Leading Change from the Bottom Up: A Field Guide for Real-World Leaders

If you’ve ever tried to change something inside a restaurant, a retail chain, or a company that’s gotten too comfortable, you already know how stubborn systems can be. You roll out a new process, you send the memo, you rally the team — and the system quietly resists. Not because people don’t care, but because the structure itself is designed to protect equilibrium.

In complexity science, that equilibrium has a name: a dissipative system — one that must pass through periods of instability to renew itself. It’s the forest fire that clears the brush so sunlight can reach the soil again. It’s the revolution that topples what’s rigid so something better can take shape. And it’s what every living organization must experience if it wants to stay alive.

The leader’s job isn’t to keep things stable. It’s to create the right kind of disturbance — just enough to loosen what’s stale and make room for something better to emerge.

1. Disturb the System, Don’t Manage It

We’ve been trained to believe that good leadership equals control — plan the work, manage the work, stabilize the work. But in complex environments, control kills creativity. What actually moves a system forward is disturbance: the willingness to ask hard questions, surface tension, and allow discomfort to do its job.

That might look like walking into a weekly meeting and saying, “If we were designing this system from scratch today, what would we keep — and what would we burn down?” It might mean suspending the rush to solution long enough for people to see what’s really happening.

It takes courage to let things feel a bit messy, but that temporary instability is what allows a team to reorganize around truth instead of convenience.

2. Go Where the Energy Already Is

When I’m inside a business that’s plateaued, I don’t start at the top of the org chart — I start at the edges. That’s where the energy always is. It’s the prep cook who quietly redesigned the line to save ten minutes, or the AGM who shifted the floor plan on a Friday night because she could see flow before anyone else could.

These are the early signals that the system wants to evolve. Leaders who know how to listen for them — and then amplify them — create change faster than any mandate ever could.

If you’re serious about leading from the bottom up, spend less time managing performance reviews and more time talking with the people who feel the friction every day. Ask them what’s getting in their way. Ask what one thing would make their work easier or better. Then act on something tangible and visible. Momentum begins at the edges and ripples inward.

3. Run Micro-Experiments Instead of Grand Plans

Big change initiatives look impressive on slides and usually collapse under their own weight. Real transformation comes through small, contained experiments that invite participation instead of compliance.

Pick one pressure point — maybe weekend prep hours, table turnover, or cross-training in the kitchen. Bring together a few people who know it best and give them permission to test a new idea for two weeks. Keep it simple. Measure what happens. Reflect. Decide whether to keep it, tweak it, or scrap it.

Each small test becomes a feedback loop that helps the system learn how to learn. And when people see even one experiment working, they start believing that change is not only possible but theirs to shape. That belief is the ignition point for bottom-up transformation.

4. Build a Culture That Feeds on Feedback

No system evolves without energy flow, and in human systems, that energy is feedback. Yet in most workplaces, feedback gets filtered, softened, or withheld because people are afraid of consequences.

To lead dissipative change, you have to make truth safe again. I often end team sessions with a single question: “What did we not say today that needed to be said?” Then I wait. That silence does more heavy lifting than any leadership framework ever could.

The more truth you allow to circulate, the more adaptive your system becomes. Teams start self-correcting. People share insights faster. And you move from managing behavior to cultivating intelligence — the collective kind.

What It Looks Like in Practice

Leading change from the bottom up isn’t glamorous. It’s the quiet, persistent work of creating just enough disruption for something new to grow. It’s walking toward friction instead of smoothing it over. It’s choosing curiosity over control.

When you stop trying to fix the system and start feeding it truth, energy, and micro-experiments, it begins to reorganize itself. And that’s when you see real progress — not the kind written in a playbook, but the kind you can feel in the pulse of your team, in the pace of adaptation, in the stories people tell each other when you’re not in the room.

The leaders who will thrive in the years ahead won’t be the ones who hold it all together. They’ll be the ones who know how to let go — and still guide the flow.