Contributions from the systems thinking community, including articles and events. Posts explore foundational concepts, contemporary applications, and emerging ideas that inform and enrich systemic design.
Application deadline: AUG 9, 2026. Gathering to Rise is a transformative leadership and resourcing space for Black, Indigenous, Latine, Arab, Middle Eastern, North African, Asian, and Pacific Islander women and gender-expansive leaders to reconnect with their gifts, build skills for navigating change, and find joy and solidarity in community.
Virpi Oinonen: The trouble is that complexity is hard to explain to people who think in straight, causal lines. So I made it visible by drawing funny (and slightly irreverent) cartoons about it. Use the cartoons to understand the problem, explain it to others… or as therapy. Your choice.
CfP deadline: NOV 9, 2026. The biennial International Conference on Communities & Technologies 2027 theme is Communities of Hope. Hold the date: April 12–17, 2027.
Is the decline of deviance actually an increase in tolerance? Part 2 of Adam Mastroianni’s article: art, the internet, being (un)cool, and bermuda shorts.
Ray Ison: The systems community has lost a founding voice. What we carry forward is the practice of inquiry he spent a lifetime refining.
Richard David Hames in memoriam for Edgar Morin, French sociologist, philosopher, public intellectual, and theorist of complex thought. Photo Oliver Dion.
James Stauch (The 55 Minutes) has completed a a three-part series on how systems thinking is (historically and still occasionally), is not (generally at present), and could be (no, must be) applied to the teaching and learning of management.
Call for contributions for SysPrac26. Taking place September 21–22, 2026, Cranfield University, UK. If you have a story to share, a question to explore, an innovation to demonstrate or a practical challenge you’ve been working through, contact@sysprac.org
Ray Ison on one complete rhythm of becoming, plus cybersystemic conferences for you calendar and other news.
MARCH 25 | ONLINE [follows The Split]. Around 1970 managerial professionalism went into reverse, leading to the decline of many successful twentieth century corporations, a loss of legitimacy by large business, and contributed to an erosion of professional standards in business adjacent professions, especially banking, accountancy and law.
This paper comes from inside the practice of public innovation, at a moment when many practitioners are trying to understand what has shifted beneath their feet. States of Change was initiated by the UK Foundation Nesta to help governments become better problem-solvers.
IFSR Quarterly newsletter. Ray Ison, #sysprac25 by Benjamin P. Taylor, article by Sebastian Wolf Siebzehnruebl, events, and calls.
Jodi Forlizzi: Service designers will play a critical role in envisioning new forms of Agentic AI services, designing their touchpoints, and ensuring that what we design and deliver is ethical and beneficial to the world.
Rethinking the boundaries of knowing / Le ruban de Möbius du savoir : repenser les frontières de la connaissance.
By ANU Library Guide Working Group. What tools can libraries develop to support transdisciplinary education and research? What are the challenges and requirements to make such tool development happen?
Zaid Khan’s TEDx talk is a good prelim to Humbling Systemic Design: Learning when not to intervene in complex social systems with Samah Kamalmaz at #RSD14 on OCT 9.
TEDx talk is 9:44 min on YouTube.
Six very excellent tips from David R. Garcia, US legislative staffer, state policy director, statewide political candidate, and professor.
Also in Chinese | Lianghao Dai: Fake interdisciplinary collaborations are a form of performative scientific behaviour that claims to be interdisciplinary but lacks knowledge integration across disciplines.
Katie Krummeck’s exciting kickstarter for DreamUP development. Katie is a social impact designer and thought leader in leveraging the power of design to drive change in social systems.
How the Cynefin Framework aids in people management and how leaders can use it to distinguish between ordered, complex, and chaotic systems. He also addresses the limitations of traditional systems thinking and the role of AI in modern decision-making.
James Stauch and Daniela Papi-Thornton on seeking to understand, map, and then act to intervene in a system. James is presenting an online book talk on The 55 Minutes, Oct 6 at RSD14-RSDX.
Bob Williams book on the CSH framework is useful for anyone working in complex environments who wants to better navigate ambiguity, power, and competing perspectives
Gerald Midgley, Rachel Lilley, and Raghav Rajagopalan: Could we be approaching a tipping point when systems thinking will become business as usual in our organisations and communities?
