Syllabus: Systems Rearchitected
Overview of each of the 12 modules, including the transformations, practices, cohort activities and lessons.. Also includes the related book groups with brief summaries. Grouped by Cohorts to help you decide whether to join one.
Cohort One
Intro to Impactful Thinking
Transform linear, reductionistic thinking into more-expansive thinking practices. Practice noticing your thinking patterns. Join a cohort to share insights, get support and resolve blockers. Lessons include:
Systems thinking practices
Writing as thinking: foundational practice(s)
Bugs in our thinking: logical fallacies and cognitive biases
A few artifacts to try
Book Group: Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World by Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown
A radical approach to design, problem-solving, and decision-making in complex, uncertain environments. This book introduces pragmatic imagination, blending systems thinking, abductive reasoning, and speculative design to embrace emergence, iteration, and adaptability. Rather than designing fixed solutions, it focuses on creating conditions for solutions to evolve, offering a powerful toolkit for innovators and leaders.
Metacognition and Empathy as Core Skills
Transform counterproductive reactions into conceptual integrity. Practice noticing your thinking patterns. Join a cohort to practice noticing reactions and integrating points of view. Lessons include:
Working with your (constant) reactions
Proactive perspective taking
Synthesizing and integrating: a core practice
Crafting (internal) conceptual integrity
Book Group: The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef
Explores how rational thinkers approach the world with curiosity, self-awareness, and a willingness to change their minds. Unlike the Soldier Mindset, which defends beliefs at all costs, the Scout Mindset seeks truth, embraces uncertainty, and questions assumptions. Using real-world examples, Galef provides tools to overcome biases, think probabilistically, and make better decisions—essential skills for leaders, innovators, and problem-solvers..
Learning & Generating Knowledge
Transform task-driven development into a learning-driven career. Practice structuring your own learning practice. Join a cohort and build your knowledge repository. Lessons include:
Make time to think: daily deep work
Identifying what to learn
Sharing your learning
Due diligence: what to do before you shake things up
Intro to knowledge repositories
Book Group: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt
Applies software development principles to optimize learning, problem-solving, and cognitive performance. It introduces "refactoring your wetware", using metacognition, pattern recognition, and deliberate practice to improve thinking. Hunt explores context switching, the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition, and cognitive biases, offering practical techniques to enhance creativity, adaptability, and decision-making in tech and beyond.
Cohort Two
Systemic Reasoning
Transform opinions into sound, cogent recommendations. Practice creating recommendations supported by sound reasons. Join a cohort and collaborate on developing a Big Idea that impacts your circumstances. Lessons include:
Intro to systemic reasoning
Strengthening the reasons
The five-pointed star: synthesizing perspectives
Why does this matter now?
Book Group: An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi and A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston
An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments is a fun, visual guide to logical fallacies and flawed reasoning. Using whimsical illustrations and simple explanations, it breaks down common errors like straw man, false dilemma, slippery slope, and ad hominem. Designed for readers of all backgrounds, the book helps improve critical thinking, debate skills, and argument analysis, making it an engaging resource for students, professionals, and logical thinkers alike.
A Rulebook for Arguments is a concise, practical guide to constructing clear, logical, and persuasive arguments. It provides step-by-step rules for structuring reasoning, avoiding logical fallacies, and engaging in productive debates. Focused on clarity, relevance, and logical progression, the book is an essential resource for students, professionals, and anyone looking to improve their critical thinking and argumentation skills.
Designing Feedback Loops
Transform noise into signal. Practice asking for the feedback you need (and ignoring the feedback you don’t). Join a cohort to become an excellent feedback facilitator. Lessons include:
First, a little therapy
Asking for the feedback you need
Giving feedback that improves thinking
The trouble with hierarchy: intro to repackaging
Book Group: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott
Critiques top-down, centralized planning, showing how governments often oversimplify complex societies, leading to failure. Using examples like Soviet collectivization and modern urban planning, Scott argues that ignoring local knowledge and imposing rigid systems results in unintended consequences. He advocates for adaptive, decentralized approaches that respect organic, bottom-up problem-solving over bureaucratic control.
