In a complex system, change rarely begins at the centre. It emerges at the edges, among early adopters, in side conversations, in places where energy is already shifting. Looking for readiness means asking different questions. Not “What is broken?” but “Where is something already leaning forward?”

Readiness is not always loud. It may show up as a small shift in language. A question that was not asked before. A team experimenting with a new way of working, even informally. These are the places where new patterns can take hold. The work is to notice, support, and amplify them.

Ask:

• Where is the system already trying to change?

• What behaviours are already emerging that we want more of?

• Who is already modelling what is possible?

Replace analysis with conversation

In complex systems, insight emerges through interaction, not isolation. Data still matters, but so do stories, tensions, silences, and questions. The map is not the territory. What matters is how people are making sense of what is happening together.

Rather than focusing on diagnosis, start by bringing people into rooms they are not usually in. Invite voices that are often overlooked. Ask open questions that do not have immediate answers. Make the conversation itself the intervention.

Ask:

• Who needs to be in this conversation, and why?

• What are we not talking about that is shaping everything else?

• Where is silence doing the most damage?

Focus on relationships over redesign

Changing structures is often necessary, but on its own it does not create different behaviour. What makes change stick is relationship. When trust increases, risk tolerance grows. When people feel seen, they contribute more fully. When roles and expectations are clear and reciprocal, systems start to move.

Investing in relationship is not soft work. It is foundational. Start with clarity. Who is responsible for what? Where are expectations misaligned? Then move to connection. Where is there friction? Where is their absence? What trust needs to be repaired or built?

Ask:

• What conversations are people avoiding?

• Where are relationships breaking under the weight of structure?

• What trust needs to be rebuilt before change can take root?

Test, don’t fix

Complexity resists sweeping solutions. What works in one part of the system may backfire in another. Rather than trying to fix the whole, create safe-to-fail experiments. These are small, low-cost actions designed to test assumptions and generate feedback.

This is not about failing fast. It is about learning responsibly. Each experiment sends a signal into the system. Each response reveals something. The goal is not immediate success, but a better understanding of what the system is ready for and what it will resist.

Ask:

• What is the smallest possible intervention we can make?

• What would we expect to see if it is working?

• How will we respond if it fails?

Attend to constraints

When change feels stuck, we often focus on motivation or mindset. But in a complex system, behaviour is often shaped less by belief than by constraint. People do what the system allows them to do. Rules, norms, expectations, rewards, and risks all play a part.

Start by mapping what is holding the current pattern in place. Are people bound by compliance requirements? Are there norms that go unquestioned? Are the risks of speaking up too high? Changing the system may not mean changing hearts and minds. It may mean adjusting what people are free to do.

Ask:

• What are the formal and informal constraints shaping this behaviour?

• What needs to be loosened or tightened to allow something new to emerge?

• Are we making it safer to change, or safer to stay the same?

Letting the model go

The Iceberg Model is not wrong. It offers a way to see beneath the surface, to explore what shapes visible events. It invites depth. But like any model, it tells only part of the story.

Its limitation is not that it simplifies, but that it encourages a particular stance. It suggests that the system can be understood from a distance. Once we uncover the causes, we can fix the outcomes. It treats change as a design problem. Something to be mapped, solved, and implemented.

In complex systems, that stance does not hold. The system is not static. It moves. It responds to us. It is shaped by participation, not just by insight. In this kind of environment, diagnosis is not the first step. It is one move among many. Sometimes helpful. Often incomplete.

Complexity leadership asks something different. It asks us to show up in the system as we are. To let go of the idea that we can stand outside it. To notice not just what is happening, but how we are contributing to it. To act with others, not on their behalf.

Letting go of the Iceberg Model is not about discarding structure. It is about holding structure lightly. It is about replacing certainty with curiosity. Control with connection. Knowing with noticing.

We do not need to dig deeper. We need to listen more widely. We need to ask better questions. We need to lead as participants, not as planners. And we need to make space for change to emerge between us, not just from within us.

The Iceberg Model has helped many leaders think more systemically. But in complex environments, it offers too little. It implies that problems can be solved by going deeper when what is often needed is to engage more broadly. It privileges insight over relationship, and observation over participation.

In complexity, leadership is not about finding the root. It is about working with what is already emerging. It is about noticing where the system is alive, where it is stuck, and where there is energy to move.

Letting go of the Iceberg is not about rejecting depth. It is about finding depth in connection, not just in analysis.

Questions for reflection

  • Where are you still searching for causes, when you could be sensing for signals?

  • What conversations are waiting to happen, but remain uninvited?

  • What would change if you led less from what you know, and more from how you show up?