OLA-x: A Leadership Framework for Leading Through Complexity

The way you show up is shaping the world, whether you mean it or not.

Leadership is not a set of techniques or a checklist of skills. It is an embodied practice: a way of being that informs every action, decision, and relationship. At the core of my philosophy is the belief that true leadership begins from within and must be cultivated through presence, reflection, and courageous inquiry.

I'm Lise Bruynooghe, an Executive Coach and Chair of the International Coaching Federation Global Enterprise Board. I bring deep experience from organisational design, systems change, and coaching leaders to act with clarity, resilience, and presence. I've worked with CEOs, founders, and senior leaders globally. My work draws on decades of experience in transformation at the highest levels, including my tenure at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), where I helped establish the institution's first-ever Organisational Design function.

Over the years, through senior roles in complex organisations and working with leaders from global financial institutions to tech companies, I've found myself returning to the same approach again and again. I came to call it OLA-x. This post explains what it is, how it works, when and why to use it, and what it looks like in practice for leaders navigating complexity.

Why Most Leadership Frameworks Fall Short in Complexity

Most leadership programmes still teach tools for ordered systems. In an ordered environment, cause and effect are clear. You can plan, predict, and execute. More effort and expertise produce better results.

Complexity is different. In complex systems, cause and effect are only clear in hindsight. You can't predict outcomes with certainty. The challenges you face at senior levels are rarely merely complicated. They're complex. Pushing harder into a system that doesn't respond to force is like turning up the volume on a radio that isn't tuned to the right frequency. More volume won't help.

OLA-x meets the reality of complexity. It rests on three assumptions that match the reality you're operating in: change is relational (it happens in and through relationships), emergent (it can't be fully predicted, only influenced), and experiential (it becomes real through experience). If you're curious about how executive coaching works in practice, I've written about that in detail.

OLA-x: A Living Cycle, Not a Checklist

OLA-x (formerly known as The Four Disciplines of Emergent Leadership) is a practical approach I developed for bridging the polarities of being and doing. It offers leaders a way to stay oriented in uncertainty without falling into overcontrol or paralysis. It's not a linear method. It's a living cycle, designed for real life and high-stakes leadership.

Think of it as a cycle you move through again and again. Observe builds awareness (being). Act brings action into the world (doing). Love anchors connection (being-with and doing-with). Iterate honours continuous learning (becoming). The four steps work together. You don't complete one and move on. You return to each as conditions change.

Observe: Seeing Clearly Without Judgment

When you misread a system, you apply the wrong tools. Most change efforts falter because people misjudge the nature of the challenge they're in and overestimate the control they have. The result is frustration, and eventually burnout.

I call this solutionising: acting before observing. It feels productive because you're doing something. In complexity, it's often a trap. Solutions get built before the problem has been properly seen, sometimes before there's even agreement that a problem exists. When action isn't grounded in understanding, we risk wasting time, money, and energy.

Observe helps you see more clearly: context, patterns, and the stories you tell about them. It's a deliberate practice of slowing down enough to pay attention to what is actually happening in yourself, between people, and in the wider system before you intervene. Think of it as checking the weather and reading the sky before you head into the mountains. You don't control the conditions, but you can watch closely, moment by moment, and adjust your route as things change.

When you don't pause to observe the system you're in and the patterns at play, you may choose a response that is inappropriate to the context. It's like planting a cactus in a swamp. It won't work.

Seeing on its own can stay abstract, even confronting. To stay with what you notice, in yourself, in others, in the system, without shutting down or slipping into judgment, you need the next step of OLA-x: Love.

Love: Staying Connected to Yourself and Others

Love, in this context, describes the capacity to remain present, open, and human under pressure. Love keeps leaders connected to themselves, to others, and to the emotional and relational realities that shape systems, especially in moments of tension or uncertainty.

When change triggers fear, the brain's threat system activates. You narrow your attention. You go into defence, control, or withdrawal. In the short term, it can look like competence. In the long term, the cost is high: creativity dims, trust erodes, and opportunities to grow are lost.

Under pressure, old protective patterns still take over. The achiever pushes harder, the pleaser smooths things over, and the avoider disappears. These adaptations were shaped by your earliest experiences of love and safety. They still live in your nervous system. When you judge these reactions, they tighten their grip. When you notice them with Love, they begin to loosen.

How you speak to yourself matters more than you might think. Your inner tone becomes the emotional climate others experience around you. Many toxic environments are born from leaders who have never learned to meet themselves with care. Before you can connect with others, you need to connect with yourself. Love asks you to stay with discomfort and contradiction long enough for wisdom to surface, instead of rushing to fix what is fundamentally a polarity.

The Love discipline doesn't mean you have to be soft or a people pleaser. Love can set boundaries. Love can say no. You can prune what no longer serves you, the same way you would tend to a garden. It means meeting the world with curiosity instead of judgment.

Act: Taking Small Intentional Steps

To turn awareness into impact, to make change real through small, grounded steps in the world, you need to take action.

