How Collectives Find Coherence
Something strange happens when you move from two-three people to twenty. Groups start developing properties that their members as individuals never had. New things emerge. New possibilities. New challenges.
Most of the challenges of our time are to do with collective action. We suffer not so much from a lack of intelligence or goodwill, but a failure to organise ourselves, and hold things together under pressure.
Some of the writing in this thread looks at structural issues, with frameworks for decision-making, models for circulating ideas, or maps of how fields organise themselves. Some of it is more intimate: what it costs to sustain process stewardship over time, and what the people who do that elusive holding work need.
Featured
How Things Happens
This is a five-part essay series offering a cross-cultural look at collective action, particularly within organisational settings. I cowrote the series with my long thinking partner Patrick Laudon, and published it in The Change Management Review in 2025 - 2026.
Soundtracking: The art of Process Stewardship
In the making - with Luea Ritter - demystifying the inner energetic work of working with systems
Long form
Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World
There is no progress on global issues without involving China. Chinese statecraft in a changing world: Demystifying Enduring Traditions and Dynamic Constraints ambitions to provide an accessible yet accurate introduction to the exercise of power in contemporary China, anchored in an understanding of the long tradition. I worked closely with author Jean Dong as development editor from 2021 to 2023 to shape this monograph. Buy it here! or read the introduction chapter China through the looking glass.
Foundations of Systems sensing
Navigating complexity is an elusive art form. Foundations of Systems Sensing: An Exploratory Guide to the Sensing Journey Method demystifies one core practice embraced by people working in and with complexity: the Sensing Journey method. It presents 20 case stories, each with details on the setup, application, and benefits, as well as tips for trying it on your own. I co-edited the book and contributed a case study on landscape your life: how to sense present potentials to shape emerging futures. Buy it here!
Phd: Mapping A digital Learning Ecosystem
The Internet is an extraordinary experience in global collaboration. What can we learn from it? In 2021, I completed a PhD thesis at Monash University on Chinese language learning as a digital ecosystem in the making. My research maps this emerging landscape in a way that is maximally useful to learners, teachers and designers. To do so, I disentangled questions of language pedagogy, business models, social networks, funding sources, and soft diplomacy. The thesis explores the possibility of conceptualising 21st century digital learning as a transmedia experience, and a set of coordinated learning tools as a distributed global public good in the making. It’s a reflection on China, learning, tech ecosystems, and Quixotic aspirations to building digital commons, You can download my full thesis here.
Essays & white papers
PHILOSOPHER IN RESIDENCE – ALIGNING ORGANISATIONS
From 2023 to 2024, I worked as Philosopher in Residence with an atypical business group called Eternus. In this role, I supported various generations of executive leaders as the organisation found its shape across different structures and strategic directions - from incubators to creative and technology - eventually settling on two core pillars of property development and wealth management. Over this period, my first in a corporate environment, I explored the role of philosopher not as a specialist but a generalist agent responsible for ‘the space in-between’, connecting the parts, exploring ‘what might be’, and improving information integrity. I wrote a philosopher in residence white paper as a sort of blueprint for the role, and a different way to work in emerging organisations.
Inclusive innovation
I contributed a personal reflection a collective volume on inclusive innovation. My text reflects on what means to build a life and practice across multiple projects and identities, in a world that keeps asking you to simplify. Download the piece here.
Blog Series
Professional musings
A series of personal posts, sharing the work that I do and the way I engage with it. A great resource for all shapeshifters.
My Practice
During the pandemic I took a series of notes on my practice. I gathered those in various documents, shuffled them around, and merged in older thoughts and reflections. Lockdown #6 was an opportunity to bring all this to shape. I shared those thoughts as a series, forming a sort of mosaic on my work, and what has been driving it.
Corona Thoughts
While working from home through the long Melbourne lockdowns, I wrote a series of pieces reflecting on the pandemic, and our reaction to it.
Reflections on running Marco Polo Project
In 2011, I founded a small charity to work on intercultural understanding and engagement with China. This series shares Insights from this experience.