Between Frost and Flow
The leaves are mostly down now. Frost rims the grass at dawn, mud by noon. The forest looks dormant, but under the litter, roots and fungi are still trading what’s left of the year’s light. Ecosystems don’t rest; they reroute.
Colleges and organizations work the same way. When the visible activity slows, the real work shifts underground. Ideas pass through quiet conversations, trust networks form in the dark. The system breathes, even when it looks still.
In Part I of this Navigating the In-Between series, we talked about agency and the moment an individual chooses to move again.
If you missed it, it’s here: The Liminal Workplace.
This time, we trace what happens when that movement circulates.
Where Systems Break
Many institutions still behave like machines: predictable, efficient, optimized for control. But machines jam easily. When the parts stop fitting, we call another meeting and workshop another process map.
Replication replaces adaptation. A new initiative mirrors the old one because it’s safer than re-imagining it. Silos grow moss. People burn time proving alignment instead of making meaning. Strat-plan Bingo is a real thing. We’ve all played it.
The result is an organism that looks busy but can’t metabolize change. Data piles up with nowhere to circulate. Feedback loops stall. The air gets thin. It becomes hard to breathe.
In large organizations, we see it everywhere: committee rosters longer than decisions, workflows that duplicate effort because the right people are simply not in the room.
Students notice. So do new hires. A campus can hum with activity and still feel strangely airless. And soulless.
How Systems Heal
Living systems recover through circulation. When nutrients move, everything wakes up.
In human terms, that means conversation. Especially the kind that crosses boundaries. The side chat between a lab tech and a faculty lead. The informal huddle that bridges IT and student advising. The email chain that starts with “I’m not sure who to ask, but…” and ends with “…if not you, then who?”
When a nursing instructor and a campus IT tech fix a simulation glitch together, both learn faster than any service desk ticket could manage. That’s mycelium at work: fine-grained, lateral… invisible.
These networks move information, energy, and empathy faster than any damned policy framework. They warn of droughts and share the sugars of success.
When a conversation begins in one department and blooms in another, the institution exhales. And people start to remember why they signed on in the first place.
Eventually, those conversations need sunlight. Leaders decide whether to shade or nurture them. Sometimes by habit. Sometimes by choice.
Leadership as Cultivation
Traditional leadership assumes oxygen comes from the top.
Modern leadership knows better. It turns light (insight) into growth. It’s photosynthetic.
The best leaders don’t just set direction; they build the conditions where trust and curiosity circulate. Safety isn’t declared in a memo; it’s modelled in meetings, in the hallways, and in the classroom.
It’s the moment a senior manager admits they don’t know the answer and asks their team to think it through with them. With is the key operand.
It’s the manager who cross-pollinates projects because they notice two people solving the same problem differently.
Command-and-control is tidy but brittle. Cultivation is messy but alive.
The goal isn’t compliance; it’s coherence.
When the System Feels Alive
You can tell when a workplace starts breathing again.
People reference each other’s work without prompting.
Meetings shorten. Jargon thins and falls off.
Someone says, “You should talk to …” That single phrase becomes a nutrient.
The energy is subtle but unmistakable: 1 + 1 = 3.
The same tasks that once felt transactional now feed something larger. Teams start to self-organize around purpose instead of hierarchy.
That’s when the ecosystem comes back online. Not because someone redesigned the org chart, but because conversation re-entered the soil.
Field Note
If The Liminal Workplace was about personal agency and change, Thinking Like an Ecosystem is about circulation and how that agency becomes shared oxygen. The closing entry explores Digital Craftsmanship: how we make and use tools without losing ourselves to them.
But for now, the invitation is simple.
Call to Action – The Conversation Map
Draw your ecosystem.
- Nodes: the people or teams you connect with.
- Nutrients: what flows between you: insight, encouragement, feedback, humour.
- Gaps: where flow stalls.
Pick one gap.
Start a low-stakes, agenda-less chat this week. No slide deck, no pitch. Just curiosity.
It’s a micro-dose of shared leadership.
See what grows.
In the end, it was never about the tools. It was about who we build with.
