An introduction to complexity

A different way of seeing, thinking and acting in a complex world

Many of the situations we most need to change cannot be reliably understood through linear cause and effect, more planning or tighter control alone. Housing, inequality, climate change, health systems, community life, team dynamics and organisational change are shaped by relationships, feedback, history and adaptation. They shift as people act within them. This course introduces complexity as more than a set of scientific concepts. It brings together complexity science, process thinking, complex thought, critical complexity and applied practice. You will learn how complex systems form and change, what can and cannot be known about them, and how to act when prediction and control are limited. Across four online sessions, we move from seeing complexity, to thinking well within it, to developing practical ways of working with context, constraints, uncertainty and emergence. No prior knowledge is needed.

Duration

4 sessions, 8 hours total

Next date

Oct 20, 2026

Cost

$749 (AUD)

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Can’t make this course?

If these dates don't work and you’d like to join the next one, email us at contact@houseofcomplexity.com and let us know what dates, days or time zones would work for you. We’ll use your responses to help shape the next course schedule.

Complexity changes how we see the world

It sees life less as a collection of fixed things and more as ongoing processes formed through relationships.

Complexity science studies how emergence, adaptation and change arise from interacting agents, feedback, constraints and histories. Process philosophy, complex thought and critical complexity extend this into questions of reality, knowledge, ethics and action.

This matters because organisations, communities, services and social challenges are not machines. Their behaviour is produced across scales, changes through interaction and is shaped by the observers, categories and interventions brought to them.

When we ignore complexity, we can optimise one part while damaging the whole, confuse measurement with reality, impose control where learning is needed and erase the situated knowledge that keeps a system functioning.

Working well in complexity begins by noticing how patterns are produced, maintained and transformed.

A different way of seeing, thinking and acting

Complexity does not offer a universal method or a promise of control.

It develops the judgement to recognise different situations, connect multiple perspectives and act responsibly when knowledge is partial and outcomes are uncertain.

This course helps you to:

See relations and processes: Notice what is producing and sustaining a pattern
Distinguish complexity from complication: Match your response to the situation
Read across scales: Connect local interactions with wider conditions
Work with feedback and constraints: See what stabilises, amplifies or redirects behaviour
Think critically about knowledge: Question frames, boundaries and models
Hold tensions: Connect part and whole, order and disorder, autonomy and dependence
Learn through action: Use small probes and feedback when prediction is limited
Shape emergence: Reconfigure conditions rather than impose fixed solutions

A four-week introduction

Session combine theory, examples, reflection and exercises, moving from the foundations of complexity to its implications for knowledge, judgement and action.

Week 1: What Is Complexity?

We begin with the mismatch between familiar management assumptions and relational, adaptive situations. We trace the history of complexity and introduce the ideas that distinguish complex systems from machines.

Why linear prediction and control often fail in complex situations
Being and becoming, reductionism and the machine view
Emergence, self-organisation and complex adaptive systems
Complexity science, complex thought, applied complexity and systems thinking

What you gain:

You gain a shared language for recognising complexity and understanding when relationships, interaction and process matter more than decomposition.

Week 2: A Closer Look at Complex Systems

We examine systems as processes, showing how patterns form and change across scales. We then explore causality, constraints and the reflexivity of human systems.

Open boundaries, multi-scale organisation and cross-scale effects
Circular, multiple and entangled causality
Feedback, constraints, emergence, adaptation and transformation
Human reflexivity, looping effects and the observer within the system

What you gain:

You learn to read a situation as a field of relations, histories and constraints, and to see what stabilises patterns, amplifies change or opens possibility.

Week 3: Good thinking in complexity

We turn from what complex systems are to what they mean for knowledge and judgement, drawing on Morin’s complex thought and Cilliers’ critical complexity.

Complex vs complicated situations
Dialogical, recursive and hologrammatic thinking
Knowledge as relational, partial, provisional and enacted
Framing, boundaries, plural perspectives and ethical responsibility

What you gain:

You develop reflexive judgement: connecting without collapsing difference, working with uncertainty and remaining accountable for what your models include and exclude.

Week 4: Emergent Practice in Complexity

We translate the course into an adaptable orientation for strategy, design and innovation that works with context, experimentation and emergence.

Start with context: reveal conditions, affordances and constraints
Reframe and reconfigure: expand the field and rearrange relations
Probe to learn: create variation and interpret feedback
Scaffold innovation: connect actors and protect emerging practices

What you gain:

You gain a practical sequence for working in complexity: start with context, reframe, reconfigure, probe to learn and scaffold innovation.

Who it is for

This course is designed for those navigating complex organisational, social or strategic situations and wanting a deeper foundation than a single framework or method. You might be:

Working across organisations, services, communities or sectors
Making decisions under uncertainty, interdependence and competing values
Leading teams or change where outcomes cannot be controlled in advance
Designing strategies, services, policies, innovations or social initiatives
Building a foundation in complexity, systems thinking or transdisciplinary practice

You do not need prior knowledge. Just curiosity and a willingness to question familiar assumptions.

Details

When: Tuesdays, 6:00 to 8:00pm AEST - 20 October to 10 November 2026
Time commitment: 4 sessions, 8 hours total
Where: Online via Zoom, with recordings
Cost: $749 AUD

Materials and reading

Course handouts and readings are distributed electronically.

There are no prescribed texts for this course. Some referenced works include:

The Complex World: An Introduction to the Foundations of Complexity Science by David Krakauer
Philosophy of Complex Systems, edited by Cliff A. Hooker
On Complexity by Edgar Morin
The Challenge of Complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin
Critical Complexity: Collected Essays by Paul Cilliers
Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems by Paul Cilliers
Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence by Alicia Juarrero
The Oxford Handbook of Process Philosophy and Organization Studies
The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding by Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana
Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking? by Ralph D. Stacey
The Dao of Complexity by Jean Boulton

Facilitator:

Steven Sullivan
Co-founder at House of Complexity

A strategic designer, educator and complexity practitioner helping organisations navigate change through transdisciplinary inquiry. Drawing from design, philosophy and science, his research and consulting approach translates complexity theory into practices that help organisations sense, adapt and evolve within dynamic systems.

Steven is also a Casual Academic at the University of Technology Sydney, where he teaches Futures Thinking in the Transdisciplinary School, supporting learners to engage creatively with uncertainty and long-term transformation.

Before founding House of Complexity, he led strategy and innovation projects, accelerators and labs for clients at Google, Optus, ING, KFC, DNSW, Uniting, ReachOut, BaptistCare and the Australian Medical Association. His work invites organisations to think, act and design with the relational intelligence that complex worlds demand.

Advancing knowledge and practice for a complex world.

Studio | Institute | Ventures

Advancing knowledge and practice for a complex world.

Studio | Institute | Ventures

Advancing knowledge and practice for a complex world.

Studio | Institute | Ventures

Advancing knowledge and practice for a complex world.

Studio | Institute | Ventures

Based in Sydney & Barcelona — Working globally