As I just posted in that group:

Systems Thinking network is weird and wild again!

Blimey. I just went through and approved a massive backlog of posts – all of us administrators of this group (speaking for myself anyway) are a bit benevolently negligent.

It feels a bit as though we are back to ‘the good (?) old days’ of lots of wide-ranging stuff being posted here – perhaps fewer discussions, but I feel a change in the LinkedIn algorithm and it seems more of this kind of natural content is back.

what can it mean?!

François Trudel

Senior Software Engineer | Technical Leader.

February 16, 2026

Systems Thinking: Unraveling Conway’s Law

François Trudel
Senior Software Engineer | Technical Leader.


February 16, 2026

(8) Systems Thinking: Unraveling Conway’s Law | LinkedIn

Posted by Catriona Burke in the Systems Thinking Network group on LinkedIn

Senior leaders today operate at the intersection of 𝐦𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐥𝐞, 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬: 𝐜𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐠𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲, 𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐨𝐥𝐨𝐠𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧, 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐟𝐫𝐚𝐠𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬. These conditions are systemic, contested, emergent and deeply embedded. Optimisation approaches and linear, reductionist logic have extremely limited contributions to make in these contexts.

Following increasing calls globally for an alternative paradigm, after several years of design, consultation and engagement with leading international scholarship and practice, I am pleased, as Academic Director, to announce the launch of a new 𝐄𝐱𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐃𝐁𝐀 (𝐋𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩, 𝐒𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐢𝐜 𝐓𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧) at Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, Ireland.

This programme is built on a different premise: that 𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 in the 21st century 𝐫𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐧𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐭𝐞, 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐞 𝐢𝐧, 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐱 𝐬𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬. 𝐒𝐲𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐦𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐦𝐞’𝐬 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞.

The design furthermore brings into deliberate relationship four elements:
• The senior leader as practitioner-scholar, operating with real authority and responsibility
• A high-stakes complex phenomenon embedded in the leader’s context
• Cutting-edge knowledge frontiers spanning disciplines and epistemologies
• Advanced research mastery enabling rigorous, reflexive, transdisciplinary inquiry

Together, these enable the creation of knowledge that is simultaneously academically robust, practically consequential, and societally relevant.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🎓 Programme Structure for Senior Leaders
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🏛️ Immersive residencies – Intensive week-long sessions per taught semester (4 in total)
🌍 Leadership Summits – Dialogue with global thought leaders and peers (3 in total)
🤝 A global learning ecosystem – Sustained intellectual and practical support
🌐 Research focus – A complex organisational or societal phenomenon privileging actionable knowledge and real world impact
👥 Cohort – Exclusively experienced senior leaders across sectors

It is a doctorate designed for leaders who 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐩𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞, not merely adapt to it. We welcome enquiries from senior leaders prepared to undertake demanding intellectual work in pursuit of 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐥 𝐢𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐜𝐭.

📄 Programme brochure: https://bit.ly/4axBjpb
📩 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐞𝐧𝐪𝐮𝐢𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐬: 𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚.𝐛𝐮𝐫𝐤𝐞@𝐮𝐥.𝐢𝐞

Post | Feed | LinkedIn

DYLAN LEVI KING OCTOBER 17, 2022 ARTICLES
The Genealogy of Chinese Cybernetics

The Genealogy of Chinese Cybernetics

The Critical Legacy of Chinese Cybernetics

Five Moments in the History of Chinese Cybernetics

In today’s post, I want to look at a question that seems almost too simple to ask: when does a system exist? For this I will be drawing on ideas from…

When Does a System Exist? The Myth of the Given System:

No Way Out -The OODA Loop and Flow Podcast

Unlocking the Real OODA Loop: Cybernetics, AI, and Epstein’s Hidden Connections – YouTube

audio link

 February 16, 2026  daviding

Problematique Dialogue + Conversation as Process and Connection | Systems Thinking Ontario | 20260209
February 16, 2026 daviding

Problematique Dialogue + Conversation as Process and Connection |… – Coevolving Innovations

VSM and Viablity Canvas
now at https://salon.tautai.net/

VSM and Viablity Canvas

h/t Ivo Velitchkov

Introduction

What is systems thinking? The answer depends on whom you ask. Here are two commonperspectives from which you will get two different answers. Engineering. Here, systems thinking is what you need to build a system whose requirements go beyond current practice. Example: all stages in a plan to evolve into a national energy distribution system for low-emission transportation. Metapolitics (a neologism analogous to metamathematics). Here, systems thinking is what you need (1)to understand the ambient social systems in which we all have unconsciously long been embedded, and (2)to use that understanding to attempt to bring these systems into alignment with current needs, given some disruptive change such as newtechnology or increased scale. Example: modifying the global economy in response to climate change.

