SteadyChange Principles

10 Practical principles for applying the SteadyChange approach

We believe that successful and sustainable change is built on a flexible, evolving approach that helps everyone make aligned decisions in their daily work.
Since change naturally generates uncertainty and legitimate fears, these principles also aim to strengthen psychological safety and collective clarity, enabling teams to engage confidently in the ongoing evolution of their organization.

Compass 1 — Define together the Invariants we want to preserve

P1: Identify our invariants collectively

We collectively identify the key invariants we wish to preserve — whether cultural, human, ethical, strategic or operational.

Why?
Because clarifying together what we want to preserve strengthens organizational resilience in the face of uncertainty (Taleb, Lengnick-Hall).

P2: Make invariants explicit

We ensure that these invariants remain clear, explicit, and accessible to everyone in daily decision-making.

Why?
Because uncertainty zones are sources of informal power: making invariants explicit helps reduce hidden power dynamics and strengthens collective alignment (Crozier, Friedberg).

Compass 2 — Translate them into simple, visible Watchpoints

P3: Translate invariants into Watchpoints

We translate our invariants into concrete, observable and measurable Watchpoints.

Why?
Because clear and measurable reference points facilitate continuous regulation and adjustment in complex environments (Meadows, Beer).

P4: Use Watchpoints as practical guides

These Watchpoints serve as simple reference markers to guide local decisions, enabling initiative and adaptation — without overloading processes or creating unnecessary rigidity.

Why?
Because simple, local points of vigilance help counter automatic decision-making biases (Kahneman, Fradin) and foster organizational learning (Senge, Morin). Watchpoints can be adapted and contextualized at different levels of the organization, ensuring global coherence while respecting local specificities.

Compass 3 — Leadership that embodies them, keeps them alive, and frees initiative

P5: Uphold and embody the reference points in each context

Leadership at all levels is responsible for safeguarding invariants, but also for making them come alive. It shares them, makes them visible, and supports their appropriation across departments, teams, and projects by facilitating their concrete translation.

Because a reference point only becomes effective when interpreted by those who act.
In a constructivist and systemic perspective, meaning cannot be decreed — it emerges from the interaction between the framework, the context, and the actors. Leadership that imposes creates rigidity; leadership that brings reference points to life fosters ownership and accountability. (Watzlawick, Morin, Malarewicz)

P6: Support aligned emergence and autonomy

Leadership encourages team autonomy and supports the emergence of solutions — as long as they respect the invariants. It acts as a support, a guardian of meaning, and a catalyst for initiative, rather than a validator of compliance.

Why?
Because in a living system, change is not centrally planned but emerges from the periphery, where interactions are most concrete.
The role of leadership is to create the conditions for this emergence to happen — aligned and non-threatening to overall coherence.
(Morin, Bateson, Malarewicz)

Compass 4 — Act and learn from the field with discernment

P7: Act with discernment within a living framework

We implement any action freely, as long as it respects the invariants. To do so, we rely on shared and observable Watchpoints that give concrete form to these invariants.

Why?
Because invariants can only guide action if they are accompanied by understandable and living reference points.
Watchpoints enable each person to act autonomously, within a coherent and visible framework.
They offer a secure structure without freezing action. (Morin, Watzlawick, Malarewicz)

P8: Integrate tensions and learning from the field

We collectively make visible the tensions and weak signals encountered in action, as shared attention points. These tensions and signals fuel a continuous process of learning and adjustment of our Watchpoints — and, when needed, of our invariants.

Why?
Because a living system regulates itself by integrating field feedback, perceived frictions, and gaps in actual usage.
This helps prevent stagnation, ensures the relevance of reference points in changing environments, and allows our culture to evolve at its own pace. (Meadows, Beer, Morin, Taleb, Crozier & Friedberg)

Compass 5 — Regulate at the right pace what must evolve — and what must remain

P9: Regularly re-evaluate our Watchpoints

We collectively and periodically re-evaluate our Watchpoints to ensure they remain relevant, useful, and understandable in real-world contexts. This process draws upon reported tensions, weak signals, field learnings, and shifts in the environment.

Why?
Because Watchpoints must remain simple, legible, and actionable.
As contexts evolve, they require ongoing regulation to avoid loss of meaning, confusion, or rigidity.
(Meadows, Beer, Senge, Morin)

P10: Re-examine our invariants to let our culture evolve at its own pace

We set up collective reflection moments to review our fundamental invariants and assess whether they still represent what we truly want to preserve. This evolution emerges from deep collective learning.

Why?
Because a frozen invariant becomes a dogma.
The cultural resilience of an organization depends on its ability to evolve its core reference points with clarity and discernment.
(Morin, Taleb, Crozier & Friedberg)

Conclusion

These 10 principles do not constitute a rigid method.
They offer a flexible and evolving approach, enabling organizations to navigate change consciously and move forward, while preserving what makes them strong and human.
Change inevitably generates tensions that reflect natural polarities to be balanced over time — between what we choose to preserve and what we choose to integrate.
The SteadyChange principles help guide these dynamics in a conscious, collective, and safe way.

Patrice Fornalik

Created on 2025-05-23

License:

The compasses and principles of SteadyChange are released under the Creative Commons Attribution – NonCommercial – NoDerivatives license (CC BY-NC-ND).

You are free to share them and use them as-is, including internally within your organizations, provided that:

you explicitly credit the author and the source of the approach;
you do not use them for commercial purposes without prior agreement;
you do not modify them (no derivative, reworked, or rewritten versions).

If you wish to translate, or integrate all or part of SteadyChange into a medium, a training program, a product, or any commercial initiative, please go through the “contact” page on the website: together, we will determine the form that best respects the intent and the framework.

To go further, a few inspiring case studies

→ See case studies in action

→ Discover our guiding compasses