https://medium.com/kybernetikum/das-human-centric-viable-system-model-hc-vsm-eine-weiterentwicklung-des-stafford-beer-vsm-zur-973710abc9a2

Article is in German – as Das Human-Centric Viable System Model (HC-VSM): Eine Weiterentwicklung des Stafford Beer VSM zur Integration psychologischer, soziologischer und kultureller Dimensionen – you will need to use translate (free in Chrome and most browsers)

We’re thrilled to unveil the full line-up for the SysPrac25 Systems Thinking Practitioner’s Conference – two packed days of exploration, insight, and innovation in systems thinking practice.

Early Bird Discount Ends July 15 at Midnight!

Additional discounts available for apprentices and SCiO members.

 Secure your place now:     Book Now

With 45 speakers and 48 hours of topical content, here’s what to expect from this year’s conference:

Featured Talks, Panels & Workshops (A–Z by first presenter):

• Chris Abbott – Building and Sustaining Complexity Capabilities in Public Service Organisations
• Chris Abbott & Simon MacCormac – Making Missions (and Projects) Possible with Systems Thinking
• Jaime Bainbridge – Final title TBC
• Nick Beech – Final title TBC
• Ollie Bream McIntosh – Systemic Investing and AI
• Mike Burrows – Introducing the Deliberately Adaptive Organisation
• Ken Carroll & Simon MacCormac – Collaboration and Complexity (Workshop)
• Lauren Clarke – How Can Systems Thinking Help Tackle the High-Stakes Policy Challenge of Enabling Secure, Trusted International Collaboration in Academic Research?
• Dr Tim Curtis – Recursive Canvases in Management Consulting: Applied Systems Thinking or Not?
• Gareth David – Debunking the Agile Panacea – Using Systems Thinking to Explore Where Agile Will Work Well
• Jan De Visch – Humanising Systems (Workshop)
• Jennifer Easton-Groves – Systemic Enquiry into Operational and Cultural Behaviours in a Financially Challenged Higher Education Environment
• Dr Anne Gambles – Thinking Differently Together: A Long-Lived Systemic Inquiry into Growing Colleagues’ Systems Thinking in Practice at The Open University
• Jane Graham – Strengthening the Connection Between Relational Leadership and Practice with Systems Thinking
• Alison Guthrie-Wrenn – Opening Keynote (Title TBC)
• Panel – Reflections and Questions: Alison Guthrie-Wrenn, Patrick Hoverstadt, Dr Mike Jackson, OBE & Dr Ray Ison
• Timo Hämäläinen & Janne J. Korhonen – Complexity Governance: Structural and Cognitive Underpinnings of Adaptive Institutions
• Patrick Hoverstadt – Viable Systems Model (VSM): Balancing Complexity (Workshop)
• Richard Hughes – Promoting Psychosocial Well-Being of Young People with Cancer Through Systems Thinking
• David Ing & Zaid Khan – Pacing Changes with Living Systems: Rhythmic Threads in Textures, Rhythmic Textures of Threads
• Dr Ray Ison – Keynote (Title TBC)
• Panel – The Future of Systems Thinking: Dr Mike Jackson, OBE & Patrick Hoverstadt
• Mike Jones & Carla Owens – Patterns of Strategy (POS) (Workshop)
• Gary Kass – Understanding the Impact of Sustainability Intermediaries in Complex Adaptive Systems
• Dr Artem Khudenko – A Sustainability Innovation Challenge: Systems Thinking Meets Design Thinking
• Tony Korycki – Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH) (Workshop)
• Louise Le Gat – Changing Mindsets (Workshop)
• Simon MacCormac – Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) (Workshop)
• Benjamin Taylor – Systemic Consulting (Workshop)
• Carla Owens & Nicola Reeves – Making a Meaningful Impact on the System of Animal Use in Medical Research
• Anca Popa – Overcoming Boundaries Between Stakeholders for Project Success
• Nicola Reeves – I Wanted to Say “No” – Instead, I Said “Wait”
• Dr Martin Reynolds – Towards ‘Requisite Systems Literacy’ for Interdisciplinary and Transdisciplinary Challenges
• Carola Ritzinger-Roll – Cybernetic KPIs in Medium-Sized Companies – A Doctoral Project
• Gavin Roberts – Systems Thinking Principles (Workshop)
• Ian Rosam – Digitisation, AI, Big Data + Systems Thinking: Transforming Audits and Value Creation
• James Stauch – Navigating Problems, Revealing Systems, and Asking Beautiful Questions
• Robin Stowell – Boosting Organisational Performance Through Personnel Availability
• Ed Straw – 50 Years of Systems Thinking in Government, Society and Life
• Dr Matvei Tobman – The Viable System Model as a Framework for AI Integration in Healthcare
• Al Walker – Regulatory Strategy Design in the Construction Products Sector
• Dr Kim Warren – Systems Dynamics (SD) (Workshop)
• Tom Watson – Beyond the Tool Kit (Workshop)
• Andrea Weierich – Using Vester’s Sensitivity Model to Build a Flywheel in IT Leadership Teams
• Ed van der Winden & Vincent van der Lubbe – Systems Practice for Everyone – Simple, but Not Easy

