Organizations aren’t rigid hierarchies, mere aggregates of autonomous teams, or isolated silos of expertise. They’re dynamic, open systems—nested within broader social, technological, ecological, and economic landscapes. To understand organizational agility today, we must move beyond optimization and control’s reductive mechanistic logic. Instead, we can adopt a more generative lens: seeing organizations as complex, evolving constellations of people, practices, infrastructures, values, and technologies, co-adapting with their environments.

In this talk, Dr. Bloom introduces Gaited Transitions—a metaphor and framework grounded in complexity science, sociotechnical systems theory, and transition design. Gaited transitions describe how organizations move rhythmically between stability and instability, like a walking organism adjusting its gait to the terrain.
* Stability brings coherence and efficiency—but can calcify into rigidity or misalignment if overextended.
Instability allows for experimentation and transformation—but can fragment an organization if left unchecked.
The practice of gaited transition lies in knowing when to stabilize, when to release, and how to scaffold change without collapse. This isn’t top-down change—it’s participatory redesign, where new patterns emerge as organizations shift the constraints that define what’s possible, meaningful, and desirable.

Drawing from boundary-spanning theory, Dr. Bloom emphasizes that organizations adapt not in isolation but through connection. Boundary spanners—individuals and structures that link internal functions to external signals—are vital to translating complexity into coherent action and developing the organization’s capacity to sense, interpret, and act coherently in complex contexts.