1. Structural capabilities, not isolated fixes: Real transformation hinges on how the parts talk, decide, and adapt—not on dropping a shiny app, a policy mandate, or a pilot project into the mix. Sensing bandwidth, feedback latency, agency distribution, and norm plasticity are the pipes and circuits of systemic learning. 2. Learning order precedes... See more

City governments collaborate across silos and with partners at local and regional levels. Many of these collaborations form around specific projects or depend on individual relationships, and often lack the organisational infrastructure needed to sustain and evolve networks as needs change.

I. Systems Leaders

Systems leaders are trusted actors who help many people to collaborate to address wicked policy problems. These policy problems resist simple solutions by a few powerful actors in one center of government

II. Challenge

Systems change is disruptive to the usual ways of thinking and acting, which means that systems leadership is... See more

Conclusion – From “Solutions ˮ to a Topology of Capabilities If we take systems seriously, “change ˮ cannot stay at the level of solutions‐in‐search‐of‐problems. A clever portfolio of intervention grafted onto an unready host is absorbed, rejected, or—worse—reinforces the very patterns it hoped to disrupt. What matters is the capability topology... See more