From Thinking in Systems to Living in (nested) Systems - Spirals of Grace
"Systems don’t live in diagrams—they live in bodies, relationships, and patterns that breathe."
The legacy of Peter Senge
When Peter Senge published The Fifth Discipline in 1990, he changed how organizations thought about themselves. He introduced the world to the idea of the learning organization: a place where people continually expand their capacity to create results they truly desire, where new ways of thinking are nurtured, and where people learn together.
At its heart were five disciplines:
Personal Mastery – individual growth as the seedbed of organizational change.
Mental Models – surfacing and challenging our hidden assumptions.
Shared Vision – aligning purpose across the collective.
Team Learning – dialogue as the crucible of insight.
Systems Thinking – seeing the whole, not just the parts.
This was—and still is—foundational. Senge’s work shifted the corporate world from machine metaphors (org charts, hierarchies) toward organic metaphors (ecosystems, learning).
In the 30+ years since, something has shifted. In the world as well as in Senge's own work.
Why learning organizations stall
Despite being widely taught, few companies truly operate as learning organizations. In my work across scale-ups, unicorns, and family businesses in India and beyond, I see the same pattern:
CEOs embrace systems thinking workshops
Teams run mental model exercises and off-sites
Culture decks proclaim shared vision and growth mindsets
And yet, when stress spikes—quarter-end crunches, investor pressure, crisis pivots—these noble ideas collapse under pressure. Teams revert to silos. Leaders default to command-and-control. Culture slogans become wall art.
Why? Because Senge’s previous framework, powerful as it is, is cognitively heavy but somatically thin. It assumes that once people "see the system," they’ll act differently. But seeing is not enough—not when our biology, emotions, and ingrained trauma responses hijack us in real time.
Complexity is not just cognitive — it’s somatic
Modern neuroscience explains what Senge intuited but did not integrate at the time of writing the Fifth Discipline.
Under high stress, the amygdala hijacks the prefrontal cortex. Strategic thinking narrows
Decision-making shifts from systemic (big picture) to reactive (fight-flight-freeze)
Leaders lose access to relational empathy—crucial for collaboration and trust-building
In other words: you can’t think your way out of complexity if your body is in survival mode.
This is why brilliant CEOs—people who can map supply chains, financial models, and macro trends—still fail to lead coherent teams. Their mental clarity is disconnected from somatic regulation and relational coherence.
From thinking in systems to living in nested systems
Here’s the leap:
A thinking system is a conceptual model: diagrams, feedback loops, causal arrows.
A living system is dynamic: it breathes through the bodies, emotions, and relationships of the people who constitute it.
Organizations aren’t machines to be optimized; they’re social organisms. Their "health" depends as much on trust, regulation, and purpose alignment as it does on OKRs and dashboards.
This is what Systems of Grace addresses: not just how leaders think, but how they feel, relate, and regulate themselves within complexity.
The Spiral - a dynamic model for leadership in motion
Building on Peter Senge’s 5 disciplines, and Mette Miriam Rakel Böll Mandalas of Systems Awareness, Systems of Grace has evolved as a spiral: an upward, living dynamic that integrates multiple dimensions of leadership.
Four Portals of the Awareness (re. Center for Systems Awareness)
Perceptual (Seeing Clearly): Cultivating deep systems awareness and surfacing biases.
Relational (Connecting Deeply): Building high-trust loops and dismantling silos.
Aspirational (Aligning Purpose): Re-grounding leaders and teams in shared “why.”
Somatic (Embodied Regulation): Training the nervous system to stay calm under pressure.
Each portal feeds into the next, creating upward movement (spiral ascent). When one is neglected—say, relational trust in a fast-scaling startup—the spiral stalls or reverses.
The 5 realities that holds the spiral together
At the core of the Spiral are Five Realities, derived from both neuroscience and Vedantic philosophy:
Physical: The state of your body, health, energy.
Emotional: Your capacity to feel and metabolize emotions, not just suppress them.
Relational: The quality of your trust and networks.
Mental: Clarity of thinking, bias recognition, systemic insight.
Spiritual: A sense of purpose, meaning, and interconnectedness (beyond “self”).
A leader’s coherence depends on integrating all five. Too often, CEOs optimize Mental while neglecting Physical (burnout), Emotional (suppression), or Relational (isolation).
Case in point:
When I introduced this model to to a unicorn start-ups leadership, our diagnostic revealed:
High Mental clarity (great strategic insight)
Low Relational coherence (trust fractures between functions)
Poor Somatic regulation (chronic overdrive)
Instead of launching new strategy workshops, we worked the Spiral:
Somatic resets: Focus on deep sleep, RHR, HRV
Relational interventions: Trust-mapping. cross-functional one-team circles
Perceptual reframe: Using systems diagrams to spot reinforcing loops driving burnout
Result? Within 12 weeks, decision-making speed improved 23%, product and internal NPS scores rose in some teams by 50%. Not because of a new playbook, but because the system itself began to breathe differently.
Why Grace?
I call this Systems of Grace deliberately. Grace is not religious—it’s systemic alignment expressed effortlessly. It’s what happens when:
A leader’s biology is regulated
Their relationships are trusting
Their decisions flow from clarity and purpose
Grace is what complexity feels like when you are in coherence, not chaos.
What Senge would say (is saying) today
If Senge were writing The Fifth Discipline now, he would likely include:
Embodied leadership practices: Somatic grounding as a prerequisite for systems thinking
Neurobiological literacy: Understanding stress, vagal tone, and decision-making
Cultural diagnostics: Measuring not just strategy but emotional social field effects (how “safe” it feels to learn in your org)
Systems of Grace builds on his foundation, and the work of Mette Miriam Rakel Böll his co-founder at the Center for Systems Awareness; and expands it into the inner work CEOs need today: to move from thinking about systems to leading as living systems.
From insight to practice
Here’s the bridge we’ll cross in this book:
From cognitive insight (seeing loops) → to embodied practice (staying grounded in loops).
From siloed self-work → to integrated reality-work (self, team, culture).
From heroic leadership → to systemic stewardship.
Because in the age of scale and solitude, leaders don’t just need better thinking—they need grace under pressureanchored in living systems awareness.
Preview of what’s next
In Chapter 3, we’ll dive deeper into the Spiral of Grace model:
How the Four Portals map directly to the Five Realities.
The neuroscience that explains why spiral ascent is possible.
A practical diagnostic you can use today to see where your own leadership spiral is stalled—and where to begin.
