We’re often told to think systematically or embrace complexity. But real-world collaboration requires both. This reflection invites practitioners into the productive middle ground – where structure and emergence work as partners. It offers questions and examples from practice, not another framework to master.
In programmes that bring together diverse actors around shared challenges – health systems, catchment management, agricultural innovation, community development – we often begin with a plan. We design a logic model, map actors, set milestones. But the further we get into the work, the more the plan starts to give way to relationships, feedback, and emergence. A partner shifts strategy. A concern surfaces we hadn’t anticipated. A conversation changes what we thought we were doing. This isn’t a failure of planning. It’s the reality of working with people, ecosystems, and change.
For many practitioners, this creates a tension that’s hard to name. We’re trained to think systematically – to see patterns, trace connections, design interventions. That thinking is valuable. But we’re also learning to work adaptively – to stay present, sense what’s emerging, and adjust in real time. The question isn’t which one to choose; it’s how to hold both.
Sometimes this gets framed as systems thinking versus complexity thinking, which can sound like an academic debate. But it’s not abstract – it’s about the choices we make every day. Do we tighten the structure or loosen it? Do we stick to the plan or respond to what’s unfolding? Practitioners need space to stay in this productive middle ground, using structure as a tool for sense-making rather than control.
Two ways of seeing
A systems lens helps us understand patterns and relationships so we can act more coherently. It lets us see structure – how one part of a system influences another, where leverage points might exist, what root causes underlie surface symptoms. It helps us design interventions that address interconnections rather than isolated problems.
A complexity-aware lens – when working with complex adaptive systems – reminds us that cause and effect often appear only in hindsight. It alerts us to emergence – the way new patterns arise from interaction rather than from our plans. It keeps us responsive to what’s actually unfolding, not just what we expected.
Complexity-aware thinking tells us that prediction is limited, that small changes can have large effects, that the system will teach us things we couldn’t have known in advance.
Both are valuable. In practice, we constantly move between them – sometimes in the same meeting, sometimes in the same conversation, sometimes without even noticing we’ve shifted.
Living the continuum in practice
Most programmes have to navigate this blend. Whether you’re co-designing a new initiative, conducting an evaluation, or facilitating across sectors, you encounter the same dynamic. The space between structure and emergence isn’t a problem to solve – it’s the ordinary landscape of collaborative work. Place-based partnerships, multi-actor initiatives, and collaborative programmes routinely navigate this terrain.
The Living Water programme illustrates this well. It was a ten-year partnership between the New Zealand’s Department of Conservation (DOC) and Fonterra (the country’s largest dairy cooperative). Its goal was to improve the health of freshwater ecosystems and support sustainable farming practices. Throughout the ten years, Living Water worked with farmers, scientists, councils, mana whenua, and communities to try out and implement different tools, methods, and approaches.
The partnership needed enough structure to coordinate work across the five programme sites and maintain coherence as a learning network, but enough flexibility for each site to respond to local contexts, relationships, and opportunities as they emerged.
The approach used systems thinking tools – theories of change, shared monitoring frameworks, coherent design across sites – not to determine outcomes but to create conditions for learning and responsiveness. The programme structure served as scaffolding for adaptation, not a blueprint for control. Work proceeded through iterative cycles of action and reflection, learning from surprises and adjusting as discoveries emerged.
This wasn’t systems thinking or complexity-aware thinking; it was both, held together intentionally. The national summary results show what’s possible when structure and emergence work as partners: partnerships across 60+ organizations; 70 projects and 44 trials tested approaches; 17 solutions were scaled; and enhanced staff capability and relationships continue beyond the formal partnership.
The final programme evaluations capture this complementarity – using performance story frameworks and mixed methods to provide enough structure for coherence (clarifying programme logic, developing guiding questions, evidencing outcomes) while staying genuinely open to what the data and stories revealed.
The most valuable findings often emerged from unexpected connections: a conversation between sites that revealed something neither had seen alone, or a surprise result that reframed what the programme was actually achieving. Neither pure planning nor pure emergence would have worked.
In collaborative settings – whether facilitating workshops or convening multi-actor processes – we need both logics. We design agendas, structure time, prepare materials, and frame questions. Yet the real breakthroughs often come from staying present to what’s emerging: a relationship that forms, a tension that surfaces, an insight that shifts the conversation. The task is to hold both – designing for learning while staying radically open to surprise.
Why this matters
For policy, programme, and evaluation teams, this middle space is where most real-world collaboration takes place. Yet it often receives least guidance. We tend to find resources on systems thinking or complexity-aware thinking separately, but rarely those that acknowledge how practitioners actually move between them.
