A three-part series into the School of System Change’s journey of cultivating systemic practice and facilitative capacity alongside partners. Sean Andrew shares his experience as Learning and Practice Partner Lead at the School, as he now transitions to a collaborative partner role.
Change at different scales and paces
While we have written elsewhere about specific Learning and Practice Partnerships, my intention here is different. Rather than focusing on impact, I want to reflect on some of the less visible ripples of this work.
Over the past four years, LPPs have shaped not only our work with partners (the World), but also how we organize as a School (the We) and how I understand my own practice and role in change (the I).
The World: Our Work with Partners
It would be false to claim that all our partners have consistently felt assured that the work we were doing together was creating the change they originally envisioned. Our work has included moments of doubt and epiphany amongst partners. Doubt sometimes shows up as fear, spurred by concerns that we are taking a winding path, that precious time and resources are being invested without immediate change, or that impact may not ever materialize. Epiphany has shown up as hope when a new idea is born, relationships deepen, or as a previously hidden pathway for action comes into view. Both experiences are usually temporary.
As Margaret Wheatley reminds us, “hope never enters a room without fear at its side.” Neither fear nor hope offers a solid stance amid complexity. What we’ve seen endure is the capacity to continue acting amid uncertainty, not because success is guaranteed, but because the work remains meaningful to those engaged in it.
With this, one of the most significant shifts we have observed is a growing comfort with not knowing. As partners become less caught in the cycle of resisting fear and grasping for hope, they’ve become more willing to stay engaged with what is unfolding and responding from that place. Rather than rushing to certainty, partners learn their way forward through participation, observation, and adaptation, often discovering that understanding emerges through engagement itself, echoing Kurt Lewin's insight that we come to understand systems most deeply when we attempt to change them. We’ve found that this orientation of being able to take action from a place of not knowing for sure is one of the most responsible and relieving ways partners can embrace complexity. I’ve often noticed this as a collective exhale that follows the recognition that none of us fully knows the right way or a single way forward.
When we ask partners retrospectively what has changed, the conversation rarely begins with the outputs themselves. While we are often brought in to support the development of a new strategy or a learning framework, the deeper shifts people tend to point to are in changes in how their organization thinks, relates, and acts together.
As one partner shared, “…has been more than just refining structures. It has been a deeply participatory journey, fostering a culture of learning, adaptability, and collaboration across all levels of our organization and within the wider ecosystem we are part of.”
Another reflected that, “…real transformation happens when strategy is not only well designed but also deeply lived, continuously evolved, and embedded in the way we work every day.”
These reflections point to something we have come to appreciate over time: while projects end, the ways people work and learn together often endure. The most significant changes are often not what is written in a document, but the capabilities people develop to contribute to change together.
As Arundhati Roy writes, “Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Much of our work is about helping to create the conditions in which people can notice these subtle changes as well.
The We: The School
Learning and Practice Partnerships have also created ripples within the School itself.
One of our early experiments was creating an LPP Circle, inspired by Sociocracy. What began as a meeting space became a place for us to explore how we might organize together differently.
As we worked with partners to cultivate learning, feedback, shared ownership, and adaptive ways of working, we found ourselves asking many of the same questions internally. How do we practice together? How do we make decisions? How do we get into a healthy rhythm that balances planning, doing, and reflecting?
The Circle became a place to experiment with these questions and with structures and processes that could better support how we organize as a School. Looking back, it feels like one of the places where some of the seeds of our current circle structure were first cultivated.
The ripples of this work were not only structural but also relational. Through Learning and Practice Partnerships, we became increasingly interested in the quality of the relationships that underpin systems change. In some pockets of the School, this even influenced the nature of manager-line manager relationships towards what some of us playfully called “relationship composting”: creating space to appreciate one another, surface challenges, and tend to the relationship as a living dimension of our work.
In many ways, Learning and Practice Partnerships became a mirror. As we supported partners to experiment with new ways of being and doing, we found ourselves engaged in the same work.
The I: My Personal Practice
As I turn towards re-constellating with the School as a Collaborative Partner, I am deeply grateful to have had a practice ground for exploring how I wish to engage in change with myself, with others, and the world.
One of the gifts of this work has been the opportunity to delve into a wide range of practices. Different partnerships have called for different ways of showing up. At times, I have been a process designer, facilitator, mediator, coach, advisor, trainer, and learner. This has invited a kind of role fluidity within me – continually asking what is needed in a particular moment of me and who I might need to become in service of it.
At the heart of this work for me has been a deepening understanding of what accompaniment looks and feels like as a relational stance. It has taught me to discern when to offer challenge or support as any good friend does, and when to give room versus when to lean in as partners find their way forward. This has meant I’ve discovered a growing willingness within me to remain in the liminal groan zone just long enough for something novel to arise, without falling into premature convergence. While the tendency still lives within me to move towards clarity and resolution, this work has taught me that some of the most meaningful shifts come from participating in what is emerging rather than trying to change what is happening here and now.
LPPs have taught me to dance between practice, process, and outcomes as expressions of systems change: cultivating capabilities, collaborating and experimenting together, and contributing towards change out in the world. Different partnerships have required different emphases, but the art has been staying in relationship with all three. This has required continually aligning attention with intention and intention with attention so that I am attending to the right layer (practice/process/outcomes) by zooming into the granular nuances of how mindsets, habits, and relationships are shifting and zooming out into how wider patterns are changing.
One of the aspects of this work I have found both rewarding and most demanding is the combination of freedom and constraint it requires. Each partnership has invited us to reinvent the process in response to a unique context while remaining guided by a shared set of principles. At times this has been exhilarating. At others, tiring. I like to think about this as a relational-principles-based approach to change that does not depend on a series of steps, but rather on building and following the banks of the river that supports us to find its own course.
What I will carry forward most is a different understanding of what good work feels like. In a world that often rewards certainty, expertise, and having the answer, I have found something deeply refreshing in a way of working that values honesty over posturing, experimentation over rightness, and relationship alongside results.
This work has not always been easy. At times, it has been messy, uncomfortable, and demanding. Yet it has also been one of the most joyful, authentic, and life-affirming experiences of my professional life.
As I prepare to re-constellate with the School in a different capacity, I find myself reflecting less on the impact we achieved and more on how this experience has shaped me, our team, and those we work with. It has deepened my capacity to stay present amid uncertainty, to make room for others to lead, and to trust that meaningful change often emerges through relationships and collective inquiry rather than control.
Still Becoming
Like all change work, Learning and Practice Partnerships have not unfolded perfectly. The work continues to face tensions, limitations, and the challenge of staying true to its core intentions without becoming rigid.
As others take this work forward, I find myself less concerned with preserving the approach and more curious about what it might become. Learning and Practice Partnerships, like the systems they seek to support, must remain alive to changing circumstances rather than fixed in a particular form. The value of the approach lies not in its preservation, but in its continued adaptation.
For my part, I am grateful to have been part of its ongoing evolution.
