Systems Thinking
Many organisational problems are connected to each other. Systems thinking helps you see those connections, understand why the same issues keep recurring, and find the places where a small change goes a long way. Go deeper with our field guide to systems thinking.
Picture a sales team that finds a way to sign up new customers faster. Its own numbers improve. Meanwhile the finance team might find itself chasing more accounts set up with missing details. Sales has done its job well, and the problem has landed with finance. Once both can see that connection, they can work out a fix together.
The Iceberg Model and Cynefin framework are the tools we reach for most, alongside our piece on why the same problems keep coming back.
Tools
Frameworks for seeing the bigger picture - from complexity and sense-making to understanding why systems behave the way they do.
Wicked Problems are complex challenges that resist straightforward solutions - where the problem itself shifts as you try to solve it. Understanding wicked problems helps organisations stop looking for simple fixes and start working with the complexity instead.
The Cynefin Framework is a decision-making model that helps leaders understand what kind of situation they're dealing with - clear, complicated, complex, chaotic, or confused. The right approach depends on the context, and this framework helps you match the two.
The Iceberg Model is a systems thinking tool that helps you look beneath surface-level events to find the patterns, structures, and mental models driving them. It's a way of seeing the deeper causes behind what's happening in your organisation.
Articles
Exploring resilience, anti-fragility, and what it means to build organisations that can adapt to whatever comes next.
Why the most reasonable solutions so often become next year's problem. Drawing on systems thinking, a 1930s sociologist, and MIT research on why the real cure gets abandoned just before it works - this piece traces the two ways a good fix turns on you, and the single habit that catches both.
How organisations change without anyone deciding to change them. Drawing on decades of research - from NASA's Challenger disaster to military friendly fire incidents - this article explores why standards erode gradually, why the erosion always moves in one direction, and why the question that matters isn't 'who let this happen?' but 'how far have we travelled from what we intended?'
Resilience isn't about bouncing back to where you were. It's about developing the capacity to adapt, learn, and come through difficulty stronger than before. This article explores what organisational resilience actually looks like and what leaders can do to build it.
Why anti-fragility isn't a programme you build - it's what emerges when the right conditions exist inside an organisation. A living systems perspective on how some organisations get stronger under stress while others crack.
Let's talk about what you're working on
Whether you're navigating a merger, rethinking how you're structured, or trying to shift a culture that isn't working - underneath, it's the same job: getting the whole organisation pulling in the same direction. Start with a conversation.