When policy and programme design lean too far toward the systems side, we often unconsciously assume we can model and predict. This leads to rigid plans, narrow metrics, and disappointment when reality doesn’t cooperate. It creates pressure to stay the course even when the course isn’t working. It can turn programmes into administrative exercises rather than learning journeys.
Recognising this interplay helps us avoid over-designing on one side or drifting on the other. Yet if we treat complexity as chaos or resign ourselves to uncertainty, we risk paralysis. “It’s all emergent” can become an excuse for not preparing, not structuring, and not learning systematically. Without coherence, collaborative work fragments. The middle ground – the space between – is where the real work happens. We need enough structure to be coherent, enough flexibility to be responsive. We design, and we adapt. We plan, and we stay present to what’s unfolding.
The skill isn’t in choosing one lens; it’s in staying aware of which one you’re using and when to shift – and, crucially, in holding structure lightly enough to respond to what’s actually emerging. This isn’t just a pragmatic accommodation to messy reality. Most real-world situations genuinely contain both structured elements and emergent dynamics simultaneously. The same programme might have predictable aspects (budget cycles, established protocols, measurable outputs) alongside genuinely complex elements (evolving relationships, cultural change, ecological responses).
These aren’t simply points on a continuum from simple to complex – they’re distinct types of dynamics that coexist within the same space. A single programme contains both designed elements and emergent elements, running alongside each other. This matters because it shifts how we think about our work. We’re not choosing between systems thinking and complexity thinking based on whether our situation is complicated enough or complex enough.
Rather, we’re discerning which aspects of our situation respond to structure and which require emergence – and holding both in view. A catchment restoration programme, for example, might involve complicated elements (monitoring protocols, farm plans) that can be designed and replicated, alongside complex elements (community relationships, cultural shifts) that can only be influenced and enabled. The skill lies in recognising which you’re dealing with in any given moment.
Reflective questions for the middle ground
Rather than checklists or rules, these questions are prompts for noticing where you are in the work – and when to shift.
- What’s knowable here, and what’s not? Some aspects of your situation are relatively stable and predictable; others are novel, with multiple interpretations and emerging dynamics. The degree of knowability shapes which lens helps more.
- Where can we design with confidence, and where do we need to experiment and learn? Some elements benefit from careful planning and structure; others require probing, sensing, and adaptation. Most programmes contain both.
- Are we planning for the outcome, or creating conditions for emergence? There’s a difference between designing a detailed path to a specific endpoint and designing the conditions that allow something valuable to emerge. Both are valid – knowing which you’re doing helps.
- Are we using our frameworks as tools for sense-making, or as blueprints for control? Systems tools – theories of change, logic models, frameworks – are valuable when they help us make sense of what’s happening and stay coherent. They become problematic when we mistake them for blueprints or instructions the system will follow.
- What patterns are we seeing, and what surprises us? Patterns point toward systems dynamics – structures and relationships worth understanding. Surprises often point toward complexity – places where our assumptions don’t match reality. Both deserve attention.
- Is cause and effect relatively clear and stable, or are we in territory where prediction is limited? When causality is clear, systems thinking helps. When it’s emergent or non-linear, complexity thinking becomes essential. Most real situations contain both.
The emphasis you give to each logic will shift with context. In evaluation, you may need more structure; in emergent facilitation, more space for adaptation. But the underlying dynamic is always present – holding both, moving between them, staying in relationship with the situation rather than imposing a predetermined answer.
Shared habits of inquiry
We don’t need new diagrams or matrices to work here. What we need are shared habits of inquiry – ways of asking what’s knowable, what’s not, and what we’re learning as we go. This kind of practice requires humility, reflexivity, and a willingness to hold paradox without collapsing it into categories.
It’s less about mastering a tool and more about cultivating a stance – one that honours both structure and emergence, both design and adaptation. It’s about staying curious rather than certain, staying in conversation rather than retreating into expertise, staying present to what the situation is actually asking of us. In the end, the task is not to master uncertainty, but to learn with it – together.
That’s where learning lives – in the movement between knowing and not knowing, between plan and practice.
Connected resources
This perspective underpins much of the work shared on this site. Together, these resources and posts show how structure and emergence can coexist in practice – and how learning itself becomes the bridge between systems and complexity:
- Complexity-aware monitoring, evaluation and learning – links to key resources
- Evaluation in complex settings – a post setting out practical approaches to MEL when complexity is present
- Systemic co-design – structuring work that honours both logics
- Theory of change – planning tools that leave room for emergence
- Social learning in practice – collaborative approaches for navigating change
- Reflective and reflexive practice – building the habits of inquiry that support adaptive work
- Complicated or complex – knowing the difference is important – the foundational post that this one builds on
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[* Image: Adobe / Piotr Krzeslak]
