What is the ANLA Methodology?

ANLA is an inclusive and unifying methodology, both epistemologically and ontologically. It carries within it the deep wisdom of the Turkish language. In Turkish, the word “anla” means “to understand”, but hidden within it is the word “an”, meaning “a moment”. This linguistic nuance reflects a profound truth: understanding is always tied to moments — it emerges in and through them.

When I developed the ANLA Methodology, this dual meaning became its foundation. After analyzing millions of words from organizational cultures over decades, I realized that understanding is not a static state — it is dynamically built through critical moments where meaning is created, shared, and transformed.

To reflect this, I reshaped ANLA into AN.LA, visually emphasizing that understanding is both an ongoing action (to understand) and a moment-centered relational practice (within the moment). This dynamic and systemic methodology blends qualitative analysis, complexity thinking, and real-time meaning-making, helping individuals, leaders, and organizations see, understand, and co-shape meaning as it unfolds.

Rooted in the relational power of the Turkish language, AN.LA invites you to embrace each moment as a gateway to deeper understanding — of yourself, your relationships, and the living systems you are part of.

At the same time, ANLA offers a significant contribution to the expanding global dialogue on systems change and leadership. Approaches such as Theory U have provided valuable frameworks by placing emergence, relationality, and presence at the center of transformation practices. Yet, even within these approaches, subtle traces of linear-progress thinking — inherited from industrial-age progress narratives — remain embedded.

By drawing on the relational richness of the Turkish language and the deeply rooted wisdom of the Anatolian geography, ANLA brings forth an epistemological lens that naturally transcends these blind spots. This lens — shaped by a language and culture that has long embraced cyclical time, relational being, and meaning-in-the-moment— offers a scientifically grounded, moment-centered methodology. It integrates the latest empirical evidence and paradigm shifts across physics, biology, sociology, and beyond, bridging ancient relational wisdom with contemporary scientific insight. Through this fusion, ANLA supports individuals and organizations in embracing understanding as a relational, ethical, and embodied practice — moment by moment.

While deeply rooted in the epistemic richness of the Turkish language, my work on "understanding understanding" led me to follow the path of interactionist sociology — tracing the legacy of Max Weber’s emphasis on Verstehen.

It was through this commitment to understanding understanding that I was able to uncover the hidden wisdom embedded within the English word "understanding" itself — a wisdom that often goes unnoticed unless one is consciously walking this very path. This discovery, where language, meaning, and relational ethics converge, forms one of the key cornerstones of the ANLA Methodology.

In ANLA, I also work to unveil the deeper wisdom embedded within the word "understanding" itself. Its etymological roots reveal that understanding is not simply about "grasping" meaning from a distance, but about taking a relational and ethical stance — a way of being in relation with what is emerging, with others, and with the unfolding meaning itself.

To understand is to inter-stand — to consciously stand in the space between concepts, assumptions, and what is coming into being. This stand holds both epistemic and ethical significance, reminding us that knowing is always intertwined with how we position ourselves and how we respond to what emerges.

This relational stance deeply resonates with Karen Barad’s concept of intra-being, where being itself is always co-emergent and entangled with the world around us. In ANLA, understanding is not only about gaining knowledge; it is about embracing our relational responsibility in every moment where meaning is formed.

This is the essence of ANLA Methodology: a moment-centered, relational, and ethically embedded approach to understanding, where knowing, being, and ethical responsibility emerge together — inseparable and alive in each moment.

​

As Henry David Thoreau wisely said, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” This very dialectic between writing and living is precisely why the book I started writing in 2019 has yet to be published. I am still writing — and at the same time, fully standing up to live. In this sense, the ANLA Methodology is not something confined to the pages of a finished manuscript. It flows through every article I write, every commentary I make, and every piece of research I conduct. Its fruits — the Meaningful Experience Model™ , the 4 Bodies Model™ , and the ANLAMap ®  Method — have all emerged from this very process of living, inter-standing, and creating meaning in action.

Elif Kus Saillard

​​

​