ARC25 SIGHTLINES | Anthology of Reflexive Contributors
This article by Gerald Midgley, Rachel Lilley, and Raghav Rajagoplan presents a three-layered approach to systems thinking that centres on relationality—the interconnectedness of people, systems, and perspectives.
We are enjoying a resurgence of interest in systems thinking in government, industry and the voluntary sector. Could we be approaching a tipping point when systems thinking will become business as usual in our organisations and communities? We suggest that we have two substantial challenges to overcome if we really want to reach that tipping point.
First, changes in our organisations—especially the increasing intensification of work and home-based employment—are making it more and more difficult to use traditional systems methodologies that are dependent on face-to-face workshops and extensive practitioner time for modelling.
Second, while there have been thirty-five years of research on methodological pluralism (mixing methods from multiple methodological sources), which gives us a more flexible approach than implementing the traditional methodologies, this presents another challenge: the sheer number of methodologies, techniques and jargon terms we can draw upon when mixing methods looks incredibly daunting to a newcomer to our field. People must believe that the benefits of learning systems thinking will outweigh the amount of work it will take to do that learning, otherwise they just won’t perceive systems thinking as relevant to them. There is a risk that, if we don’t rethink some of our most cherished assumptions, then interest in systems thinking will wane before we reach the tipping point.
If we want systems thinking to be widely used, then it’s essential to make it both accessible to newcomers and useful for all discussion and decision-making contexts, not just formally constituted design projects.
Editor’s note: Gerald Midgley presents the three-layer systems approach in Beyond Systemic Design Methodologies: Systems thinking as an everyday practice, RSD14-ONLINE.
Three-layer systems approach
To tackle this risk, we offer a vision of systems thinking that addresses both these challenges. The vision is expressed in terms of three layers of systems thinking.
The first layer offers a relatively simple representation of a system, using some basic concepts (boundaries, relationships, emergent properties and perspectives) and an explanation of how the embodied cognition of the systems practitioner is part of any system they seek to change.
The second layer builds on it by showing how these concepts can be abstracted out of that simple representation for use in rethinking the system: e.g., shifting the boundary, mapping newly-perceived interconnections, looking for previously-unseen emergent properties and seeing the system from different perspectives.
These skills help us question our assumptions and expectations, both in systemic design and associated self-reflection. The third layer, built on top of the last two, codifies these concepts and skills into a substantial set of specialist systems methodologies and methods to support systemic practice. This vision of systems thinking is founded on an approach to systems philosophy that updates some long-established ideas from cybernetics and systems theory with contemporary neuroscience.
Layers one and two can be used routinely in our thinking and conversations, outside face-to-face workshops and formal modelling processes, thus addressing the organisational challenges of intensification and remote working. The second layer also provides quick-to-learn skills that demonstrate the value of systems thinking to people coming to it for the first time, which addresses the challenge of perceived relevance. The third layer of methodologies and methods is there for those who have benefited from layers one and two and want to further enhance their practice.
The philosophy and neuroscience are also there for those who want to deepen their understanding of what is happening when they think and converse with others. It changes people’s appreciation of themselves, which is ultimately necessary if they are going to see the full implications for systems practice of being an integral part of any system they seek to transform.
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John Ingram, David Barling, Natasha Bayes, Julian Cottee, Angela Dickinson, Charlotte Hardman, Eric Holub, Katie Jones, Craig Leadley, Rosanne Maguire, Lucy Michaels, Gerald Midgley, Raghav Rajagopalan, Jing Zhang, Monika Zurek; Fork to farm: reverse engineering a food system. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 18 September 2025; 380 (1935): 20240158. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2024.0158
Sightlines is an annual anthology of reflexive contributors—RSD chairs, speakers, and other influential voices whose work is foundational or influential in systemic design. This article is published for ARC25, as context for Gerald Midgley’s RSD14-RSDX talk, Beyond Systemic Design Methodologies: Systems thinking as an everyday practice.
