Both the world, and the business-of-change that has sprung up to support it, are in crisis. The models we’ve built our organisations around are crumbling under the weight of the very problems we seek to solve. We can no longer pretend that the tools and frameworks that got us here will be the ones to get us out. The business of change, in its current form, isn’t just broken—it’s standing in the way of the transformation our world desperately needs.
We’re facing a crisis on two fronts. On one hand, there’s the mounting and interrelated ecological and societal crises - systemic challenges that demand coordinated, large-scale solutions. On the other hand, there’s an organisational crisis: the impact sector’s existing structures, designed for incremental progress, are woefully unprepared to meet these complex, urgent threats. If our organisations are in crisis, how can we expect to solve the crises faced by society?
Founder-driven leadership, while once a catalyst for innovation, has now become a roadblock. It’s a structure that centralises power and slows down decision-making, at a time when we need agility and collective wisdom. Similarly, relying on funder-driven financing models is putting us in handcuffs. We’re stuck in a cycle of short-term thinking, chasing project-based wins that fit funder agendas, rather than tackling the deep, structural change that could actually move the needle on global crises.
And if you’re a for-profit venture (like Armillaria ), struggling to balance the need to find funding by not only designing, testing, building and selling a product or service, with essential but unpaid field-building, market education, and advocacy, good luck!
This dissonance between the scale of the problems we face and the outdated models we cling to is beyond unbearable.
The truth is, we can’t solve societal crises while our own systems are in crisis.
If we don’t radically reconstruct the way we operate, we’re not just delaying progress—we’re actively contributing to the problem.
What’s needed is a paradigm shift—not just in how we think about impact, but in how we structure our organisations to respond to it. The metacrisis should be the wake-up call we need to dismantle the siloed, hierarchical models that no longer serve us. Instead, we must build fluid, adaptive structures that can handle the complexity of today’s crises. This means embracing regenerative funding models that prioritise long-term impact over funder appeasement. It means distributing leadership to create more resilient organisations that can act quickly and effectively. And most importantly, it means moving beyond collaboration, and learning to cooperate and coordinate (thanks for the model,
!)—across sectors, organisations, and ideas.
Crisis can be paralysing, but it’s also a turning point. As I’ve noted elsewhere, krisis means a moment of decision—an opportunity to choose a new path. Right now, we have a choice: continue to operate within broken systems, or embrace the crisis and use it as a springboard for radical change.
It’s not just time for a reckoning—it’s time for a radical reconstruction of how we respond to crisis, both within our organisations and in society at large. The future will be met by those brave enough to abandon obsolete frameworks and forge new ones, designed for a world in flux.
Before you go:
End of year is a particularly challenging time for impact entrepreneurs, what with conferences in full swing, sales slowing, and funders often punting on decisions until the new year. And with the recent news about a pending change of government in the USA our collective capacity to navigate crisis is more important than ever. That's why I've put together a free 90 minute webinar for impact entrepreneurs and non-profit leaders that I'll be hosting in a few weeks. To find out more about that, please visit my website here.