Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems — Keep them up ‘durch dick und dünn’ (‘through thick and thin’)

Returned from an outstanding book launch event in Berlin on May 9, 2025, thoughts have gone through my mind. It was not just a book launch per se but a profound analysis of the complex and disruptive times we are all currently living through. The question, ‘How can these challenges be transformed in lasting ways for the common good?’, was sitting in the room on the 4th unseen chair on the podium.

Transformation of any system created by humans, may it be the energy system, the food system, the health care system, or the political system in the region(s) you are based and also familiar to quite some degree, is not an easy thing to achieve as much as one might think. As a consultant or consulting company you might have more insight than the involved parties and know to make certain moves to get the system slowly move at one end (Are we seeing the whole playing field yet?). Would it be possible to initiate the transformation from the inside? Probably not in the short run. But would you agree with that this would be possible to fully achieve via sheer willpower and unexpected help?

As Edgar Schein has famously coined it, “Everything You Say or Do Is an Intervention that Determines the Future of the Relationship” — which causes certain things to happen and people, groups, organizations and institutions to act in ways (that could not be expected as we did not include this behavior in our thought process (these are my words based on real-world experiences) within the relationship space.

There needs more to it. The topic and title of the book launch on last Friday at BuM in Berlin was ‘Everyday Habits for Transforming Systems’* by Adam Kahane (written in a quite unique way together with several hundred ‘co-writers’ and ‘co-commenters’) bringing to life the mentioned seven personal daily habits that people, engaged in some well-known and astonishing system transformations, have pursued on a daily basis to enable what they have achieved.

• Habit 1: Acting Responsibly (have always the whole (system) and other impacted people/parties in mind)
• Habit 2: Relating in Three Dimensions (relate with other people in the system as individuals, as part of a group and )
• Habit 3: Looking for What’s Unseen (don’t trust your experience and eyes to see what’s obvious to others but not for you)
• Habit 4: Working with Cracks (make emerging cracks in the system your intimate friend)
• Habit 5: Experimenting a Way Forward (try a small version of your bold imagined move to see how the system behaves, repeat)
• Habit 6: Collaborating with Unlike Others (engage with people who are an essential part of the specific system but you would normally not mingle or talk with)
• Habit 7: Perservering and Resting (overcoming the inevitable frustration, energy drainage find ways to reload your batteries, good mood and hope, and keep on moving)

Having said this, a living system is always consisting of many groups with even more individuals, set rules that have often evolved over decades or generations (e.g. political systems) and relations (openly seen or hidden for outsiders). This makes Habit 1 (Acting Responsibly) and Habit 2 (Relating in Three Dimensions) from my point of view especially relevant as intended systemic transformations involvs at the largest part working with people at various positions within the system.

Where and when should one start when your personal actions rather seem like moving ‘‘grains of sand for nothing’? Will the described habits really be helpful to lift bold challenges off the ground? What’s in it for me (WIIFM; an expression I heard the first time during a conference in Oman during a table conversation)?

Each and one of us has his or her personal drivers to envision possible systemic transformation and trying to bring them to life with intentional personal effort. Sometimes you are already (literally) in a ‘good driver’s seat’ or position to set off. Sometimes it is rather a very personal need felt to make a difference. Combining the seven habits above besides not loosing sight of your vision enables you over time to get into a position or rather constellation/relation with others thinking similar on bold challenges and the envisioned transformation becomes a reality as working together in this.

What I take once again with me is:

When you really ‘burn’ for a cause you don’t quit even after continuous setbacks, have an ‘open eye’ for ‘opportunities that emerge’, and dare to ‘move into the unknown’, amazing things can happen. Honing the 7 Habits will support this journey.

Thanks for the opportunity to meeting in person and refresh the conversation.

• The subtitle of the book is ‘The Catalytic Power of Radical Engagement’ which could lead finally to ‘radical collaboration’ to transform really bold challenges and culturally sustained behaviors that prevent us collectively to create a future we would wish to become a reality for our kins and kids.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com, and slightly adapted and changed.