Concepts
The full collection. Filter by theme or browse and see what catches your eye.
Systems archetypes
Accidental Adversaries
Two parties who should be collaborating but whose actions inadvertently undermine each other
Human dimensions
Action Bias
The tendency to do something - anything - rather than wait, watch, and understand
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Adaptive Capacity
The ability to adjust to changing conditions - the resource that matters most when you can't predict what's coming
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Adaptive Cycle
The recurring pattern of growth, conservation, release, and reorganisation that all living systems move through
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Antifragility
Systems that don't just survive shocks but get stronger from them - beyond robust, beyond resilient
System behaviours and patterns
Attractors
The states a system naturally gravitates toward - change the attractor and the system reorganises itself
Core building blocks
Boundaries
Where you draw the line around a system changes everything you see inside it
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Boundary Critique
Asking who decided what's inside and outside this system - because that choice shapes everything that follows
Human dimensions
Bounded Rationality
People make reasonable decisions given the information and cognitive capacity available to them - which is always limited
Core building blocks
Buffers
The slack in a system that absorbs shocks and keeps things stable when conditions change
Natural and ecological metaphors
Carrying Capacity
The maximum a system can sustain - every system has limits, even if they're not visible yet
Leverage and intervention
Catalytic Mechanisms
Small structural changes that reliably produce the right behaviour without constant enforcement
Mental models and ways of seeing
Causal Loop Diagrams
A visual tool for mapping the reinforcing and balancing feedback that drives a system's behaviour
Complexity and uncertainty
Co-evolution
When two or more systems evolve in response to each other, neither standing still
Human dimensions
Cognitive Load
The amount of working memory being used - complex systems impose high load, which degrades thinking
Complexity and uncertainty
Complex Adaptive Systems
Systems made of many agents that learn, adapt, and produce behaviour nobody designed
Complexity and uncertainty
Complexity vs Complication
A jet engine is complicated - predictable if you understand it. Raising a child is complex - fundamentally unpredictable
Leverage and intervention
Constraints
Limitations that shape behaviour - sometimes adding one creates better outcomes than removing one
Organisational and social systems
Culture as System
Culture isn't something you install - it's an emergent property of interactions, incentives, and structures
Complexity and uncertainty
Cynefin Framework
A sense-making model that matches your response to the kind of situation you're in
Human dimensions
Decision Fatigue
The deteriorating quality of decisions after a long session of decision-making
Core building blocks
Delays
The gap between doing something and seeing what happens - the source of most bad decisions in systems.
Organisational and social systems
Distributed Leadership
Leadership as a property of the system, not a role - whoever sees the problem leads the response
Natural and ecological metaphors
Diversity and Stability
More diverse systems tend to be more resilient - monocultures are efficient until they're catastrophically fragile
Organisational and social systems
Double-Loop Learning
Questioning not just 'are we doing things right?' but 'are we doing the right things?'
System behaviours and patterns
Drift
Slow, invisible movement in a system's behaviour that goes unnoticed until it's dramatic
Mental models and ways of seeing
Dynamic Thinking
Thinking in terms of change over time rather than frozen snapshots - how does this play out?
Complexity and uncertainty
Edge of Chaos
The zone between rigid order and total disorder where systems are most creative and adaptive
System behaviours and patterns
Emergence
When the whole does something none of the parts could do alone - behaviour that arises from interactions, not instructions.
System behaviours and patterns
Equilibrium
A state where opposing forces balance - stable until something shifts the balance
Systems archetypes
Eroding Goals
When you lower your standards instead of closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be
Systems archetypes
Escalation
Two parties each responding to the other's moves, ratcheting up intensity until both lose
Mental models and ways of seeing
Event-Pattern-Structure
Moving from 'what happened?' to 'what keeps happening?' to 'what's causing the pattern?'
System behaviours and patterns
Exponential Growth
When something grows by a percentage rather than an amount - it feels slow until it suddenly feels unstoppable.
Core building blocks
Feedback loops
Reinforcing loops accelerate change, balancing loops resist it - together they drive all system behaviour.
Measurement, signals, and sense
Feedback Starvation
When a system lacks the information it needs to self-correct - common in hierarchies where bad news doesn't travel upward
Systems archetypes
Fixes that fail
A quick fix that addresses the symptom but makes the underlying problem worse over time.