Act means moving forward without waiting for certainty. In complex environments, clarity often follows action rather than preceding it. Acting from awareness and connection allows leaders to take responsibility for what is within their influence, while staying responsive rather than reactive.

In my experience, confidence doesn't precede action; it follows it. That's why big life events like redundancy, illness, or divorce so often become catalysts for change. They literally shock us out of waiting. In ordered environments, waiting for the right plan, the right moment, the right information can be wise. In complexity, that logic collapses. Waiting for perfect information or total alignment leads to analysis paralysis.

Action doesn't need to be dramatic. It's built through small, consistent moves, taken from the person you're becoming rather than the one trying to stay safe.

Many of my engagements start with an intensive two-day retreat in the Swiss mountains. Walking, talking, and creating the conditions for clarity to emerge. From there, many evolve into a longer-term partnership. I've described what executive coaching looks like in practice when you walk and talk in the mountains instead of sitting across a desk.

Iterate: Learning and Adapting As You Go

On its own, Act can turn into change for its own sake. To make sure it leads to impact, we need to Iterate.

Iterate closes the loop. It asks leaders to pay attention to what their actions produce, to learn from real-world feedback, and to adjust course accordingly. You act, pay attention to what happens, learn from it, and adjust. That requires the ability to shift perspective: to move between the detail on the ground and the bigger picture, to learn from what has already happened while scanning what might be coming, and to experiment without losing sight of responsibility and consequence.

In complexity, cause and effect are only clear in hindsight. You can't predict outcomes with certainty, but you can sense patterns as they emerge. Iteration is what keeps Observe and Act connected. We navigate complexity not with a master plan but through lived practice and a balancing act of attention (observe) and adaptation (act), again and again.

Leadership is like cleaning up after your teenager. It's a game you can get better at, but never complete. Because what worked yesterday will eventually need adjusting. You change. People around you change. The context or environment changes. You make a habit of taking small actions, noticing what's shifted, then trying again.

Iteration replaces the illusion of control with continuous learning, helping leaders stay effective as conditions change. Many leaders carry a self-inflicted pressure to have answers, to get it "right," to avoid mistakes. In complexity, that stance leads to paralysis. Leaders never operate with full information. Iteration accepts that our knowledge is partial and provisional. Each step forward reveals new information, new constraints, and new possibilities. Learning happens because we act. That requires humility.

How to Use the OLA-x Framework

OLA-x is not something you "apply" in a rigid way. It's something you grow into. Here's a practical way to work with it.

Start with Observe. Before you act, pause. What's actually happening in you, between people, and in the wider system? Notice the stories you're telling. Notice the patterns. If something triggers you, observing doesn't mean you judge yourself or explain it away. It's simply noticing it. "Oh, hello fear." Then staying present.

Anchor in Love. When you notice tension, resistance, or discomfort, stay with it. What do you need right now? What does the other person need? Love keeps you connected to your humanity even when it would be easier not to.

Take a small step (Act). Choose the next move that feels doable. You don't need all the answers. You need one step. Then notice what happens.

Iterate. What changed? What did you learn? What would you do differently? Adjust and go again.

The cycle repeats. You don't graduate from OLA-x. You return to each discipline as conditions shift. Over time, it becomes second nature. You begin to notice more. You take action when you once hesitated. You learn from your mistakes. And little by little, your leadership becomes a truer expression of who you are.

When to Use OLA-x: Situations That Call for It

OLA-x is particularly useful when:

The outcome is uncertain. Restructuring, acquisitions, market shifts, strategic pivots. When cause and effect are only clear in hindsight, linear planning falls short. OLA-x helps you stay oriented without pretending you have a master plan.

You're under pressure to perform. When change triggers fear, the impulse is to tighten control or withdraw. OLA-x's Love discipline helps you stay connected to yourself and others when the stakes are high.

You feel stuck between being and doing. Leaders who over-observe can slip into analysis paralysis. Leaders who over-act can burn out or misread the system. OLA-x holds both: awareness and action, in a cycle.

Success on paper no longer feels enough. When you're looking for something else—the ability to shape the world around you—real impact is disruptive. It challenges the status quo, and the status quo pushes back. OLA-x helps you stay with the tension instead of softening the message or sidestepping the confrontation.

You're navigating a mismatch. Perhaps you're carrying something troubling while someone else is talking about something painfully small. Or you're in a situation where your calendar feels like a record of concessions rather than a map of your intentions. OLA-x gives you a structure to observe the mismatch, stay connected, choose consciously, and notice what shifts.

Why Use OLA-x: What Changes When You Do

When you use OLA-x consistently, several things shift.

You stop solutionising. You catch yourself before building solutions to problems you haven't properly seen. You slow down enough to read the system.

You stay connected under pressure. Instead of going into defence, control, or withdrawal when fear activates, you learn to notice your patterns and meet them with curiosity. Your inner tone becomes the emotional climate others experience around you, and you take that responsibility seriously.

You act before you feel ready. In complexity, clarity often follows action. Confidence follows action. Once you stop waiting for the "permanent" title, the "right" moment, or perfect alignment, your energy changes. You focus on presence now instead of fretting about a future "if."

