Some problems can’t be solved.
They have to be replaced.
You're trying to change something fundamental.
We help you see the whole system you're changing.
A RESEARCH COMPANY FOR MAJOR CHANGE
The answer is usually zooming out.
We are all trained to solve problems by zooming in: more detail, more analysis, more focus on the part that’s broken.
For many problems that works.
Some problems do not yield to it, because they are not faults inside the system. They are the system, working as designed.
A problem like this gets clearer when you zoom out and look at the reality, the context around it.
That move, zooming out before zooming in,
is what we do with you.
What we do
We map your reality.
We read your situation as a system of choices: the essences (the dimensions within which a choice was made) and the manifestations (the choice made in each one), including the larger context it is nested in.
We find the missing moves
We locate the changes you have already made and surface the inversions you have not. The gaps are often where you’re facing obstacles and where the resistance comes from.
We make it cohere
We help your initiatives align and pull in one direction, so they reinforce each other instead of working against each other.
Who we work with
The framework is agnostic to topic and to level of detail, so the same method applies to an organisation, an industry, or a societal problem.
We work with people with a mandate to change a system, not to optimise one.
Foundation and programme directors,
Leaders of movements and coalitions, and
Senior civil servants.
If you are trying to make the current thing run better, we are not the right partner.
If you suspect the current thing is the problem, we are.
The idea behind it.
Everything here comes from one book: If Not This, Then What? sets out the framework in full: how to read a reality as a set of choices, how to invert those choices systematically, and how to assemble the result into a coherent alternative.
The method has roots going back four decades.
And it draws from complexity theory, systems thinking, lexical semantics from linguistic theory and set theory.
Some of our work
REALITY PAPERS, NO. 1
The Human Family & Everything Else
The climate crisis is always framed as a threat to human rights. We show that by drawing the moral boundaries as it did, the arrow of causation goes the other way too. The UDHR created the systems that led to the climate crisis, and why we need to align on a coherent new reality to make our climate activism and change efforts stick.
FORESIGHT
Scenarios versus alternative realities
Traditional scenario work helps to show directions for the future or work through what our preferred future could be. It does not show whether the future you’ve imagined is coherent. We show how our framework strengthens the field by structurally driving coherence into the alternative realities we design.
REALITY PAPERS, NO. 2
The Systemic Pivot
We use our framework to dive deep into the architecture of venture capital, impact investing and systemic investing to show where they overlap and where they truly differ. We then show that Big Venture is using systemic investing principles and where it is lacking… and how to fill the gap.
Watch this space for more!