What if change starts with what you keep?

Last week, the streets of Belgrade, my hometown, filled with people dancing and celebrating. A student movement had just won a national election, after two years of standing up to an authoritarian government with no party, no money, no formal leader, and no access to media. They didn’t just win. They changed the whole country in a very unlikely way.

I’ve been part of this fight for freedom for the last two years, as a member of the Serbian diaspora. There’s enough to learn from this movement to fill a book. But I want to focus on two things almost everyone watching from outside got wrong. Both apply to any change you’re trying to lead.

The world called it a “leaderless revolution”. It was not a revolution, and definitely not leaderless. I’d call it a reclamation. Understanding why reveals something useful about how change happens—and what makes it last. 👇

It wasn’t a revolution - It was a reclamation

The students never called it a revolution. Revolutions can be messy, frightening, and imprecise. They can also bring the wrong people to the fore. Even people who want change worry about what might be destroyed along the way.

The students used what little freedom remained in the system—to move, speak and assemble—to organise and demand that institutions do their jobs. Despite attacks, they maintained non-violent discipline and supported one another. Their growing strength helped the healthy parts of the system push back against the corruption weakening it.

They were reclaiming what those institutions were meant to stand for. They also reclaimed national symbols that had been used to divide people. The flag became a way to express solidarity and care for one another.

That’s what I mean by reclamation: recovering what matters and making it part of how you move forward.

There’s a lesson here for anyone leading change. You need to answer four questions:

What needs to change? What deserves to be preserved? What have we lost that we need to revive? What do we need to reclaim or redefine?

Most change efforts spend their energy on the first question. A new leader arrives, explains what is broken, and announces what will be different. But people also need to hear what is worth keeping: the relationships, knowledge, traditions and achievements they have built and still value.

And sometimes, what you need already exists in the organisation’s history. A purpose people once believed in. A habit of speaking honestly. A way of caring for each other that disappeared as the organisation grew.

Bringing those things back can give people a reason to embrace change. They can see how it will help them recover something they miss.

Reviving brings back something that disappeared. Reclaiming recovers something whose meaning or use has been distorted. A team might revive a habit of honest conversation, while reclaiming “ownership” so it means having a real say in decisions rather than simply taking the blame.

Change always involves loss. Some things really do have to go. But when you only talk about what you are removing, people are left to imagine everything they might lose. Often, it is those potential losses they are resisting.

Be just as clear about what you will protect and what you want to bring back or reclaim. That gives people something to build on—and a reason to help. Building on positive traditions and the healthy parts of a culture can help change take root and last.

It wasn’t leaderless - It was leaderful.

The movement had no charismatic leader at the top, no single centre of authority, no small group holding all the power. To people used to looking for someone in charge, that looked like an absence of leadership.

There was confusion at first. Without a figure to follow, people had to find another way to align. What gave them direction was a shared purpose: to pressure the system to address corruption and restore democratic freedoms.

And something important began to happen. Without needing permission from a central authority, more people started rediscovering their own agency. They saw something that needed doing and realised they could act.

Leadership became something people did, rather than something they waited for.

Farmers arrived on tractors. Professors stood by their students. People organised marches, transport and support. Across Europe and North America, people who had never organised anything organised a diaspora to support the movement and later to vote. Nobody told us to.

Power and leadership began flowing through the movement and beyond it. People took responsibility in different ways, some requiring extraordinary courage. Each act showed others that they could contribute too.

This was coordinated, but decentralised. Open assemblies gave people a way to make decisions together. Shared purpose gave them direction. Neither required every action to come from someone at the top.

That made the movement difficult for a centralised authoritarian system to confront. It kept looking for the person behind it all: someone it could pressure, discredit or remove. But there was no single source. Leadership was spread across too many people, acting in too many places.

That collective agency carried on after the election, with citizens across Serbia organising themselves each day to remove hateful graffiti, take down campaign stickers and clean up their neighbourhoods.

There’s a lesson here for anyone leading change. When people depend on your instructions, the effort depends on you. When they understand the purpose, can coordinate with one another, and have room to act, leadership can grow beyond you. As people take responsibility for change, they begin to change themselves too. A clear shared purpose can help them coordinate without waiting for instructions.

The question for anyone with authority is: are you helping people rediscover their agency—or teaching them to wait for you?

The shift

I don’t want to idealise this movement. There were mistakes, as there are in every change worth making, and the hard part starts now.

But before a single vote was counted, the students had already helped people who had learned to stay quiet discover that they could act. They could strengthen what still worked, recover what mattered, and take responsibility for what needed to change. In doing so, they began to change themselves too.

The next time you’re leading change, look beyond what needs fixing. Ask what deserves to be preserved, what you want to revive, and what people need to reclaim.

And whatever your title, ask yourself:

What could you do towards a purpose you share with others, without waiting for someone to put you in charge?

Until next time, keep the freedom alive ✊