Working with Complexity/ Working Systemically

Authors: Institute for the Future
Publication date: 2013

The Governance Futures Lab brings social inventors and futures thinking to the challenge of designing better systems of governance. The mission of the Governance Futures Lab is to reimagine and experiment with the basic architectures and processes of governance.

In this series from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Center for Health Leadership's 2011 Annual Leadership Conference, you will learn how to build effective partnerships within communities and health organizations, and across sectors. In this video, Kenneth V. Hardy stresses the importance and complexity of relationships in collaborative arrangements and focuses on its implications for succesfully working together.

In this series from the UC Berkeley School of Public Health, Center for Health Leadership's 2011 Annual Leadership Conference, you will learn how to build effective partnerships within communities and health organizations, and across sectors. In this video, Sam Kaner focuses on among others the complexity of group dynamics. He investigates what makes it so likely that many high hope collaborative efforts end up with such a poor sense of the gap between what they thought they could do versus what they actually did.

Authors: McKenzie, F.
Publicateion date: 2013

This Ecoagriculture Discussion Paper explores the possibilities of taking cross-sectoral collaborative action to break away from business-as-usual. It shows how the complexity of the sustainability challenges makes cross-sectoral collaboration so essential. It highlights how complex non-linear linkages exist between food, agricultural, and land systems. It argues that if we are to effectively operate in this nexus, then we need to seriously reconsider the way we work together.

Authors: Hummelbrunner, R. & Jones, H.
Publication date: 2013

Complexity heightens the importance of effective management, but poses challenges for the tools and approaches used most widely to manage international development projects.

This ODI guide, which follows 'A guide to planning and strategy development in the face of complexity', addresses the challenges managers face steering development interventions towards their intended goals in the face of three types of challenges:

Authors: Hummelbrunner, R. & Jones, H.
Publication date: 2013

This Background Note is a guide, explaining how planning and strategy development can be carried out despite complexity. While it is true that complex situations require a greater focus on learning and adaptation, this does not render plan­ning irrelevant.

Authors: Nauheimer, H.

The Change Management Toolbook is a collection of more than 120 tools, methods and strategies that you can apply during different stages of personal, team and organisational development, in training, facilitation and consulting. It is divided into three principal sections: Self, Team and Larger Systems.

Author: edited by Arjen E.J. Wals
Publication date: 2007

This comprehensive volume - containing 27 chapters and contributions from six continents - presents and discusses key principles, perspectives, and practices of social learning in the context of sustainability.

Authors: Puente, L.M. et alii. (for The Institute for Strategic Clarity and NetworkingAction)
Publication date: 2010

This joint paper of The Institute for Strategic Clarity and NetworkingAction presents the Managing from Clarity framework as a tool to increase the effectiveness of Global Action Networks. The framework results from an applied-research project, undertaken with the Latin American network of Youth Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (YES).

Author: Glasbergen, P., in Global Environmental Change 20(1): 130-141.
Publication Date: 2010 

Global action networks (GANs) are civil society initiated multi-stakeholder arrangements that aim to fulfill a leadership role for systemic change in global governance for sustainable development. The paper develops a network approach to study some of these GANs as motivators of global collective action and investigates how in their interaction processes the actors involved create the organizational capacity for collective change.