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Understand and Shift your Change Culture

Why does change feel so hard—no matter where you work?

Do you ever wonder why change management is so difficult?

Why the same poor practices seem to pop up in organization after organization?

Take a moment and think about the last time change failed in your workplace.

Was it due to weak sponsorship?

A rigid, linear approach?

Or the assumption that change is just about communication and training?

After training hundreds of change agents across countries, cultures, and companies, we’ve seen the same thing again and again: the problems are not unique. They’re not one-off issues to “fix.”

They’re systemic patterns—and to make progress, those patterns need to be shifted.

Introducing The ComplHEXity Deck

A sense-making tool for navigating real-world change

ComplHexity is a practical, visual tool designed to help change leaders, facilitators, and teams make sense of their most complex change challenges.

At its core is a set of hexagon-shaped cards—each featuring a unique IdeaLeap graphic that brings complex change dynamics to life. Every card captures a real-world insight: an observable behaviour, a systemic tension, or a deeply held belief that shapes how change unfolds in your organization.

Use the deck to reflect, spark dialogue, and co-create strategy. By arranging the cards visually, you can surface hidden dynamics, explore interconnections, and shift unhelpful patterns.

Whether you’re trying to understand your change culture, make sense of what’s happening right now, or plan your next move, the ComplHexity Deck gives you a tactile, flexible way to work with complexity—one interaction at a time.

A Sense-Making Framework

In complex systems, change doesn’t follow a straight line. That’s why traditional approaches—focused on planning, controlling, and managing change—often fall short.

Instead, change in complex environments needs a different approach: one that helps you make sense of what’s happening and respond in real time.

The ComplHexity Deck is built on a core framework that helps you see and shift your change culture through three connected lenses:

  • Patterns – The repeated behaviours, practices, or outcomes that shape your system over time

  • Narratives – The stories people tell about the change, the organization, and their role within it

  • Interactions – The everyday conversations, decisions, and dynamics that reveal how change actually unfolds

By observing these dimensions—and how they influence one another—you can uncover what’s really holding change back, where energy is building, and what shifts are possible right now.

This isn’t about managing change.

It’s about sensing and responding—tuning into what’s already in motion and working with it to create momentum.

From Insight to Action—and Back Again

The centre of the infinity loop is where sense-making becomes action.

Once you’ve surfaced the patterns, narratives, and interactions shaping your change culture, the next step is to respond.

This is where the Lean Change “4 Dimensions of Change” model comes in.

You don’t reach for a single framework—you choose from four interdependent dimensions:

  • You – Your experience, beliefs, and personal perspective on change

  • Your Stance – The posture you take in the work: coach, mentor, facilitator, manager

  • Tools & Practices – The practical methods you draw from (Agile, Lean, OD, Design Thinking, etc.)

  • Big Ideas – The guiding concepts and principles that shape your approach to change

The Lean Change 4 Dimensions of Change model helps us balance the art and science of change.

Both are important.

Change agility is achieved when we have balance.

And because change is emergent, this isn’t a one-time process. You intervene, then sense again.

Sense → Respond → Sense.

Over time, you’ll start to see new patterns take shape—shifting the culture of change itself.

Card Categories

  • Anti-Patterns

    Anti-patterns in change management are commonly used behaviours, approaches, or solutions that may appear helpful on the surface but consistently lead to poor outcomes over time.

    They are recurring responses to complex change that reflect underlying assumptions, outdated mindsets, or system constraints—and while they may be well-intentioned, they often reinforce resistance, misalignment, or inertia.

    Identifying anti-patterns helps change agents recognize what’s not working, uncover systemic dysfunctions, and shift toward more adaptive and effective practices.

  • Patterns

    Patterns in change management are recurring behaviours, practices, or system dynamics that consistently support alignment, adaptability, and progress during change.

    These patterns often emerge over time as effective responses to complexity, helping individuals and teams navigate uncertainty, build trust, and sustain momentum.

    Recognizing positive patterns allows change agents to amplify what’s working, reinforce healthy dynamics, and replicate success across the organization.

  • Narratives

    Narratives in change management are the shared stories, beliefs, and assumptions that shape how people interpret and respond to change.

    These aren’t just formal messages from leadership—they emerge from conversations, past experiences, and the informal ways people make sense of what’s happening around them.

    Narratives influence behaviour, trust, and engagement. By listening for prevailing narratives, change agents can surface underlying mindsets, uncover sources of resistance or momentum, and introduce new stories that shift how people see the change and their role within it.

  • Interactions

    Interactions in change management are the observable exchanges between people—conversations, decisions, behaviours, and moments of collaboration—that reveal how change is actually unfolding on the ground. Unlike plans or intentions, interactions show what’s really happening in the system.

    By paying attention to interactions, change agents can spot alignment or disconnects, uncover informal dynamics, and identify leverage points for influencing behaviour and shifting patterns in real time.

  • Big Ideas

    Big ideas are the 'philosophy' around change. Mental models, conceptual, and high-level.

  • Change Agent Stance

    Stances refer to how you see change, how you see your role in change, your attitude towards change, and the stance you take in situations. Common stances are mentor, coach, teacher, facilitator, and manager.

  • Tools & Practices

    The tools, templates, frameworks, and models that we use.

  • Change Agent

    Your traits and temperament, your biases and beliefs, and your experiences that shape your world view. goes here

Why Hexagons?

Because change is connected—and so are your ideas.

Hexagons are more than just a clever shape. They’re a method for exploring how ideas connect—and uncovering the nuances within those connections.

Each card has six edges, offering six possible connection points to other ideas. When you place hexagons beside each other, the shape naturally invites discussion:

What connects to what? Why? How strongly?

And here’s the twist: the answers will never be the same twice.

Give two different groups the same ComplHexity cards, and they’ll create entirely different webs of meaning.

Even the same group, on a different day or with a different challenge in mind, will make different connections.

That’s the beauty of hexagonal thinking—it surfaces the complexity in how we see and understand change.

It also sparks rich dialogue. As teams build their webs, they debate which ideas are more central, which connections matter most, and what patterns they’re starting to notice.

Along the way, they dive deeper into the ideas on the cards—and into their own perspectives on change.

How to Use the CompleHEXity kit

The connections you make are only limited by the connections you make

Shift Your Change Culture