How worlds are made and remade

A new way of thinking and doing in a complex world

A four-week online course on how connected systems behave — and how to think, lead, and act more effectively in a complex world. Through practical exercises and real examples, you’ll learn to see patterns, navigate uncertainty, and approach challenges with a systems lens. No prior experience required.

Duration

4 sessions, 12 hours total

Next date

Feb 10, 2026

Cost

$600 (AUD)

Enroll now

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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

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.

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

We design digital products that grow from lived practice. By observing how people actually collaborate, we uncover the informal patterns and feedback loops that drive real work, creating tools that adapt, connect and evolve within their ecosystems.

What we do:

Behavioural and systems research: uncover how work really happens across teams, tools and contexts.
Workflow and collaboration mapping: reveal the invisible networks and dependencies that drive value creation.
Co-design and prototyping: work alongside users to design, test and refine solutions that fit real practice.
Experience and interface design: create intuitive interactions that simplify complexity and enhance collaboration.
Adaptive product ecosystems: design systems that evolve with changing needs and feedback over time.

Week 3: Good thinking in complexity

We co-create services as dynamic relationships between people, processes and places. By engaging users and teams as sensemakers, we design experiences that learn from use, adapt through feedback and sustain value as conditions shift.

What we do:

Service mapping: uncover how different parts of a service connect, where gaps exist and where improvement is possible.
Co-design: work with the people and communities who use and deliver services.
Creative workshops: use participatory sessions to unlock fresh thinking, shared and divergent understanding.
Prototyping and testing: try out ideas quickly, gather feedback and refine.
Business case development: turn insights into actionable, sustainable models for delivery and scaling.

Week 4: Complexity practices for Creative Emergence

We help organisations build innovation as a living ecology of learning and exchange. By weaving together frameworks, spaces and networks, we create the conditions for new ideas, practices and relationships to emerge, evolve and endure.

What we do:

Innovation frameworks and methods: design practical systems for experimentation, learning and scaling what works.
Labs, accelerators and programs: create environments where teams can test new ideas safely and learn through real-world feedback.
Leadership and team capability: build the confidence and skills to innovate in conditions of uncertainty and change.
Impact networks: connect partners, sectors and society to enable shared transformation and collaboration at scale.

Who it is for

This course is for anyone who regularly finds themselves thinking, surely there has to be a better way to deal with this.

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 - 28 January to 18 February 2026
Time commitment: 4 sessions, 8 hours total
Where: Online via Zoom, with recordings
Cost: $600 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
On Complexity / The Challenge of Complexity: Essays by Edgar Morin By Edgar Morin
Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems by Paul Cilliers
Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence By Alicia Juarrero
Complexity and Management: Fad or Radical Challenge to Systems Thinking? by Ralph D. Stacey
The Dao of Complexity by Jean Boulton
Embracing Complexity: Strategic Perspectives for an Age of Turbulence by Cliff Bowman, Emeritus Professor Peter M Allen, and 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.

Strategic Design • Digital Product Design • Service & Experience design • Innovation Ecosystems Development

Based in Sydney & Barcelona — Working globally