Business leaders and CEOs today are facing mounting pressure to deliver both short-term results and long-term transformation. At the same time, they are asked to build organisations that are agile, resilient, and aligned from the C-suite to the frontline. I had the opportunity to speak to Dr Gerry Kraines when he was in Singapore recently. We observed that to thrive in this BANI environment, many leaders are turning to two powerful frameworks: Strategic Organisation™ and Systems Leadership. While often discussed independently, these two disciplines are deeply complementary. Strategic Organisation™ focuses on designing the structure, roles, talent capabilities, leadership, accountability, and work systems of an organisation to ensure effectiveness. Systems Leadership focuses on the mindset, behaviours, and processes required to lead in complexity, mobilise stakeholders, and enable learning across boundaries.
Strategic Organisation™: Building the Conditions for Success
Strategic Organisation™ (SO) emphasises that organisational performance is less about individual brilliance or capabilities, and more about system design. At its core, SO is a discipline that helps leaders align five key elements: structure, process, people, leadership, and values. When these are aligned, organisations gain clarity of purpose, consistency in execution, and coherence in how people work together.
One of SO’s most powerful concepts is the idea of “time-span of discretion” invented by Elliott Jaques in the 1950s. Every role in the organisation, from shop floor to CEO, has a time horizon for which it is accountable. Misalignment between role complexity and capability leads to dysfunction. This concept, when applied, helps organisations calibrate managerial layers, streamline bureaucracy, and avoid over-engineering or leadership vacuums. But just asking a subordinate to ‘fix it’ or ‘do what makes sense’ is neither helpful nor effective. As Gerry would put it “Accountability without Authority is Fantasy and Stress.”
From a Systems Thinking lens, the Nested Hierarchy of Choices offers a clear framework for translating an organisation’s purpose and vision into coherent strategies, tactics, and daily activities across the enterprise. When integrated with the design principles of Strategic Organisation™, it enables each layer of the organisation to take ownership of decisions appropriate to their scope of responsibility—ranging from long-term vision-setting and strategic direction to tactical planning and frontline execution. This structured approach ensures that conceptual strategies are not just abstract ideas but are operationalised holistically throughout the organisation. It promotes vertical alignment, reinforces accountability, and empowers individuals to make decisions that are connected to a shared purpose, ultimately creating a more agile and focused organisation, anchored on clear accountability at every level of leadership.
Take HR, for example. In most companies, HR is seen as an enabler. But in a strategically organised company, HR becomes a systemic lever for transformation. Roles are defined not just by titles, but by accountabilities. Career progression is aligned with the complexity of work, and performance systems are designed around the effectiveness with which employees overcome obstacles and create opportunities, not just competencies. This changes the game from “managing people” to “managing systems of roles.”
Strategy in Action: A Manufacturing Example
Consider a mid-to-large sized manufacturing company undergoing a shift toward smart factory operations. Leadership has invested heavily in IoT, automation, and analytics—but results are mixed. Frontline workers resist the change, middle managers struggle to bridge the technical and human elements, and the executive team is firefighting rather than leading.
By applying Strategic Organisation™ principles, they redesigned their operating model using the Functional Model of a Level 5 Business Unit. Strategic roles were separated from tactical ones. Cross-functional direct-and-indirect accountabilities for outputs (i.e., QQT/R: Quantity, Quality, Time, Resources) are mapped to clarify who is accountable for what in relation to whom. Leaders used accountability mapping to see where execution bottlenecks lay. And at the heart of the transformation, a new system for decision rights, role expectations, and time-span alignment was implemented.
The result? Resistance decreased, productivity increased, and managers had more time to lead rather than plug gaps. Systems Leadership principles—like double-loop learning and surfacing mental models—were used to reframe the cultural assumptions holding the organisation back.
Systems Leadership: Navigating Complexity Through A Theory of Success
If Strategic Organisation™ builds the structure as espoused by Gerry Kraines and Elliott Jaques, Systems Leadership provides the lens. Developed by thought leaders like Peter Senge and Daniel Kim, Systems Leadership challenges leaders to think beyond event-led chains and start recognising patterns, loops, and interdependencies.
A Systems Leader is someone who can hold the long-term vision while navigating short-term complexity. They build capacity for generative conversations, suspend assumptions, and use tools like the Casual Loops and the Levels of Perspective to perform diagnosis and co-creation. Most importantly, they see change not as a linear ‘project’, but as an emergent, iterative process.
When applied together, Strategic Organisation™ provides the infrastructure for accountability and alignment, while Systems Leadership provides the mindset and practice for adaptation and innovation. The synergy between the two creates a powerful enterprise that not only delivers but evolves.
Leading the System: How Executives Can Apply Both
So how can leaders combine Strategic Organisation and Systems Thinking in practical terms? It starts with diagnosis. Leaders need to move from a reactive mindset to one of systemic awareness. Instead of asking “Who dropped the ball?”, they must ask “What in the system allowed this problem to emerge?”.
Second, leaders need to design for learning. This means embedding double-loop learning into strategy reviews, building in feedback loops at multiple levels, and using tools like the Creative Tension Model to manage the gap between current reality and vision. Strategic Organisation™ helps formalise the ‘what’: structure, role design, accountability. Systems Thinking guides the ‘how’: adaptation, sensemaking, and emergent strategy.
Third, leadership development must be re-imagined. Instead of generic competency models, organisations should develop leaders who can lead systems and understand authority and roles. This means teaching managers how to design role architectures, align team charters, and diagnose systemic causes of conflict.
Conclusion: The Future of Work is Systemic
As complexity increases, the leaders who will thrive are those who can simultaneously engineer the conditions for performance and cultivate the learning environment for growth. Strategic Organisation™ and Systems Leadership are not just frameworks; they are leadership imperatives. By embracing both, organisations move from managing chaos to leading change. From reacting to building capacity. And from siloed excellence to enterprise-wide coherence.