These posts reflect on what it looks like to work with systems thinking and complexity-aware approaches in real-world settings. They draw on my experience in place-based environmental programmes, multi-actor partnerships, facilitation, and evaluation – contexts where structure and emergence are both present and need to be held together.
Rather than presenting methods or frameworks, they focus on how this work is actually navigated in practice: moving between structure and adaptation, making sense of what is unfolding, and staying coherent without becoming rigid. Systems and complexity thinking appear here as a way of seeing and working, not as a separate toolkit to master.
If you are looking for curated resources, tools, and frameworks, the systems thinking and complexity hub is the place to start. The posts below sit alongside that material as reflections from practice.
Working between structure and emergence
- Working between systems and complexity: a practitioner’s guide – Explores the productive middle ground between structured and emergent ways of working. Draws on experience from collaborative programmes including Living Water, with practice-based questions for reflection. This is a central reflection for this section, linking the different strands of practice.
- Complicated or complex? Knowing the difference matters – A practical introduction to one of the most important distinctions in this space. Explains why recognising the difference between complicated and complex situations matters for how you plan, respond, and evaluate.
- Systems thinking, systemic design, and systems innovation: what’s the difference? – A plain-language comparison of related terms that are often used interchangeably. Useful for practitioners who want to be more precise about which approach fits their situation.
- Exploring complexity: a thread through recent reflections – A connecting post that draws together threads across several reflections, exploring how evaluation, co-design, systems thinking, and participatory research share common foundations in complex settings.
Applying systems and complexity thinking in practice
- Systems thinking and systemic design: working with complexity – An accessible introduction to systems thinking and systemic design in practice, with a focus on interconnections, leverage points, and co-design in complex, real-world settings.
- Working well in complexity: seven foundational patterns – Seven patterns that show up repeatedly in complex, multi-actor initiatives. Draws on systems thinking, evaluation, co-design, and collaborative governance to offer a grounded reference for everyday decisions.
- Working with complexity: building relational foundations for systemic change – Explores how trust, communication, and shared purpose shape what is possible in complex settings – and why relational foundations matter as much as frameworks and tools.
- Supporting shared learning in complex, multi-actor settings – Looks at how collaborations can move beyond information sharing to support genuine shared learning and adaptation, with attention to the conditions that make this possible.
Systems, complexity, and evaluation
- Evaluation in complex settings: reflections on practice and evaluator roles – Reflects on how evaluation shifts when outcomes are emergent and values are contested. Shares grounded patterns from complexity-aware monitoring, evaluation and learning (CAMEL) and considers what this asks of evaluators.
- When evaluation is also design: complexity, place, and continuity in multi-actor work – Explores what it means to treat evaluation as a form of design in long-term, place-based work – shaping how learning, accountability, and responsibility are carried forward over time.
- When programmes end: places and relationships continue – Reflects on what happens at the boundary between a programme ending and the ongoing life of a place, and how evaluation can carry learning and accountability beyond formal structures.
For curated tools, frameworks, and guidance, see the systems thinking and complexity hub and the complexity-aware MEL page. For related reflections on evaluation practice more broadly, see Reflections on evaluation practice in complex, multi-actor settings.
If you are working in a similar space and would like to connect around systems thinking, complexity, facilitation, or evaluation, you are welcome to get in touch. If you have found this page helpful, consider sharing it or signing up for occasional updates.
[* Image: Studio Romantic / Adobe Stock]