This essay is based on the Metapolitics perspective. In two Examples I explore perverse behavior patterns of two ambient social systems, a newoneandanolder one: 1. mass radicalization, disinformation, and other perverse social consequences secondary to new technologies that facilitate intensive everyone-to-everyone communication (for example, “social networking”), and 2. environmental destruction secondary to a compulsion to grow arising from the financing structures of public corporations. Analysis of both of these behavior patterns reveals a common element: Emergent behaviors, not anticipated in classical thinking, arise from highly intraconnected or coupled networks. This failure of classical thought leads to The Big Lesson I wish to communicate in this essay: THINK NETWORKSFIRST, ACTORS SECOND. Here is the importance of this lesson: Effective interventions will arise from altering interactions within networks. You cannot even see these interactions unless you focus on the network. This essay offers two examples that contradict the conventional understanding of Network Effects. We are living inside something we don’t understand.

Peter writes:

“I’ve spent 40 years applying cybernetic frameworks to real organisations — from the U.S. Army War College to UNESCO to distributed educator networks spanning 18,000 participants. Recently, I’ve been working intensively with Claude (Anthropic’s AI), and something struck me: every interface Claude offers is a different kind of conversation, with different affordances and different costs.
So I wrote a practitioner’s guide mapping Claude’s eight conversation surfaces through the lens of Gordon Pask’s Conversation Theory (1975, 1976).
The core insight: every time you switch from chat to Claude Code, or from a Project to an Artifact, you’re not just changing tools — you’re changing the structure of the conversation itself. And that structure determines what kind of knowing is possible.
The guide introduces what I call the “re-education tax” — the real cost of re-establishing shared understanding when you switch surfaces or start fresh sessions. If you’ve ever felt frustrated explaining context to an AI again after switching tools, you’ve been paying this tax without naming it.”

(2) Post | LinkedIn

[Completing a trio of recent LinkedIn articles]

Sheila Damodaran
Global, National & Regional Strategy Development | Leadership Capacity, Systemic Research & Longitudinal Thinking Through The Fifth Discipline


February 1, 2026

(15) Jay Forrester and the Discipline That Learned to See Persistence | LinkedIn

[Another one where I have great sympathy with the author and intent, but don’t agree with the piece overall – however, lots of juicy debate!]

Abdul Aziz
Strategy & Performance through Empathy, Architecture and Analytics


February 14, 2026
I recently developed a “Systems & Complexity Lifecycle” framework as a teaching device, treating systems theory, complexity science, chaos theory, and catastrophe theory as temporal stages in how entities evolve from stability through transformation.

The framework maps four stages:

Stage 1 – Systems: Stability and homeostasis (Bertalanffy’s General Systems Theory)
Stage 2 – Complexity: Emergence of higher-order properties (Holland’s Hidden Order)
Stage 3 – Chaos: Sensitivity to initial conditions (Gleick’s Chaos)
Stage 4 – Catastrophe: Discontinuous transformation (Thom’s catastrophe theory)

(4) The Great Divide: Systems Thinking and Complexity Science | LinkedIn

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/great-divide-why-systems-thinking-complexity-science-abdul-aziz-7l8de/

Sheila Damodaran

Global, National & Regional Strategy Development | Leadership Capacity, Systemic Research & Longitudinal Thinking Through The Fifth Discipline

February 15, 2026

Peter Senge: The Fifth Discipline at Thirty-Five — Lineage, Surge, and Scale

Sheila Damodaran
Global, National & Regional Strategy Development | Leadership Capacity, Systemic Research & Longitudinal Thinking Through The Fifth Discipline


February 15, 2026

(2) Peter Senge: The Fifth Discipline at Thirty-Five — Lineage, Surge, and Scale | LinkedIn

Free 90 Minute AI Modeling Tools Workshop – Create diagrams such as the one below, completely documented, along with an Aha! Paradox, and emotional story embracing the relationships, usually in 10 min or less.
The Workshop will be at 11 am Eastern Time (New York) on Feb 19th, and I’ll send out the Zoom link info 1 day and 1 hour before the workshop. Just reply to this post, and I’ll put you on the list.

Post | Feed | LinkedIn

At Systems Thinking Systems Practice, 24-26 March 2026, University of Hull, we will again run Skills Training Workshops.

These workshops were a huge success at SysPrac25, with many of them oversubscribed.

They will take the form of interactive workshops, which will further develop your skills or introduce you to new approaches you may not have encountered before.

To vote visit https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfsLoKstfeA5BwI8pK5kAb25abdUAhLeKe2s51Xp4Gmxw_FAg/viewform before 20 February 2026!

The conference: https://stream.syscoi.com/2026/01/25/2026-conference-systems-thinking-and-systems-practice-hosted-by-the-university-of-hull-centre-for-systems-studies-css-systems-and-complexity-in-organisation-scio-and-the-or-society-24-26-march/