In a complex world, your business doesn't need more rules, it needs stronger connections.

The more companies lose control, the more they add processes and committees. But in a complex world, this reflex makes the problem worse: it rigidifies systems instead of keeping them alive. What needs to be strengthened are not the rules, but the relationships.

Rethinking performance: from control to cooperation

Leaders often believe that moving faster means multiplying procedures, tools, and controls. In reality, this only makes the machine heavier and slows down decision-making.

As Donella Meadows showed as early as 2008, it is not the elements of a system that determine its performance, but the quality of the relationships between those elements.

In other words:

What slows your company down is not the quality of your teams, but the quality of the cooperation between them.

Silos, turf wars, and endless reporting loops are all signs of a system trying to protect itself rather than learn. Yet in a complex world, collective adaptation becomes the primary source of resilience.

Three levers to change the game

1. A shared compass

Your employees should be able to answer this question without hesitation:

“What are we really trying to achieve together?”

If the answers differ, you’re already losing half your energy.

A clear compass cannot be decreed — it must be built through dialogue and embodied in everyday decisions.

2. Regular, useful exchanges

Emails and endless meetings don’t create cooperation. What works are:

  • short, well-paced check-ins,
  • focused on real blockers,
  • with one simple rule: leave with decisions, not minutes.

Collective efficiency comes from clarity and rhythm, not from information overload.

3. A transversal indicator

Each department can excel in isolation while weakening the system as a whole. The remedy: a shared indicator that forces collaboration — for example, overall lead time, customer satisfaction rate, or a cooperation index.

What is measured together, succeeds together.

The Volvo example: the power of the collective

At Volvo’s cab plant in Umeå, Sweden, 37 semi-autonomous teams were studied over seven months.

The results were clear: the stronger the inter-team relationships, the higher the performance.

Observed outcomes:

  • increased productivity,
  • improved delivery quality,
  • greater job satisfaction.

Instead of adding more layers of control, Volvo chose to:

  • empower semi-autonomous teams to solve their own daily problems,
  • create cross-functional coordination spaces between production, maintenance, and quality,
  • build a culture based on trust, mutual respect, and shared goals.

This approach created a system able to self-adjust continuously without depending on constant central control.

In conclusion: In complexity, connecting beats controlling

High-performing organizations are not the most hierarchical, but those where cooperation flows freely.

In an uncertain world, resilience comes from the quality of relationships, not the density of rules.

What clogs your organization is not your talent — it’s your connections.

Cooperation is not a “nice-to-have”; it is a competitive advantage.

And when leaders stop managing through control and start managing through meaning, trust, and relationship, the system becomes capable of learning on its own.

To go further
  • Meadows, D. (2008) – Thinking in Systems. Chelsea Green.
  • Edmondson, A. (2018) – The Fearless Organization. Wiley.
  • Morin, E. (1990) – Introduction à la pensée complexe. ESF.