The 2025 annual report is a case study in transformative work in support services to children and adults with developmental disabilities, surviviors aof brain injuries, and their families.
Geraldine Cahill reflects on the Canadian Forum on Social Innovation and offers a good primer on the trend toward mission-oriented innovation policy.
The European OR research community has a tradition of working groups that goes back to 1975. The website has information on joining or starting a group.
A relational science working model for supporting Indigenous rights and reconciliation in research.
How can interdisciplinary teams engage with societal actors in transdisciplinary research? Emma Ligtermoet, Claudia Munera-Roldan, Cathy Robinson, Zaynel Sushil, and Peat Leith introduce the Context-Centred 4Ps Framework—shared exploration of positionality, purpose, power, and process through equity, trust, openness, and reflexivity.
How can AI be integrated as a collaborator in transdisciplinary research? What capabilities help preserve cross-disciplinary insight? Faye Miller offers five capacities to leverage artificial intelligence effectively across different stages of research while maintaining integrative oversight.
Katie Krummeck, Gray Garmon, Munir Ahmad, and Sarayu Agarwal have created a human-centred design resource for social impact and innovation practitioners that can be downloaded from the Aga Khan Foundation learning hub.
OCT 3–21 2025 | ONLINE. Announcing two RSD14 keynotes by Gerald Midgley. #1 RSD14-RSDX (online) Beyond Systemic Design Methodologies: Systems thinking as an everyday practice. #2 RSD14-TORONTO (also livestreamed) Tackling Marginalisation in Systemic Design.
JULY 11–15 2025. But don’t worry, online tickets are available right up to July 11. The programme aims to push the boundaries of what we know about systems thinking and systemic leadership.
JULY 11–15 2025 | Birmingham, UK. The Birmingham Leadership Institute hosts the ISSS 2025 conference. In-person and online sessions. Of note: systemic leadership paper track and keynotes Juanita Bernal (photo) and Rachel Lilley (RSD13 keynote).
CMM Podcast: Abbie and Karina Solsø discuss emergent sense-making the tensions of plurality by embracing not knowing and creating social coherence through the responsibility of ethics.
Person of interest: Timothy Jackson on Guattari’s Chaosmosis, traverses subjectivity, systems theory, and the creative force of ethico-aesthetic practices in complex worlds. Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour.
From the stacks: A review of Russell Ackoff and Daniel Greenberg’s 2008 book, Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track. The authors called for a learner-centred, systems-informed, democratic redesign of education’s purpose. “Why doesn’t education focus on what humans can do better than the machines and instruments they create?”
Check the Systems and Complexity in Organisation calendar for events held by SCiO groups. Sketchnote: Annika Varjonen / Visual Impact. Event: Learning Finland? Systemic Challenges and Opportunities.
John Seddon is the author of several books, which represent the backbone of his work with many private and public organisations, exposing the fallacies of command-and-control management, such as reliance on targets, incentives, and standardisation, as fundamentally flawed.
SEPT 3 & 4 2025 | Milton Keynes UK. Open call for contributions. SysPrac25 Conference organised by SCiO (Systems and Complexity in Organisation) in partnership with the Open University’s Systems Thinking in Practice (STiP) group, and the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR).
Flourishing business model design enables us to ask bigger questions, tell better stories, and build ideas that are aligned with our values and vision. Join a monthly webinar to find out more.
If you can learn to listen carefully, you find that systems speak. Not in words, but in patterns and anomalies: beacons that light up the places where an experiment or intervention can teach us more about a system’s behavior and the path to desirable change.
A starting point to bridge that gap, providing impact investors—foundations, family offices, impact funds, and those that advise and work with them—with practical options to apply systems thinking across their impact investing strategy, implementation, and impact measurement and management (IMM).
Based on experience in improving health systems in South Africa, Senegal, Zambia, Botswana and Chemonics global health supply chain portfolio, but is likely to have wider relevance for other systems and countries.
Benjamin Taylor’s resource list serves as a primer and prep for SCiO (Systems and Complexity in Organisation) open meeting (Manchester UK).
Neuroscientists—Luiz Pessoa posts a recommendation on X and Sean Manion replies with a letter from 1944.
The Centre for Systems Studies (University of Hull) newsletter includes articles and news about webinars, UK-based events, publications, and the Annual Mike Jackson Lecture—this year is John Seddon .