When the Pipes Burst: Why Organisational Change Needs Systems Thinking
Recently, I navigated a complex move into an old cottage—full of history, character, and unforeseen quirks. First the boiler broke. Once that was repaired, the bathroom leaked into the kitchen: less charming period feature, more Fawlty Towers.
The irony of that interdependence was not lost on me. As a researcher and strategist focused on complexity-informed systems change, I often watch major organisational restructures with a mix of professional curiosity, compassion, and structural frustration. Like the plumbing in an old house, an organisation is a network of connected relationships: change one part, and the effects travel elsewhere. Yet when a large public body or civic machine undergoes a sudden, top-down reset, leadership often reaches for the traditional corporate playbook—cut headcount, balance the spreadsheet, and expect instant optimisation.
But human organisations are complex adaptive systems: performance emerges from the interactions between people, teams, processes, information, and incentives. Removing a team or capability changes those relationships, redistributes work, and creates feedback effects elsewhere, so the rest of the organisation cannot be expected to carry on unchanged.
Top-down restructures often overlook one of the most important conditions for healthy complex systems: the relationships through which people share knowledge, coordinate decisions, resolve problems, and get work done.
When specialised contracting teams are dismantled overnight to meet an immediate budget target, the change does more than reduce costs. It can sever the invisible threads of trust, collective memory, and unwritten workflows that keep a public service running.
I have seen the fallout directly. When human connections are severed too quickly, the work does not disappear; knowledge becomes harder to access, decisions take longer, and delivery pipelines develop friction. Milestones stall, risks rise, and the remaining teams must absorb the impact with less support.
Cost savings and efficiency should not come from blind subtraction. They require an intentional systems lens, supported by robust programme delivery management that identifies dependencies, protects critical knowledge, and plans the transition before capacity is removed.
So, what does good systems-informed restructuring look like? It begins with two practices:
First, map delivery interdependencies. Before ending a contract or removing a team, understand how information, dependencies, decisions, and trust flow through the system. A cut that looks isolated on an organisational chart can create bottlenecks across an entire programme timeline. Second, protect institutional memory. When specialist contractors leave, years of unwritten project history and programme intelligence leave with them. A coordinated handover, clear ownership, and an effective governance framework are essential to keep the next delivery phase moving.
Transitions are messy, but they are also the moment to stop patching one burst pipe at a time and redesign the plumbing: protect critical relationships, transfer knowledge before it drains away, and build delivery frameworks that can adapt as the system changes.
If your organisation or department is navigating a major structural shift right now, how are you protecting the relationships, knowledge, and informal networks that keep delivery moving? I’d be interested to hear what’s working in your organisation.