 More details here:                https://www.systemspractice.org/SYSPRAC25

We can’t wait to welcome systems thinkers from across the world to #SysPrac25. Let’s shape better futures together.

#SystemsThinking #SystemsThinkers #ProblemSolving #Innovation

by red flower | Jul 7, 2025 | The Alternate Feed | 0 comments

Video:

Welcome to TYS, an interactive learning resource focused on systems thinking and systems engineering. In a world of abundant intelligence, systems thinking is becoming more important than ever. This site aims to help you understand complex systems, their interactions, and how to design and manage them effectively.

https://teachyourselfsystems.com/about

By The Civil Rights Engineer Who Heals Through Documentation

Published by Caia Tech

https://theburden.org/

h/t Jonathan Yu @jawnsy@mastodon.social who says

A classic talk about systems thinking, as told through a story of ocean diving.

Some key observations:

1. Catastrophic failures in complex systems are the result of several smaller failures

2. An unused or untested safety system does not exist

3. Normalization of deviance is a natural human phenomenon

https://youtu.be/kW5_wkJJf3A by Ronnie Chen via DevOpsCon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW5_wkJJf3A

4 January 2018

Blog entry

Document

Launch LinkedIn post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/centre-for-relational-care_at-the-centre-for-relational-care-we-talk-activity-7345338712643260417-QHLG

And the Center’s Knowledge Hub: https://www.centreforrelationalcare.org.au/knowledge-hub

Complex Adaptive Systems: Thinking differently about child protection by Sophi Bruce, CEO Centre for Relational Care

This thought piece challenges the idea that the child protection system is broken – instead, it’s doing what it was designed to do. The system tends to self-correct, absorbing change and reinforcing familiar norms and mindsets. 

Drawing on insights from complex adaptive systems, the piece outlines four key shifts needed to move from ‘compliance’ to ‘connection’: supporting families as living systems, transforming organisational culture, confronting the system’s deep foundations, and rethinking what we value and measure.

If we want better outcomes, we need to shift the conditions that drive behaviour. This work is already happening, led by families, young people, and communities.

https://bobwilliams.gumroad.com/l/valuesinaction

Values In Action: A Critical Systems Heuristics Workbook

$0+

Bob Williams

Values in Action is a hands-on, thought-provoking and practical workbook designed to equip people with tools to explore, question, and strengthen the ethical and practical foundations of their and others’ decision-making.

The purpose of the workbook is to enable you and others make well-grounded claims that whatever you are doing is the right thing to do. That claim to ‘rightness’ is, individually and collectively, yours and will almost certainly be challenged. Critical Systems Heuristics helps you to engage constructively and ethically with those challenges. It will help you identify and determine whether the key decisions made by every intervention, strategy, plan, evaluation or policy were, are or will be the right thing to do.

Grounded in Critical Systems Heuristics (CSH), the workbook helps you to identify whose values shape an intervention, who or what benefits from them, who or what doesn’t benefit, what knowledge is prioritised, and what legitimises and sustains that intervention. Whether used on your own or as part of a team, the CSH framework is useful for anyone working in complex environments who wants to better navigate ambiguity, power, and competing perspectives.

The workbook is useful for any intervention, including strategy, evaluation, planning and policy.

For Strategy:

Strategic decisions are often made under uncertainty, where competing visions of success and hidden value judgments can derail progress. Values in Action provides a structured method to clarify what truly matters, examine who benefits, and ensure that strategies are not only efficient but ethically grounded. By distinguishing between what is and what ought to be, this workbook supports long-term thinking that aligns with diverse stakeholder aspirations and adaptive learning.

For Evaluation:

Evaluation is more than just assessing outcomes. It is about understanding merit, worth, and significance. This workbook frames evaluation as a value determined practice, and guides evaluators through exercises that expose whose values are embedded in evaluation questions, methods, and interpretations. It is especially powerful in complex, contested, or cross-cultural settings where conventional evaluation approaches may fall short.

