How Collectives Find Coherence
Something strange happens when you move from two-three people to twenty, and more. Large groups start developing properties that their members never had. New things emerge. New possibilities. New challenges.
Most of today’s entangled crises – destruction, fragmentation, collapse – have 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 holding that elusive work actually need to sustain it.
Featured
How Things Happen
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
Co-written with Luea Ritter and forthcoming through Collective Transitions, Soundtracking demystifies the inner work of stewarding living systems towards greater coherence. The book considers the listening, tending, and reweaving that holds collectives together through fragmentation and change. It gives language to practice that is often invisible, and a framework for practitioners, decision-makers, or anyone who tends to the spaces between people and ideas.
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 a long-time understanding of its 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 aims to be maximally useful for 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.
A linguistic exploration of collectives
My interest in collective started in linguistics. Before migrating to Australia, I submitted a thesis at Paris-Sorbonne University on Collective Nouns in contemporary English. Two jury members found it too trans-disciplinary to defend. I was due to leave for Australia, and didn’t stay back for a year to review it. The hesis maps a philosophical problem with a linguistic equivalent: how does language handle the tension between the one and the multiple? When we say ‘the family decided’ or ‘the police arrived’, we're treating a group as a unified agent, but the grammar keeps slipping, the verb agreement wavers, the pronoun hesitates. I catalogued 792 collective nouns in contemporary English and asked: how does naming something as a collective change what it can do? In 2008, I published a related paper, ‘From riches to garbage’, that explores how categorisation determines value, and how things lose and regain identity when they move between categories. Both are in French: the paper and the thesis.
Essays & white papers
PHILOSOPHER IN RESIDENCE – ALIGNING ORGANISATIONS
From 2023 to 2024, I worked as philosopher in residence with a business group called Eternus, which has since folded, supporting executive leaders as the organisation found its shape. Over this period, my first time in a corporate environment, I explored the role of philosopher not as a specialist but a generalist agent, responsible for ‘the space in-between’, building coherence and improving information integrity. I wrote a philosopher in residence white paper as blueprint for that role, which is also a prequel to the work I have been doing since through Shapeshifters Group.
Inclusive innovation
I contributed a personal reflection to a collective volume on inclusive innovation, with particular focus on South East Asia. My text reflects on what it means to build a life and practice across multiple projects and identities, in a world that keeps asking you to simplify your professional narrative around one single point of focus. Read the full piece here.
Blog Series
Professional musings
In this thread of blog posts, I share the somewhat atypical work that I do and the way I engage with it. It’s a potential 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, merging 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 is 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. Shared in this thread.
Reflections on running Marco Polo Project
In 2011, I founded a small charity to work on intercultural understanding and engagement with China. This blog series shares some of my core insights from this experience.