We don’t start with structure. 

We start with purpose. 

Each morning, I walk the Two Towns Trail — an eight‑kilometre stretch between Warragul and Drouin. My kelpie, Maggie, sets the pace. It’s a daily ritual, her earnest stride keeping time with the rush of the world beyond the fence while Country stands steady, watching. Rabbits scatter, horses and calves look on, as each morning Maggie delights in racing the traffic surging parallel along the freeway fence line. 

It is my time to observe. To reset. To think. 

As the mornings cool, spiderwebs appear along the fences, traced with dew. They are fragile if you look at a single strand. But step back and something else becomes clear: strength doesn’t come from one point. It comes from connection. From circular design. From how each strand holds another. 

That’s when the thinking shifts from walking … to leadership. 

At Marist-Sion College, the development of our Circles of Support organisational architecture began with one question: What if our leadership structure could amplify influence and impact, rather than reinforce hierarchy? 

Too often, organisations design charts to show top-down control. Lines of authority. Boxes of responsibility. But architecture shapes behaviour. And behaviour shapes culture. 

We wanted an architecture that: 

• builds capacity rather than dependency 

• enables collaboration rather than silos 

• places support at the centre, not the edges 

In this context, leadership is understood as a shared practice grounded in our College Leadership Statement that calls leaders to grow others, lead with evidence and reflection and deliberately create the conditions for people to flourish. The circles position leadership as relational, distributed and rooted in service. Through the lens of servant leadership and subsidiarity, leadership becomes a stone placed gently in the pond: entrusting others with agency, affirming their dignity and allowing ripples of responsibility to extend well beyond the leader’s immediate reach. 

Like the spiderweb on the trail, no single circle holds the weight alone. Strength comes from intentional design. From relationships that reinforce one another. From shared purpose made visible through structure. 

Because when the why is clear, the how becomes human. And when organisations design for connection, impact follows. 

Lisa Harkin
Principal