The invisible art of directing is the act of regulating the tension between the “warp” (the rigid strategy) and the “weft” (the unpredictable living) to hold a system together without suffocating it.
I’ve outlined my thoughts in this article. It’s up to you to tell me if I’m off my rocker 😉!
Forget the KPI Hall of Fame!
You’ve no doubt been taught management as the art of building rigid structures.
Your management has no doubt once shown you, on PowerPoint, these monumental edifices, composed of four to six massive pillars supporting a triangular pediment pointing to the sky – and to success.
A stone temple to represent performance. I’ve seen dozens of them; I’ve been shown just as many with great pride.
But on the ground, this symbolic monument is no more than a collection of paper blocks.
It’s collapsing.
In reality, companies are fibrous organisms, alive and in motion.
Managing requires us to leave behind the posture of the builder and adopt that of the weaver. Weaving is a praxis of complexity. It’s about holding together threads that are trying to pull apart.
Your job is to regulate tensions so that the whole holds together.
The mechanics of tension: between structure and breath
Weaving is an extraordinary invention, born long before Rome dreamed of stone monuments. Before mankind learned to pile up to dominate, it learned to bind to survive.
This precedence of thread over stone should alert you to the fact that the survival of a system depends not on its rigidity, but on how well it holds together. The act of weaving is based on the duality of warp and weft.
- The chain brings together your vertical, fixed threads, stretched across the loom. It embodies your strategy, your framework, your objectives. Without this initial tension, nothing is possible. But the chain alone remains a mute harp.
- Weft refers to the horizontal thread slipped between the warp threads. It carries the human, the unpredictable, the living.
This dynamic is in line with Ronald Heifetz ‘s Adaptive Leadership. It separates technical challenges, which require expertise, from adaptive challenges, which require a change of posture. Your role lies in this constant regulation between the demands of the framework and the breath of the system. Barry Johnson ‘s Polarity Management confirms this necessity: you don’t cut between discipline and freedom; you regulate the passage of the shuttle so that one feeds the other. Listen to the resistance of the matter in your body when you impose too narrow a framework. It speaks to you!
The ethics of presence: the micro-politics of gesture
The loom imposes a radical proximity.
Managing from a closed office is like changing the texture of a sheet without touching it. It’s an illusion of control.
This anchoring defines what Karl Weick calls “Sensemaking”.
In the ambiguity of organizations, you don’t impose a truth.
You help your team to extract meaning from chaos.
You name the thread that sticks out, you make the pattern visible.
Every interaction is a shuttle passage: it’s a meeting, a silence, a feedback.
Here, your posture is in line withAdrienne Maree Brown ‘s thinking in Emergent Strategy: leadership is fractal.
What plays out at the micro level reflects and builds the macro level.
The solidity of your overall weave depends on the accuracy of each thread crossing.
What I’ve read from her has really changed my perspective:
“There is an art to the cloud:
staying close enough to relate,
but not close enough to kill the other’s ability to fly.”
What’s at the heart of your job as a leader? Hold the fiber without suffocating it. A brusque gesture or a vague word weakens the whole.
Your credibility is embodied in your ability to inhabit each point of contact, because you know that the quality of the relationship here determines the resilience of the system there.
You answer for the health of the fiber, not just the shape of the fabric.
Void space: directing the invisible
A fabric draws its strength from its interstices. Tightening the weft too much produces a rigid, suffocating, lifeless cardboard. In leadership, emptiness is not an absence of work; it’s a condition of survival.
In the face of uncertainty, the reflex to “fill in” with an immediate decision often betrays control anxiety.
This is where you need to summon your “Negative Capacity”. This concept, explored by Peter French, refers to a leader’s ability to dwell in doubt and mystery without chasing certainties.
Your sovereignty is measured by your ability to hold the space of emptiness without trying to fill it with your ego. This is where leadership meets radical wisdom: holding space so that others can do.
In the Roman vision, the leader saturates the space with his will. He is the monument.
In the praxis of weaving, the leader becomes the “frame” of the loom.
It is an act of raw courage to stand still when the system panics, not to “slice” to reassure oneself, but to guarantee the tension of the warp.
You are not the solution to your team’s problems; if you are the answer to everything, you are the bottleneck of the living.
Your role is to guarantee the integrity of the framework, so that others can inject their own movement into it.
This is the essence of “Presencing” in Otto Scharmer’s Theory U: leading from the emerging future, accepting that we don’t yet know.
Adrienne Maree Brown, a journalist and author I quoted above, tells us in Emergent Strategy that, although we don’t control the system, we can foster the conditions for its deployment.
Holding space is not passivity, it’s active guarding.
Your turn to hold the world
Weaving is an act of patience. It’s never finished. You take the work off the loom, but life continues to transform it.
To lead means to accept this impermanence.
Your power comes not from control, but from your ability to hold the thread, here and now.
You’re not here to please. You see, you breathe, you regulate.
Hold the space. Hold your plot. The rest will follow.💪
And if you need any help, I’m here.
Ref. for the curious
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Adrienne Maree Brown, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds (2017). In English only. The essential reference on fractal leadership and the art of the cloud.
- Heifetz & Linsky, Adaptive Leadership: The Practice of Deploying Change (2017). Adaptive Leadership (Éditions Eyrolles). The distinction between technical and posture challenges.
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Peter FrenchNegative Capability: Management and Organization Studies (2001). In English only. The seminal article on the leader’s ability to hold the space of doubt without acting on impulse.
