It’s August, and I’m bracing myself. This time every year, I start itching for change in a burn-it-all-down-and-start-over kind of way. Maybe it’s the heat. Maybe it’s the fact that I haven’t taken any time off (yet! t-minus 12 days and counting) and I’m tired. Or maybe it’s just being 8 months into the year and increasingly clear about what is and isn’t working. Whatever it is, I’m getting restless.

Is it just me?

I share this as I’m writing chapter 7 in my book, which is all about the fractal nature of change—how it emerges through small shifts repeated over and over, building slowly here and there until suddenly it’s everywhere, all at once.

On one hand, this fundamental truth of change encourages us to be patient and steadfast in how we shepherd change through our systems. To hold change as an article of faith. But change is not something we wait around for. It’s always happening, all around us and, as we talked about a few months ago, within us.

Nor is real and lasting change something we can simply speak into being. The first part of this chapter (preceding the excerpt below) is a critique of that old change management darling, the mandate. Mandates seem like the most expedient route to change, but—as we’ve learned from our own experience and the mistakes of others—when we move fast, we break stuff.

I don’t mean breaking the rules. I mean breaking trust, relationships, social contracts. Stuff that matters.

So yes, let’s be careful and strategic with our moves. But there comes a time, like on this August day, when momentum takes over and change won’t be denied.

Maybe I’m not restless after all. Maybe I’m just ready.

Several big shifts are underway here at Radiant Change, and I’m excited to share more with you in the months ahead. For now, a small change I’m making is that the rest of the monthly mini-retreats in 2026 are being converted to book club meetings, where members of the RadiantChange.co community of practice are gathering to share their thoughts on a chapter-in-progress.

You are most welcome to join us—if the excerpt below speaks to you, hit reply and I’ll send you the full chapter along with the Zoom link. 💛

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

—Arthur Ashe

TRUTH #7: CHANGE IS FRACTAL

How Change Moves

[Here’s an excerpt from my book-in-progress I’d love your input on. Kindly hit reply and let me know how this aligns with your experience and what it sparks for you. You may find yourself in the acknowledgements. 💛]

The problem with mandates is that they are a simple solution to a complex problem. They presume that a solution—often presented as a silver bullet—exists, can be known, and is known by those with the most authority or seniority in the system. They assume that everyone and everything can and should change together, like the flip of a switch. They pretend that telling people to change is enough to change them.

These are the hallmarks of classic change management—change as internal communications campaign. Top-down. Rolled-out. But this is not how change moves through complex systems.

Change unfurls like the fronds of a fern, through many repetitions of the same move, creating a new pattern that becomes the default, slowly and then all at once.

In mathematics, this is called fractals: the repetition of a pattern to create a whole that reflects the characteristics of its parts.*

This is what growth and change look like in the natural world. Think of the branching patterns of rivers. The delicate architecture of snowflakes. The filaments (within filaments) that create a bolt of lightning. From the roots and branches of trees to the veins on a leaf, from the shell of a snail to the spiral of our galaxy, change is fractal.

The complex adaptive systems we call our teams, organizations, communities and societies are no different. Here are three implications for our work in leading change. Can you recognize these fractal patterns in your own system?

Micro-Moves

If change emerges through the repetition of patterns, it means that the way to build stable and strong change at scale is to start small. This is counterintuitive, and we can either let it frustrate us or welcome it with relief. We don’t have to change everything, only parts of things—a meeting’s agenda, a performance incentive, a posture of listening and learning rather than declaring and directing—and change takes over from there.

This is a conversation I have often with leaders who are nervous about engaging with executive coaching, thinking it will require them to change who they fundamentally are. But the work is in these micro-moves, and while the impact can be profound, the result is actually that these leaders become more fully themselves.

From the Fringe

Change often begins at the fringes, for example within one team that starts doing things differently. As they start seeing results, others become interested in what’s going on over there. A few committed challengers—heeding Arthur Ashe’s counsel to start where they are, use what they have and do what they can—build a mountain of influence pebble-by-pebble with every repetition of their new pattern, and every conversation contributes to a paradigm shift in the system.

I’m currently fascinated by the momentum building in the United States around democratic socialist politicians and policies. One could say the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York is an aberration or even a backlash to glaring corruption and historic economic inequality—but that’s not the full story. In truth, Mamdani and countless others have been quietly insisting that politics should serve the interests of all people, not just those who wield the outsize influence that wealth affords under crony capitalism. The paradigm shifts slowly, and then all at once.

Ripples from Center

When we are leading from a position of some authority in our system’s hierarchy, it’s wise to think about change in terms of waves. There’s the wave of the change curve that we are traveling together through the 10 Truths. There will be waves of emotion that we surf with our people. And there will be waves of adoption.

Rather than leading with an all-at-once, mandate-driven race to the final result, we choose one part of the system to start with, and one element to change. When we find what works, we keep doing that thing. With repetition it becomes habit, cultural norm, muscle memory. And because everything is connected to everything else, this change cannot be contained. It will ripple throughout the rest of the system, not because we tell it to, but because that is how change moves. Our job, the vast majority of the time, is not to exhort or enforce, but to follow the energy.

Understanding change as fractal offers us an escape from the Controlling trap, protection from the Knowing trap, and a profound lens on our Co-Creating practice. Now, we aren’t just co-creating change with other people—we are co-creating with change. In Truth #1, we accepted that change is always here, always happening. Now we get to work—or rather, play—with it as the force of nature that it is.

*I first encountered this idea in adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. It remains my favorite book on my favorite topic, highly recommend.

[End of excerpt]

📒 You’re Invited: Book-in-Progress Club

I’m in the home stretch on the first draft of my manuscript, with deep gratitude to everyone who has been following along and sharing your feedback on these monthly excerpts this year.

We’ll be gathering for 1 hour on Friday, August 14 at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT / 5 p.m. BST to talk about the chapter on Truth #7: Change is Fractal. If you’d like to join us, reply to this email and I’ll send you a Zoom invite that includes a link to the chapter in full.

In the meantime, look for fractals of change in your work and in your world. Change is always unfurling around us, between us, within us. Noticing these micro-shifts can help us be less surprised when change happens to us, and more strategic with how it happens through us.

Onward together.

Kristen Lisanti
​Radiant Change​
​How Change (Really) Works