You replace the illusion of control with continuous learning. You accept that your knowledge is partial and provisional. Each step reveals new information. You get better at the game without ever "completing" it.

You hold both being and doing. You don't sacrifice awareness for action, or action for awareness. You move between them in a cycle, held by the capacity to stay connected to yourself and others.

Real-World Examples of OLA-x in Action

Here are anonymised examples from my work that illustrate how OLA-x shows up in practice.

Observe: The calendar as data. A leader came to me when her schedule felt draining. Looking at her week, she realised her calendar had become a record of concessions rather than a map of her intentions. Her presence was being traded for mere throughput. Using the Observe step of OLA-x, she recalibrated her commitments when the friction started to build. Energy drain became a data point she could no longer ignore.

Observe: The mountain hike. A senior leader walked with me in the Swiss mountains. Day one, she walked fast. Very fast. Day two, I took the longest hike available, the steepest incline, and I didn't stop. Eventually she said: "Why am I being so hard on myself?" That type of insight doesn't come from feedback. If I had told her that at the start, she wouldn't have listened. It comes from lived experience. Relentlessly pushing herself up the mountain made her realise the pressure she was putting herself under every day.

Love: The C-suite leader making cuts. A C-suite client had to make uncomfortable decisions to save the rest of the organisation. She had to let go of people she had personally hired. We could have looked at the strategy, got it done, and moved on. Instead, we looked at the emotions involved for her and for the people being let go. That decision was still hard, but it was executed lovingly. Doing that from a place of love is what leadership at that level requires.

Love: Staying with the tension. For fast-thinking leaders, success on paper is rarely the finish line. Real impact is disruptive. It challenges the status quo, and the status quo usually pushes back. When resistance shows up, the impulse is to soften the message or sidestep the confrontation. The discipline of Love in OLA-x is the capacity to stay connected to your mission and your people when the pressure is at its highest. Tension is good news. It shows you're actually moving the needle.

Act: The acting role. A client had been in an acting leadership role for months. A restructuring was underway, and her position might become permanent. She wanted the job and cared deeply about the mission. Yet she hesitated. She was mentally rehearsing her colleagues' reactions if the decision went the other way, looking for predictability in a system that was, by definition, in flux. In ordered environments, you can wait for the right plan. In complexity, it simply doesn't work. Impact is the result of showing up. Once she stopped waiting for the "permanent" title to start leading, her energy changed. She stopped fretting about a future "if" and focussed on her presence "now."

Act: Resentment and people-pleasing. If you keep the peace at all costs, resentment can be your friend. Use OLA-x: Observe that resentment is often the moment to pause; it means something is out of alignment. Love: What do I need right now, and what does the other person need? Act: Take some form of action, a boundary, a choice, a small shift in behaviour. Iterate: Notice what changed and see how you feel. If needed, repeat.

Iterate: AI overwhelm. Many leaders feel overwhelmed by the speed of AI. OLA-x helps navigate the uncertainty: Observe by taking a step back to look at everything clearly. Love: Stay grounded when fear and urgency pull you in different directions. Act: Choose the next small step and take it. Iterate: Adjust in real time, because nothing stays static long enough for a perfect plan.

[PLACEHOLDER for more examples if desired:] The content library includes additional scenarios (habit stacking, saying no with stage 4 cancer client, grief stone in nature, tree trunk decision, manure metaphor, walking pace and boundaries). I can expand any of these or add others if you'd like more real-world illustration.

The Three Pillars: Leading Self, Others, and Change

My philosophy rests on three interlinked pillars that shape how I work with leaders:

Leading Self: Awareness, presence, and alignment between intention and action. When you're disconnected from yourself, you export it. You project your unexamined parts outward. You rush to judgment. The inner work comes first.

Leading Others: Building trust, opening dialogue, and enabling collective performance. Leadership is relational. How you show up influences systems, cultures, teams, and outcomes. The way you speak to yourself does not stay inside. It shapes everything: how you lead, how you set expectations, how you respond to failure, how others feel around you.

Leading Change: Navigating uncertainty and complexity with strategic insight and grounded confidence. This approach resonates especially in times of uncertainty and change, where rigid answers fall short and adaptive intelligence is needed. Through coaching, leaders learn to recognise ambiguity as a space for possibility rather than a threat.

By combining reflective presence with disciplined action and ongoing learning, OLA-x helps leaders move from doing more to being more effective. This way of leading cultivates clarity, resilience, strategic insight, and the courage to act with purpose in complex, uncertain environments.

Where to Go From Here

OLA-x is a simple structure for something inherently complex: being human while leading others. It's not something to "apply" in a rigid way. It's something you grow into. Over time, it becomes second nature. You begin to notice more. You take action when you once hesitated. You learn from your mistakes. And little by little, your leadership becomes a truer expression of who you are.

This framework encourages leaders to move from analysis paralysis and reactive certainty to curious engagement. It emphasises that leaders do not need all the answers. What matters is the capacity to ask the right questions, be genuinely curious, and create space for deeper insight.