For Planning:

Planning processes often assume agreement about goals, roles, and evidence. Values in Action invites planners to test those assumptions, surface underlying worldviews, and anticipate value conflicts before they become blockages. The workbook’s practical structure makes it ideal for participatory planning, helping teams move from intentions to actions with greater clarity, legitimacy, and resilience.

For Policy Development:

Policy is inherently a normative endeavour concerned with what should be done. Yet policies frequently reflect hidden biases or fail to acknowledge those most affected; especially negatively affected. This workbook enables policy developers to interrogate whose voices are included, what forms of knowledge are valued, and what trade-offs are ethically defensible. It is particularly useful in areas such as health, environment, and social justice, where policy decisions carry deep value-based moral implications.

The workbook is donationware. You are welcome to download it for free. However, to help me cover the costs of preparation and publication, please consider donating the cost of a cup of coffee in my part of the world ($5), or more if you think this workbook will be especially valuable to you. Thanks to people’s generosity, my previous workbooks have covered their production costs, and it would be nice if this happened again.

Bob Williams

http://www.bobwilliams.co.nz

https://bobwilliams.gumroad.com/l/valuesinaction

by Gerald Midgley | Jun 2025 | Format: Sightlines, RSD14, RSD14 Programme, SDA blog, Topic: Methods & Methodology

ARC25 SIGHTLINES | Anthology of Reflexive Contributors

This article by Gerald Midgley, Rachel Lilley, and Raghav Rajagoplan presents a three-layered approach to systems thinking that centres on relationality—the interconnectedness of people, systems, and perspectives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdNDTdtlOGs

Scaling with Experimentation: https://youtu.be/McdcNJk0R8c
The ‘Where’s Wally’ of Systems Thinking: https://youtu.be/PdNDTdtlOGs

Subscribe to the Cyb3rSyn Newsletter for future episodes: https://www.cyb3rsyn.com/p/the-cyb3rsyn-kaleidoscope-episode-6

https://tana.pub/f9SCNBrxYV7j/selected-sources-q12-2025

100-day Challenge & Critical Systems Thinking

Novi Milenkovic 

Applying complexity science to product management practices

June 29, 2025

Whew, I completed a 100-day challenge on Bluesky and looked at 50 books through the lens of Critical Systems Thinking

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/100-day-challenge-critical-systems-thinking-novi-milenkovic-9dnaf/

Variety Dynamics is an effective approach to managing difficult highly-complex real-world situations such as wars, epidemics, diplomacy, climate change, political decision making, terrorism, urban planning, economic change….

Managing variety dynamics is more effective than using force.

Variety Dynamics is concerned with the  dynamic distribution of variety in any situation as  the fundamental basis for use of power, control and management. This is an especially valuable understanding for managing complex situations.  Variety is the number of possible options available to different elements in a situation.

https://variety-dynamics.org/index.php

Vincent van der Lubbe LinkedIn

Do you recognize this? You build technically sound solutions, but:

● Business and IT speak different languages about strategy
● Vendor relationships become more complex than planned
● Technical roadmaps clash with organizational reality
● You’re reacting more than directing

On Wednesday June 25th from 18:00-19:30 hrs, Patrick Hoverstadt shares his insights. He saw how technically strong strategies bogged down with organizational dynamics. His conclusion? Look at organizations the way you look at systems: understand interrelationships and patterns.

My personal recommendation: Patrick combines sharp intellect with british humor, the depth of scientist with the breadth of a practitioner, and the accepting fatalism of an optimist ploughing on.

In this webinar, Patrick discusses:

● How organizations influence each other – and why your IT strategy often goes in a different direction than planned
● Vendor lock-in as a strategic pattern: when it works for you, when against you
● First Mover or Fast Follower? Understanding timing in technology adoption
● Navigate between collaboration and competition (with other departments, vendors, partners)
● Recognizing which forces drive your strategic direction – and how to leverage them

With real-world examples such as:
● Platform owners changing the rules of the game
● IT departments evolving from cost center to strategic partner
● Technical choices that unintentionally create strategic dependencies
● When following “best practice” is just not smart

For whom: IT architects, digital leaders and tech professionals who are curious about the intersection of technology, people and organization.

When: Wednesday, June 25th from 18:00-19:30 hrs

Speaker: Patrick Hoverstadt – systems thinker, consultant and author of “Patterns of Strategy” (2017) and “The Fractal Organization” (2008)

Language: English Duration: 90 minutes including Q&A

An initiative of the “Systems Thinking for Information Professionals” and “Governance” interest groups.

Event link: https://lnkd.in/dxKt-cKu NB DIRECT ACCESS TEAMS LINK

Original post: