April 4, 2024 · Michael Bertrand
After two decades of working on organisational transformations — as a leader within them and later as a coach facilitating them — one insight has emerged with particular clarity: managing polarities rather than trying to solve them could have fundamentally changed those experiences. For many organisations I have witnessed, it still can.
A polarity is an interdependent pair of values or strengths that are both needed over time for a healthy, thriving self or organisational system. Unlike a problem — which has a solution — a polarity has no permanent resolution. The tension between stability and change, between individual initiative and collective alignment, between short-term results and long-term development: these are not failures of management. They are the nature of complex systems.
The question is not how to eliminate them, but how to navigate them wisely.
One of the most common dynamics in organisational transformation is stakeholder resistance. When people resist change, the default interpretation is that they are attached to the status quo, risk-averse, or simply difficult. But viewed through a polarity lens, resistance is often a signal that the values associated with the current pole are not being honoured in the proposed change.
When leaders take this signal seriously — acknowledging the genuine value in what exists before advocating for what is coming — something shifts. Resistance often reduces dramatically. The conversation shifts from "are you with us or against us?" to "how do we honour both what has worked and what is needed?" Viewing stakeholder tension through a polarity lens, rather than as a problem to overcome, can drastically reduce friction and create support opportunities that problem-solving approaches miss entirely.
Transformation urgency often creates a particular dynamic: the people driving the change become so focused on the destination that they dismiss the current state. Communication plans are built around positioning the new approach as superior while tacitly (or explicitly) dismissing the value in existing practices.
This approach amplifies resistance rather than harnessing collective wisdom. When people feel that what they have built, developed, and valued is being discarded rather than evolved, they fight back — or they disengage. Polarity-aware transformation includes all perspectives not as a courtesy but as a strategic necessity. The voices that are most resistant often carry the clearest signal of what the neglected pole needs.
Organisations that ignore polarity management in transformation follow a predictable pattern: they feel stuck, or they invest significantly in change only to revert a few years later. The investment produces results; but because the underlying polarities were not managed, the conditions that led to the original problem reassert themselves.
Understanding polarities enables resilience and meaningful change — transformation that does not simply replace one set of problems with another, but creates systems capable of navigating their inherent tensions over time.
I am now profoundly committed to going deeper into polarity management in every transformation engagement I take on. And my invitation to you is to be curious: what polarities might you encounter in your current context? Where might the resistance you are experiencing be a signal, rather than an obstacle? What would become possible if you managed the tension rather than tried to resolve it?
The answers may surprise you — and they may change what you thought you needed to do.
We work with leaders and organisations to apply polarity thinking to complex change — reducing resistance and building lasting capability.