Measurement, signals, and sense
Goodhart's Law
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure
Organisational and social systems
Groupthink
When the desire for agreement overrides honest thinking - a system failure disguised as alignment
Systems archetypes
Growth and Underinvestment
Growth creates demand, but investment in capacity doesn't keep up - so performance drops and justifies not investing
Human dimensions
Hindsight Bias
After something happens, it seems obvious it was going to happen - making us overconfident about our ability to predict
Design and intervention approaches
Holding Space
Creating conditions for emergence rather than controlling outcomes - leadership as environment design
Mental models and ways of seeing
Iceberg Model
Events are the tip - below the waterline sit the patterns, structures, and mental models that create them
Organisational and social systems
Institutional Inertia
The tendency of large systems to resist change, even when everyone agrees change is needed
Core building blocks
Interconnections
The relationships between parts matter more than the parts themselves
Leverage and intervention
Intervention Side Effects
Every action in a complex system produces effects beyond the one you intended
Complexity and uncertainty
Irreducibility
Some systems can only be understood by running them - there's no shortcut to the answer
Natural and ecological metaphors
Keystone Species
The role whose removal would fundamentally alter the system - the node that holds everything together
Measurement, signals, and sense
Leading vs Lagging Indicators
Lagging indicators tell you what happened. Leading indicators tell you what's coming. Most people only track the first kind
Organisational and social systems
Learning Organisation
An organisation that continuously transforms itself by learning from its own experience
Leverage and intervention
Leverage Points
The places in a system where a small change can shift everything
Systems archetypes
Limits to Growth
Every growing system eventually hits a constraint - the question is whether you see it coming
Mental models and ways of seeing
Linear Thinking
Assuming that cause and effect are proportional, direct, and one-directional - the default that fails in complex systems
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Local vs Global Optimisation
What's best for the part isn't always best for the whole - the tension at the heart of most system design
System behaviours and patterns
Lock-in
When path dependence becomes a trap - the cost of switching is so high that inferior solutions persist
Mental models and ways of seeing
Map is Not the Territory
Every model is a simplification - useful but never the whole truth
Mental models and ways of seeing
Mental Models
The invisible assumptions and stories we carry about how the world works
Design and intervention approaches
Minimum Viable Intervention
The smallest change that could shift the system - start small, learn fast
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Modularity
Systems made of loosely connected parts that can fail independently without bringing down the whole
Human dimensions
Motivated Reasoning
Finding the evidence for what you already believe - the human default, not the exception
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Multiple Perspectives
Any complex system looks different depending on where you stand - no single viewpoint is complete
Natural and ecological metaphors
Mutualism
Relationships where both parties benefit - rare in rhetoric, common in reality
Human dimensions
Narrative Fallacy
The need to construct a simple story from complex events - makes us feel like we understand, even when we don't
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Nested Systems
Every system is simultaneously a whole and a part of something larger - teams within organisations within sectors within societies
Organisational and social systems
Network Effects
When a product or system becomes more valuable as more people use it - the force behind platforms and standards
Natural and ecological metaphors
Niche Construction
Organisms and organisations don't just adapt to their environment - they reshape it
Core building blocks
Nonlinearity
Small changes can have huge effects, and big changes can have none - systems rarely respond in proportion
Leverage and intervention
Nudges
Subtle changes to the choice environment that steer behaviour without restricting options
Measurement, signals, and sense
Observer Effect
The act of measuring or watching a system changes how the system behaves
Organisational and social systems
Organisational Debt
The accumulated cost of shortcuts, workarounds, and deferred structural decisions
System behaviours and patterns
Oscillation
Systems that overshoot and undershoot because feedback arrives too late
Organisational and social systems
Outcome Mapping
Tracking changes in behaviour and relationships rather than counting outputs - designed for complex change
System behaviours and patterns
Overshoot and Collapse
When a system blows past its sustainable limits before feedback kicks in, and the correction is catastrophic
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Panarchy
Adaptive cycles nested across scales - what happens at one level affects cycles above and below
Natural and ecological metaphors
Parasitism
Relationships where one party extracts value at the other's expense - sometimes structural, not intentional
Design and intervention approaches
Participatory Systems Mapping
Building system maps with the people who live in the system, not just the people who study it
System behaviours and patterns
Path Dependence
Where you can go depends on where you've been - history constrains future options
Measurement, signals, and sense
Perverse Incentives
Incentive structures that reward the opposite of what you intended - the cobra effect
Leverage and intervention
Policy Resistance
When a system fights back against your attempt to change it
Design and intervention approaches
Portfolio of Experiments
Running multiple small interventions simultaneously to increase the chance of finding what works
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Power in Systems
Who sets the rules, who controls the flows, who defines success - structure IS power
Design and intervention approaches
Probe-Sense-Respond
The strategy for complex situations - try something small, see what happens, then decide what to do next
Measurement, signals, and sense
Proxy Measures
