The smartest leaders don’t pick sides, they work within the polarity and the tension created by our modern organizations. Leaders are often told to make clear-cut decisions, which suggests that there are problems and solutions. This is a very surface level and linear driven approach to leading. An approach that is less likely to succeed in our modern organizations and in the future organizations driven by technology and fast-paced change and innovation.

Though not every challenge is a problem to be solved. Some are more like systemic dynamics to be understood, leveraged and managed. Systemic polarities are interdependent opposites that can’t be resolved, only balanced and managed over time.

Stories are systemic and fractal in nature. They offer a view of how leaders and people not only make sense of and create meaning in a system, but how they can drive strategic vision. In both nature and business, patterns repeat at different scales. Just as a tree’s branching structure mirrors itself from the trunk to the twigs, stories in leadership follow a fractal nature—where a small anecdote can reflect the larger strategic vision of an organization.

The fractal nature of stories means that a well-told individual experience, metaphor, or analogy can scale up to communicate broader leadership values, business strategies, and organizational culture. By recognizing and leveraging this, leaders can create narratives that remain consistent yet adaptable, allowing them to connect deeply across multiple levels of an organization.

“Org charts are pointless—they only show hierarchy.”

That’s a bold statement, and for leaders steeped in traditional organizational design and positional authority, it might even feel threatening. Though from a systemic and narrative leadership perspective, this assertion opens the door to a far more accurate and actionable understanding of how organizations actually work.

Organizational charts were designed to bring order to complexity. They show who reports to whom, define formal roles, and delineate boundaries. While this is helpful for basic structure and operations, they fail to capture the deeper, more dynamic elements that actually drive behavior, performance, and transformation.

The smartest leaders don’t just fix problems, they scale what’s already working. Today a leaders attention is often pulled toward what's not working such as declining metrics, conflict areas, failure to thrive, or underperformance. While these deserve attention, they are not the only data the system is offering. In fact, focusing exclusively on problems can obscure the more valuable question: Where is the system already thriving, and how can we do more of that?

Systems are dynamic, self-regulating entities. That means they're always producing signals; not just signs of strain, but also signs of resilience, creativity, and alignment. Systemic leaders learn to recognize and amplify these patterns.