Design Journeys – A Systemic Design Tourbook

Peter Jones Service Design, Social Systems Design, Systemic Design

Kristel Van Ael and I completed a year-long project for this special book, designing the first practitioner handbook for systemic design practice. BIS Publishers is listing the book, and it is now in print from the publisher, and available in North America through major book channels August 2nd. Design Journeys was written as an accessible tourbook style, a handbook for the journeys and many destinations of collaborative design for complex systems and systems change. Its value proposition can be stated as: This book presents important new developments in systemic design, guided into practitioner pathways that teach the power of visual tools for collaborative dialogue to empower stakeholders to lead designed change in contexts of high social complexity. Accessibly designed as a launchpad for both new learners and experienced practitioners, Design Journeys Through Complex Systems will affirmatively shift how you, your team, and client projects generate insights about high-complexity problems. With …

New Books Network Interview

Peter Jones Media Ecology, Systemic Design

Kristel and I held a wonderful interview with Kevin Lindsay of New Books Network last year, and after editing and staging other interviews, it was recently released. New Books in Systems and Cybernetics As I slowly settle into 2023 — reflecting on the blur that was 2022 — I can’t help but think about the complex problems (aka big messes!) we face at every turn: from increasingly devastating manifestations of the climate emergency, to the ubiquitous homelessness crisis, to the perplexing challenge of accessing a family physician in prosperous regions such as British Columbia, Canada. At the same time I am buoyed by the promise of Systems Thinking. Systems practices can take many forms and have the potential to inform — and guide us through — sensible, comprehensive and creative problem-solving. Here on this channel, we have explored some of the origins of systems and cybernetics by talking to knowledgeable …

Shifting Mindsets for Managing Complexity

Peter Jones Governance, Social Systems Design, Systemic Design

A “Macro” Argument – The Paradigm Shift happening The era of so-called New Public Management is slowly shifting. NPM has seen a significant, worldwide trend in public sector governance, has held the current paradigm since at least 1991, and arguably has survived, or absorbed several emerging movements in public management. Yet I see no academic agreement on what comes next. A recent development in public management has been sectoral innovation (e.g. De Vries, et al, 2018), and this might evolve toward the practices we are distinguish as complexity management. Yet digital governance, collaborative leadership, and e-governance are more frequently represented in the literature.  Yet these are more techniques with new management, not management innovation. We are looking for the adoption of new structural forms of management, or innovations that address the purposes of strategic leadership.  Digital governance changes the interface between stakeholders and government, it does little to change the …

Contexts – The Systemic Design Journal

Peter Jones Media Ecology, Research innovation, Systemic Design

The board of the Systemic Design Association and our Publications team have published Volume 1 of Contexts – The Systemic Design Journal. Now available online. Executive editor Cheryl May and I have finished our build and test sufficiently to soft launch the journal and maybe get some early feedback. We have a small collection of five articles and an editorial, in online and PDF formats – which is not huge, but the very first set on a new platform does take some work.We first announced the journal project at RSD10 and showed the first articles in press at RSD11, and its live as of this week. The following titles and authors are included: Find the journal site page on the SDA platform, and the articles at the Volume 1 Table of Contents. The journal was a system design from the beginning, and has taken us until the first month of …