Complexity is about how the world actually works
It sees life not as a straight line of cause and effect, but as a web of relations.
Complexity science brings together insights from many fields. Drawing on biology, physics and evolution to mathematics, the social sciences and philosophy, to explain how connected systems behave and change.
This matters because most things we try to improve are complex. Our habits and relationships. The way teams and organisations work. Housing, health, transport and community life. These systems do not respond to the logic of traditional management.
When we do not understand complexity, our solutions often make things worse. We optimise one part and damage the whole. We increase control and call it progress, even as outcomes decline. Like damming a river to make it efficient, we drain life from the ecosystem and create new problems downstream.
If we want to improve complex systems, we first need to understand how they really behave.
Understanding complexity changes everything
Once you see it, the world looks different.
It challenges many of our default assumptions and reshapes what we notice, what we value and how we act.
This course helps you to:
See the bigger picture: Notice patterns, connections, and blind spots
Recognise different problems: Respond in ways that fit the situation
Understand organisations as living systems: Attend to relationships and context
Work with constraints: As sources of change and creativity
Navigate tension and power: Work more skilfully with people
Think laterally: Hold contradiction and diversity of thought
Stay open: Adapt when certainty is not available
Develop humility: Gain perspective and respect for the complexity of life
A four-week intro course
This hands-on course helps you feel systems, surface hidden assumptions and see interdependence. Each session blends theory and play to sharpen how you think, lead and act.
Week 1: Messy Problems and the Origins of Complexity Thinking
We begin from lived experience. This week looks at the pressures shaping contemporary life and work, and why many familiar ways of thinking no longer fit the problems we face. We introduce complexity and systems thinking as a lens for making sense of these conditions.
The defining challenges of our time, from societal issues to organisational problems
Different types of problems and why treating them the same leads to failure
The limits of linear, rational approaches we have inherited
Complexity and systems thinking intro and origins
What you gain:
You gain a shared language for complexity and a clearer way to distinguish different kinds of problems, helping you recognise when linear approaches will fail and when a systems view is required.
Week 2: How Complex Systems Behave
This week introduces the core ideas of complexity. We explore how complex systems behave and what this means in practice. Through real world examples and interactive exercises, we make these dynamics visible.
How relationships, feedback, and history shape what becomes possible
Emergence, stability, and transformation through constraints and tipping points
Adaptation, learning, and self organisation in living systems
Using these dynamics to act more wisely in organisations and society
What you gain:
You gain the ability to read how systems actually behave in practice, spotting patterns like feedback, constraints and history so you can act more wisely and avoid unintended consequences.
Week 3: Good thinking in complexity
This week focuses on how we think, know and make sense of situations when clear answers are not available.
Transdisciplinary thinking and problem framing
4EA cognition: embodied, embedded, extended, enacted
Abduction and futures thinking under uncertainty
Agency, adaptation, diversity, and learning
What you gain:
You develop stronger judgement under uncertainty by understanding how knowledge is formed and limited, and by building awareness of practical habits for framing problems, thinking across disciplines and exploring futures.
Week 4: Complexity practices for Creative Emergence
The final week brings everything together. We explore practical principles and real examples to see how others design, lead and act within complexity.
Creative practices for emergence, including framing, recombination, and working with constraints
Real world examples of how others design, lead, and act in complex conditions
Critical reflection to surface practice insights and limitations
A synthesis of complexity shifts into practical principles for ongoing practice
What you gain:
You gain a set of practical, adaptable principles you can use to shape strategy, collaboration, and design, enabling you to work productively within complexity.
Who it is for
Something this useful shouldn't be locked away in academic journals. This course is for people working with messy organisational challenges, offering not just new ideas, but a richer way of noticing, thinking and living in a complex world. You might be:
Working across organisations, services, communities, or sectors
Making decisions in conditions full of uncertainty and competing pressures
Leading or managing people through change
Designing services, strategies, or social initiatives
Early in your career and wanting a stronger foundation for working with systems
You do not need prior knowledge. Just curiosity and a willingness to see things a little differently.
Details
When: Tuesdays, 6:00 to 8:00pm AEDT - 9 June to 30 June 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 Atlas of Social Complexity by Brian Castellani and Lasse Gerrits
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.
