complexity
Too Much to Move.
We often imagine change as a clean swap of parts, one process out, another in, and we keep telling ourselves that with enough focus and discipline the machine will run better.
complexity
Transformation
The Art of Letting Go Without Falling Apart
Transformation isn’t subtraction. It’s not about taking something out to make space. It’s the reconfiguration itself that changes everything. Letting go isn’t absence, it’s a shift in how things relate so something new can begin.
complexity
After we build: The Ethics of Scaffolds
Most structures are built to last. But what if that isn't the point? Sometime care looks like building, and sometimes care looks like stepping aside.
complexity
The Limits of Design: Why Emergence Can’t Be Engineered
We like to believe that if we build the right structures, policies, teams, strategies, or incentive systems, something good will emerge. We hold on to the hope that good intentions paired with solid design will stabilize the future. But if we’re honest, we often don’t know whether they will.
complexity
On Frames and Fences
We say we want less regulation—until we need it. The real tension isn’t between freedom and control, but between rules that trap and rules that enable.
Adaptive
Of Bridges and Vessels
Don’t get me wrong, I understand the notion and see the beauty in all the “Build bridges, not walls” kind of metaphors. But when it comes to strategy and futures, I’m afraid a bridge isn’t the answer.
complexity
The Banyan Approach
The problem with traditional strategy is not just its rigidity—it’s its assumption about time. The idea that we can move from ‘now’ to ‘next’ as though history were a straight road. The Banyan approach rejects this.
complexity
A Season of Paths
December is full of contradictions—the year closes, yet the world feels impossibly full. Lights shine on long nights, reminders that even darkness holds a spark of hope. Christmas invites us to reflect on the tangle of past, present, and future, offering pathways not to predict but to participate.
Poetry
The Cyclops' Gaze
The Cyclops, one eye fixed on the world, sees only what lies before it. Depth dissolves into certainty, a singular truth, unbroken but incomplete. Complexity shimmers beyond its gaze, an intricate weave of ripples and roots, where nothing stands alone, where every part speaks to another. Hierarchies cling to their
Strategy
On Participation
Participation is key to Futures Work, yet often resisted by hierarchies valuing efficiency over collaboration. Its value lies in complexity's nature.
Futures
Futures Anosognosia
We humans are anticipatory systems. That means we take future states into account when acting in the present. This is a system inherent ability of our biological system. Anticipation is not the same as expectation. Anticipation is looking without the end in mind. That is why we are anticipative systems,