Organizations aren’t static structures. They’re made of people — and the constantly shifting relationships between them. When those relationships are strong, teams adapt, create, and grow. When they break down, systems stall. This piece explores what we learned at Bridging Dialogues 2025 about designing for those dynamics — not around them.

Bridging Dialogues 2025: Systems, People, and the Space In Between

This year’s edition of Bridging Dialogues 2025 – the international gathering of designers, strategists, researchers, and changemakers – took place under the theme: Toward more agile, inclusive, and effective organizational models

It was a space for exactly that: bridging. Between systems and individuals. Between disciplines and practice. Between what we know and what we’re still figuring out. From service design to complexity science, Bridging Dialogues 2025 was packed with honest conversations about how to make organizations more human – and more adaptive – in an increasingly unpredictable world.

Highlights from the Bridging Dialogues 2025 talks and sessions

One idea that stayed with us came from keynote speaker Marta Bartolaso, who described organizations as complex living systems—constantly shaped by the people within them. As she put it, “Every time that someone (individual) underperforms or overperforms in the complex living system (organization, team), it affects the system in a negative way by adding stress — and stress over time pushes the system toward disadaptation.” In other words, performance isn’t just an individual metric; it’s a relational ripple that can either strengthen or destabilize the whole.

It flips the whole idea of performance. Instead of focusing only on metrics and KPIs, we’re asked to see performance as a dynamic balance in a living system. One person over-performing or under-performing can destabilize the whole, adding tension that leads to breakdown over time. In other words: resilience in organizations is relational.

Wait, what’s a developanist?

It’s not a typo. A developanist is someone who studies how people grow and evolve over time — a term introduced by Jennifer Garvey Berger, one of the most thoughtful voices on adult development and leadership.

In her talk “Growing Big Enough for Love: The Developmental Case for Connection in a Fractured World,” she argued that we need more than tools or processes — we need emotional and relational capacity to face complexity.

She described four types of collaboration habits inside organizations:

• Transactional – minimal, task-based
• Role-based – structured, but rigid
• Creative – where people show up as their “whole self”
• Co-creative – the most generative, based on mutual trust and shared creation

“To collaborate well, people in an organization don’t just need to work together — they need to like each other. Maybe even love each other.”

The exercise we won’t forget: Listening to Love

Yes, that’s really what it’s called. And it works.

• One person shares a short story about something delightful that happened to them
• The others listen — just listen
• Then, each person shares what values they heard in that story, and why it might matter to the storyteller

It’s surprisingly simple — and deeply moving. It builds trust fast. And it reminds us that design and transformation aren’t just cognitive – they’re relational and emotional too.

Stress, love, and silence: a somatic reflection

In another group practice, participants were guided through a quiet reflection:

• Think of something stressful
• Feel where that stress sits in your body
• Ask yourself: How much love would I need to give myself to make this stress dissolve?
• Use your arms to show that amount
• Then, look around. Notice the size of others’ gestures — and imagine adding their “love” to your own

Done in total silence, it was a strangely powerful moment. A reminder that teams don’t just need clarity — they need care.

Complex systems in motion: the Eclipse exercise

This was a clever way to feel complexity, not just talk about it.

• Everyone secretly picks two people in the room: one as their “sun” and one as their “moon”.

• Without saying who’s who, you have to move around the space and try to position yourself so your “moon” blocks your “sun”.

What happens? Total chaos.

That’s the point. In complex systems, you can influence behavior, but you can’t fully plan or control it. Organizations, like teams, are living systems. They don’t follow scripts.

Workshop: Beyond Organizational Narcissism

Together with Milan Günther, I had the chance to lead a workshop at Bridging Dialogues 2025 titled Beyond Organizational Narcissism. We invited participants to rethink transformation not as a matter of tools, structures, or internal rituals—but as something that starts with people, ecosystems, and the world outside the org chart. Using the EDGY framework, we explored how to move from inside-out thinking to an outside-in approach that’s grounded in connection, not control.

One idea that kept coming back for me was this: complex systems are full of potential at the beginning, but once they fracture, they’re much harder to steer. Bridging Dialogues 2025 was a powerful reminder of that. It taught me that organizations don’t thrive on blueprints—they thrive on relationships in motion. And if we want to shape meaningful change, we have to start by designing for the space between us.

Organizations are not machines.
They are relationships in motion.

#BridgingDialogues2025.
The event was organized by @Peoplerise and @Arsenalia, with the support of Talent Garden, eFM, and Cultur-e.

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Bartosz Balewski

_{CO-Founder, UX Consultant}