Interdependent Artifacts
Transform individual expertise into interdependent ideas that generate innovation. Practice creating a collection of interdependent artifacts. Join a cohort design a sufficient collection of artifacts to improve your circumstances. Lessons include:
Modeling knowledge flow
Interrelating artifacts
Communicating divergent points of view
Beyond RACI: Convergence
Conceptual integrity: a sufficient collection of artifacts
Book Group: Communication Patterns by Jacqui Read
Explores how effective communication structures improve collaboration, decision-making, and knowledge flow in technical teams. The book examines common dysfunctions like misalignment, silos, and unclear feedback loops and provides practical strategies to enhance clarity and efficiency. By understanding and designing better communication flows, teams can reduce friction, improve alignment, and create more resilient and adaptive systems.
Cohort Three
Modeling Patterns and Structures
Transform requirements-driven design into insight-driven design. Practice modeling, alone and with others. Join a cohort experience collaborative modeling with exercises like EventStorming. Lessons include:
A shared language: Defining concepts and vocabulary
Models and knowledge flow
Facilitating modeling
Show don’t tell: What models are helpful?
Book Group: Collaborative Software Design by Evelyn van Kelle, Gien Verschatse, and Kenny Baas-Schwegler
Emphasizes team-driven software architecture, ensuring shared understanding and alignment across stakeholders. It introduces techniques like Domain-Driven Design, Event Storming, and knowledge mapping to foster better collaboration and decision-making. The book highlights that software design is a social process, advocating for transparent communication, iterative modeling, and cross-functional teamwork to build resilient systems.
Architecting Knowledge Flow
Transform software thinking into relationship designs. Practice decoupled information system design. Join a cohort tackle a real-world system challenge together. Lessons include:
Two pieces of software walk into a bar
Information design isn’t (necessarily) knowledge design
What’s a platform?
Build a prototype
Book Group: Building Knowledge Graphs by Jesus Barrasa & Amy E. Hodler
A practical guide to designing, implementing, and optimizing knowledge graphs. It covers graph databases, semantic modeling, and querying techniques, with a focus on Neo4j and RDF triple stores. Through real-world examples, the book explores how knowledge graphs improve data integration, decision-making, and AI applications, making it essential for developers, data architects, and knowledge engineers.
Taking a Systems Perspective
Transform systems understanding into impactful action. Practice modeling a system in various ways. Join a cohort to build a framework that describes a familiar system. Lessons include:
Qualities of a healthy system
Frameworks & approaches
The Iceberg Model
Events
Capabilities
Book Group: The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge
Explores how organizations can become adaptive, knowledge-driven, and resilient by fostering systems thinking, shared vision, team learning, mental models, and personal mastery. It argues that linear thinking and short-term fixes fail, while understanding feedback loops and systemic structures leads to sustainable success. By cultivating a learning organization, leaders can drive innovation, collaboration, and long-term impact.
Cohort Four
Shifting Paradigms
Transform solutions into transformations. Practice identifying a leverage point. Join a cohort to share strategies for communicating and acting on a real-world leverage point. Lessons include:
What is a leverage point?
Finding a leverage point
Recommend a first step
What else might be impacting this situation?
Book Group: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
Argues that scientific progress is not gradual but occurs through paradigm shifts. Normal science operates within a dominant framework, but when anomalies accumulate, a crisis leads to a revolutionary shift in thinking. Kuhn introduces incommensurability, where competing paradigms are fundamentally different. His work reshaped how we view scientific discovery, innovation, and the resistance to change in knowledge systems.
Systems Leadership: Redefining Success
Transform management into leadership.. Practice two self-selected qualities of systemic leadership. Join a cohort design an approach to develop systemic leadership in your circumstances. Lessons include:
The trouble with “management”
Qualities of systemic leadership
Planning your practices
How will you teach others now?
Book Group: Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by Gen. Stanley McChrystal
Argues that traditional hierarchical organizations fail in fast-changing, complex environments. Drawing from his military experience, McChrystal shows how the U.S. military adapted to decentralized, networked threats like Al-Qaeda by breaking down silos and fostering shared consciousness and empowered execution. He advocates for agility, transparency, and decentralized decision-making, helping businesses and teams operate more like adaptive networks.
A Self-Defined Systems Project
Transform passive learning into a project that matters (to you). Practice self-directed initiative. Join a cohort to present your project to others.
Book Group: Ultralearning by Scott Young
A guide to mastering skills quickly and efficiently through self-directed, intense learning strategies. It emphasizes deliberate practice, deep focus, rapid feedback, and meta-learning to optimize knowledge acquisition. Using real-world examples, Young outlines how ultralearners accelerate learning, adapt to challenges, and outpace traditional education. The book is ideal for professionals, students, and lifelong learners seeking continuous growth.
Updated Sun, February 2
