SecureChange Principles

Practical principles for applying the SecureChange approach

We believe that successful and sustainable change is built on a flexible, evolving approach that helps everyone make aligned decisions in their daily work.
Since change naturally generates uncertainty and legitimate fears, these principles also aim to strengthen psychological safety and collective clarity, enabling teams to engage confidently in the ongoing evolution of their organization.

Compass 1 — Clarify what we want to preserve

Identify our invariants collectively

We collectively identify the key invariants we wish to preserve — whether cultural, human, ethical, strategic or operational.

Why?
Because clarifying together what we want to preserve strengthens organizational resilience in the face of uncertainty (Taleb, Lengnick-Hall).

Make invariants explicit

We ensure that these invariants remain clear, explicit, and accessible to everyone in daily decision-making.

Why?
Because uncertainty zones are sources of informal power: making invariants explicit helps reduce hidden power dynamics and strengthens collective alignment (Crozier, Friedberg).

Compass 2 — Navigate with simple and observable points of vigilance

Translate invariants into points of vigilance

We translate our invariants into concrete, observable and measurable points of vigilance.

Why?
Because clear and measurable reference points facilitate continuous regulation and adjustment in complex environments (Meadows, Beer).

Use points of vigilance as practical guides

These vigilance points serve as simple reference markers to guide local decisions, enabling initiative and adaptation — without overloading processes or creating unnecessary rigidity.

Why?
Because simple, local points of vigilance help counter automatic decision-making biases (Kahneman, Fradin) and foster organizational learning (Senge, Morin). Vigilance points can be adapted and contextualized at different levels of the organization, ensuring global coherence while respecting local specificities.

Compass 3 — Leadership That Brings Our Reference Points to Life and Empowers Initiative

Uphold and embody the reference points in each context

Leadership at all levels is responsible for safeguarding invariants, but also for making them come alive. It shares them, makes them visible, and supports their appropriation across departments, teams, and projects by facilitating their concrete translation.

Because a reference point only becomes effective when interpreted by those who act.
In a constructivist and systemic perspective, meaning cannot be decreed — it emerges from the interaction between the framework, the context, and the actors. Leadership that imposes creates rigidity; leadership that brings reference points to life fosters ownership and accountability. (Watzlawick, Morin, Malarewicz)

Support aligned emergence and autonomy

Leadership encourages team autonomy and supports the emergence of solutions — as long as they respect the invariants. It acts as a support, a guardian of meaning, and a catalyst for initiative, rather than a validator of compliance.

Why?
Because in a living system, change is not centrally planned but emerges from the periphery, where interactions are most concrete.
The role of leadership is to create the conditions for this emergence to happen — aligned and non-threatening to overall coherence.
(Morin, Bateson, Malarewicz)

Compass 4 — Regular and collective reassessment of points of vigilance

Act with discernment within a living framework

We implement any action freely, as long as it respects the invariants. To do so, we rely on shared and observable vigilance points that give concrete form to these invariants.

Why?
Because invariants can only guide action if they are accompanied by understandable and living reference points.
Vigilance points enable each person to act autonomously, within a coherent and visible framework.
They offer a secure structure without freezing action. (Morin, Watzlawick, Malarewicz)

Integrate tensions and learning from the field

We collectively make visible the tensions and weak signals encountered in action, as shared attention points. These tensions and signals fuel a continuous process of learning and adjustment of our vigilance points — and, when needed, of our invariants.

Why?
Because a living system regulates itself by integrating field feedback, perceived frictions, and gaps in actual usage.
This helps prevent stagnation, ensures the relevance of reference points in changing environments, and allows our culture to evolve at its own pace. (Meadows, Beer, Morin, Taleb, Crozier & Friedberg)

Compass 5 — Regulating and Evolving our Collective Reference Points at their own pace, for the common good

Regularly re-evaluate our vigilance points

We collectively and periodically re-evaluate our vigilance points to ensure they remain relevant, useful, and understandable in real-world contexts. This process draws upon reported tensions, weak signals, field learnings, and shifts in the environment.

Why?
Because reference points must remain simple, legible, and actionable.
As contexts evolve, they require ongoing regulation to avoid loss of meaning, confusion, or rigidity.
(Meadows, Beer, Senge, Morin)

Re-examine our invariants to let our culture evolve at its own pace

We set up collective reflection moments to review our fundamental invariants and assess whether they still represent what we truly want to preserve. This evolution emerges from deep collective learning.

Why?
Because a frozen invariant becomes a dogma.
The cultural resilience of an organization depends on its ability to evolve its core reference points with clarity and discernment.
(Morin, Taleb, Crozier & Friedberg)

Conclusion

These principles do not constitute a rigid method.
They offer a flexible and evolving approach, enabling organizations to navigate change consciously and move forward, while preserving what makes them strong and human.
Change inevitably generates tensions that reflect natural polarities to be balanced over time — between what we choose to preserve and what we choose to integrate.
The SecureChange principles help guide these dynamics in a conscious, collective, and safe way.

License:

The compasses and principles of SecureChange are licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA. license:
You are free to share it, adopt it, and adapt it within your organizations, provided you explicitly credit the original author and the source of the approach, do not use it for commercial purposes without prior agreement, and share any adaptation under the same conditions.

By adopting or adapting this approach, you actively contribute to strengthening it and keeping it alive, in alignment with its original intent:

To facilitate change without sacrificing what makes us human.

I warmly invite you to join this journey with integrity and enthusiasm, to preserve its meaning and respect its original intention, so that together we can evolve sustainably, without ever losing sight of what truly matters.

Patrice Fornalik

Created on 05- 23-2025

To go further, a few inspiring case studies

→ See case studies in action

→ Discover our guiding compasses