Syllabus

Intro to Impactful Thinking

Transform linear, reductionistic thinking into more-expansive thinking practices. Practice noticing your thinking patterns. Join a cohort to share insights, get support and resolve blockers. Lessons include:

• Systems thinking practices
• Writing as thinking: foundational practice(s)
• Bugs in our thinking: logical fallacies and cognitive biases
• A few artifacts to try

Book Group: Design Unbound: Designing for Emergence in a White Water World by Ann M. Pendleton-Jullian and John Seely Brown

Metacognition and Empathy as Core Skills

Transform counterproductive reactions into conceptual integrity. Practice noticing your thinking patterns. Join a cohort to practice noticing reactions and integrating points of view. Lessons include:

• Working with your (constant) reactions
• Proactive perspective taking
• Synthesizing and integrating: a core practice
• Crafting (internal) conceptual integrity

Book Group: The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef

Learning & Generating Knowledge

Transform task-driven development into a learning-driven career. Practice structuring your own learning practice. Join a cohort and build your knowledge repository. Lessons include:

• Make time to think: daily deep work
• Identifying what to learn
• Sharing your learning
• Due diligence: what to do before you shake things up
• Intro to knowledge repositories

Book Group: Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt

Systemic Reasoning

Transform opinions into sound, cogent recommendations. Practice creating recommendations supported by sound reasons. Join a cohort and collaborate on developing a Big Idea that impacts your circumstances. Lessons include:

• Intro to systemic reasoning
• Strengthening the reasons
• The five-pointed star: synthesizing perspectives
• Why does this matter now?

Book Group: An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments by Ali Almossawi and A Rulebook for Arguments by Anthony Weston

Designing Feedback Loops

Transform noise into signal. Practice asking for the feedback you need (and ignoring the feedback you don’t). Join a cohort to become an excellent feedback facilitator. Lessons include:

• First, a little therapy
• Asking for the feedback you need
• Giving feedback that improves thinking
• The trouble with hierarchy: intro to repackaging

Book Group: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed by James C. Scott

Interdependent Artifacts

Transform individual expertise into interdependent ideas that generate innovation. Practice creating a collection of interdependent artifacts. Join a cohort design a sufficient collection of artifacts to improve your circumstances. Lessons include:

• Modeling knowledge flow
• Interrelating artifacts
• Communicating divergent points of view
• Beyond RACI: Convergence
• Conceptual integrity: a sufficient collection of artifacts

Book Group: Communication Patterns by Jacqui Read

Modeling Patterns and Structures

Transform requirements-driven design into insight-driven design. Practice modeling, alone and with others. Join a cohort experience collaborative modeling with exercises like EventStorming. Lessons include:

• A shared language: Defining concepts and vocabulary
• Models and knowledge flow
• Facilitating modeling
• Show don’t tell: What models are helpful?

Book Group: Collaborative Software Design by Evelyn van Kelle, Gien Verschatse, and Kenny Baas-Schwegler

Architecting Knowledge Flow

Transform software thinking into relationship designs. Practice decoupled information system design. Join a cohort tackle a real-world system challenge together. Lessons include:

• Two pieces of software walk into a bar
• Information design isn’t (necessarily) knowledge design
• What’s a platform?
• Build a prototype

Book Group: Building Knowledge Graphs by Jesus Barrasa & Amy E. Hodler

Taking a Systems Perspective

Transform systems understanding into impactful action. Practice modeling a system in various ways. Join a cohort to build a framework that describes a familiar system. Lessons include:

• Qualities of a healthy system
• Frameworks & approaches
• The Iceberg Model
• Events
• Capabilities

Book Group: The Fifth Discipline by Peter Senge

Shifting Paradigms

Transform solutions into transformations. Practice identifying a leverage point. Join a cohort to share strategies for communicating and acting on a real-world leverage point. Lessons include:

• What is a leverage point?
• Finding a leverage point
• Recommend a first step
• What else might be impacting this situation?

Book Group: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

Systems Leadership: Redefining Success

Transform management into leadership.. Practice two self-selected qualities of systemic leadership. Join a cohort design an approach to develop systemic leadership in your circumstances. Lessons include:

• The trouble with “management”
• Qualities of systemic leadership
• Planning your practices
• How will you teach others now?

Book Group: Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by Gen. Stanley McChrystal

A Self-Defined Systems Project

Transform passive learning into a project that matters (to you). Practice self-directed initiative. Join a cohort to present your project to others.

Book Group: Ultralearning by Scott Young

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