The True Cost of Compliance: A Hidden Productivity Tax
Rules that once protected progress now drain it. This essay exposes the hidden productivity tax of outdated compliance — and why rewriting the rulebook is the only way to restore clarity.
Seeing Like a State: The Dangers of Simplifying Complexity
A critique of how states simplify complex realities into rigid rule systems, revealing the dangers of legibility when it erases local knowledge and lived practice.
When Rulebooks Break, Systems Drift Into Dysfunction
Rules often survive long after reality has changed. When legitimacy outpaces outcomes, systems drift into dysfunction — whether in housing, work, or strategy.
Climate-Focused Adaptations: Designing for Resilient Futures
Climate-focused adaptations are frameworks for reshaping systems to withstand climate risks — embedding resilience into infrastructure, policy, and everyday practice.
Capacity & Structure: The Architecture of Work
Capacity & Structure defines the scaffolding of people, processes & resources that set a system’s limits and shape its ability to grow, adapt, and deliver outcomes.
Systems Drift: When Rules Outpace Reality
Systems Drift is the slow misalignment of rules and reality. Left unchecked, it creates brittle compliance rituals and weakens institutional trust.
Continuous Improvement: The Discipline of Incremental Change
Continuous Improvement, using Kaizen and the PDCA cycle, builds progress through small, disciplined steps — embedding change as a habit rather than a disruption.
Systems Thinking: Mapping Patterns in Complexity
Systems Thinking frames complexity through interconnections and feedback loops, helping anticipate unintended outcomes and design resilient, system-level strategies.
Double-Loop Learning: Reframing the Rules of Organisational Learning
Double-Loop Learning reframes not just actions but the rules that shape them, enabling organisations to adapt assumptions and stay resilient in changing contexts.
Single-Loop Learning: Error Correction Within Stable Assumptions
Detects and corrects errors without questioning underlying rules — effective when assumptions are valid and context stable.