Using something measurable as a stand-in for something that isn't - useful until people start gaming the proxy
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Punctuated Equilibrium
Long periods of stability interrupted by sudden, dramatic change - how most systems evolve in practice
Mental models and ways of seeing
Reductionism
Breaking things into parts to understand them - powerful for machines, misleading for living systems
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Redundancy
Having more than you strictly need - looks wasteful in stable times, looks essential in a crisis
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Regime Shifts
When a system flips from one stable state to another - often suddenly, usually hard to reverse
Leverage and intervention
Requisite Variety
To stay in control of a system, you need at least as many responses as the system has ways of changing
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Resilience
The ability to absorb disturbance and still maintain essential function - not bouncing back, but holding together
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Robustness vs Resilience
Robustness resists change like a fortress. Resilience absorbs and adapts like a reed. Different strategies for different worlds
Systems archetypes
Rule Beating
People find ways to comply with the letter of a rule while violating its spirit - and the system gets what it measures, not what it wants
System behaviours and patterns
S-Curves
Growth that starts slowly, accelerates, and then levels off as it hits limits - the shape of most real change
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Safe-to-Fail Experiments
Small probes designed to test how a complex system responds - if they fail, the damage is contained
Human dimensions
Satisficing
Choosing good enough rather than optimal - often the rational response to complexity
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Scale Effects
Things that work at one scale often don't work at another - what succeeds in a startup fails in a corporation, and vice versa
Leverage and intervention
Second-Order Effects
The consequences of the consequences - what happens after the first thing happens
Complexity and uncertainty
Self-Organisation
Order that arises from interactions, not instructions - nobody planned it but it works
Design and intervention approaches
Sense-Analyse-Respond
The strategy for complicated situations - gather data, analyse it, then act on what the experts find
Organisational and social systems
Sensemaking
The process of creating meaning from ambiguous, complex situations - not decision-making, but what comes before it
Human dimensions
Sensemaking Under Pressure
How people actually make sense of complex situations in real time - usually not through analysis
Complexity and uncertainty
Sensitivity to Initial Conditions
Tiny differences at the start can produce vastly different outcomes - and you can't always tell which ones matter
Systems archetypes
Shifting the Burden
Relying on a quick fix so much that the ability to do the real thing slowly disappears.
Measurement, signals, and sense
Signal vs Noise
The challenge of distinguishing meaningful information from random variation - most of what looks like signal is noise
Organisational and social systems
Silos
When parts of a system optimise independently, losing sight of the whole - a structural problem, not a people problem
Mental models and ways of seeing
Solutionism
The assumption that every problem has a clean solution - when complex systems often need navigation, not fixing
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Stakeholder Mapping
Identifying everyone who affects or is affected by a system - including those with no voice at the table
Core building blocks
Stocks and Flows
Everything accumulates or depletes - and the difference between the two drives how systems behave
Boundaries, perspectives, and power
Sub-optimisation
Optimising one part of a system at the expense of the whole - every department hitting its targets while the organisation fails
Systems archetypes
Success to the Successful
Winners get more resources, which makes them win more - a structural advantage that compounds over time
Natural and ecological metaphors
Succession
The predictable sequence of change after a disturbance - cleared ground doesn't stay cleared
Measurement, signals, and sense
Surrogate Measures
When you can't measure what matters, you measure what you can - and then forget the difference
Natural and ecological metaphors
Symbiosis
Different organisms - or organisations - living in close association, for better or worse
Mental models and ways of seeing
System Blindness
The inability to see systemic causes - defaulting to blaming individuals when the structure is the problem
Leverage and intervention
System Traps
Predictable structural failures that show up across every kind of system
Design and intervention approaches
Systemic Design
Combining systems thinking with design practice - understanding the system before designing the intervention
Mental models and ways of seeing
Systems Mapping
The practice of making a system visible - its parts, flows, boundaries, and dynamics
Organisational and social systems
Theory of Change
A map of how you believe change happens - from activities to outcomes - only useful if it acknowledges complexity
System behaviours and patterns
Tipping Points
The moment when a gradual change suddenly becomes a dramatic, often irreversible shift
Systems archetypes
Tragedy of the Commons
When everyone acting in their own interest destroys the shared resource they all depend on
Resilience, adaptation, and change
Transformability
The capacity to create a fundamentally new system when the existing one is no longer viable
Design and intervention approaches
Transition Management
A governance approach for guiding large-scale system transitions over long timeframes
Complexity and uncertainty
Uncertainty vs Risk
Risk is when you know the odds. Uncertainty is when you don't even know what could happen
System behaviours and patterns
Unintended Consequences
Every intervention in a system produces effects you didn't plan for - sometimes bigger than the ones you did.
Measurement, signals, and sense
Weak Signals
Early, ambiguous indicators of emerging change - easy to dismiss, potentially critical
Complexity and uncertainty
Wicked Problems
Problems that resist definition, change shape when you try to solve them, and have no stopping rule