Gerald Midgley
University of Hull | Birmingham Leadership Institute
Gerald Midgley is an Emeritus Professor in the Centre for Systems Studies at the University of Hull, UK. He is an independent consultant, and also holds Visiting Professorships at the Birmingham Leadership Institute, University of Birmingham (UK); the School of Cybernetics, College of Systems and Society, Australian National University; and the Department of Informatics, Linnaeus University (Sweden).
Gerald has held research leadership roles in academia and government, including fourteen years as Director of the Centre for Systems Studies at Hull and seven years as a Senior Science Leader in the Institute for Environmental Science and Research (ESR), New Zealand. He has written almost 400 papers for academics and practitioners on systems thinking, systemic leadership and community operational research, and has been involved in a wide variety of public policy, health service, natural resource management, community development and technology foresight projects. While most of these have been in the UK or New Zealand, he has also led or collaborated with systemic interventions on every continent worldwide.
Gerald was the 2013/14 President of the International Society for the Systems Sciences, and has written or edited twelve books, including Systemic Intervention: Philosophy, Methodology, and Practice (Kluwer, 2000); Systems Thinking, Volumes I-IV (Sage, 2003); Community Operational Research: OR and Systems Thinking for Community Development (Kluwer, 2004); The Handbook of Systems Thinking (Open Science, 2023); and Systems of Marginalization and Identity (Routledge, 2026, forthcoming).
Rachel Lilley
Birmingham Leadership Institute, University of Birmingham
Rachel Lilley is an Associate Professor at the Birmingham Leadership Institute, a Systems Thinking and Leadership teaching and research centre at the University of Birmingham, UK.
She is a practitioner-researcher in systems approaches and systems leadership and also the Programme Director for an innovative transdisciplinary Master’s Programme combining Systems Leadership and Systems Practice. Rachel’s high-impact research examines human decision-making, systems thinking capabilities, and behavioural change. It has supported policy design and practice, community initiatives, and leadership development at all levels. She has a particular interest in building capabilities to address climate and social change.
Rachel is an expert in human sensemaking, with specialist knowledge in cognition, consciousness, and perception. Her theoretical expertise is supported and informed by a strong track record of practising, teaching, and developing embodied perception skills in teams, organisations, and individuals.
She has over 30 years of experience as a systems practitioner working with public and third-sector organisations, as well as large corporates, addressing climate change, social issues, leadership, behaviour change, community engagement, and well-being. More about Dr Lilley
Raghav Rajagopalan
Centre for Systems Studies, Hull University Business School
Raghav is a systems philosopher passionate about alternate ways of knowing and learning from the margins. He elected to work for a decade with poor communities—fisherfolk and tribal people. Raghav is convinced that real answers to most vexing problems in organizations, economies and ecology can come from listening deeply to unschooled people from diverse cultural backgrounds.
With a doctorate in systems sciences, Raghav specializes in adding systemic perspectives and cultural analysis to his consulting practice. He is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Systems Studies, University of Hull, UK. He is a Trustee at Anusandhan Trust, Mumbai, which researches public health. He has co-authored a book about an extended epistemology for systems thinking, which is under publication.
Sightlines: ARC25
What if design embraced complexity by designing relationships and relationality itself?
Silvia Barbero: Talking about relationality means talking about life, systems, and identities in dialogue, and every dialogue is complex precisely because it is authentic and unique.
Mobilizing the Potential of Systemic Design Research
Peter Jones: Systemic design has learned from its contributing disciplines and has not foreclosed its potentials by defining a canon or narrowing our focus to the issues of the day (even given our continual interests in social change). I see systemic design as taking a long view, toward constructive reorganisation of social and service systems, without the need to address immediate (first horizon) change
Movement, Becoming, and the Cybernetic Archive
Kate Doyle: The modern archival impulse speaks to a very basic tendency toward collection and re-collection, categorisation, and creation. Photography has shown us two sides of the realisation (s) of this impulse: a ready access to creative archival artistry/an enabled pursuit of proof and fixity. We walk the line upon which a production of thingness can exchange experience into commodity and stasis.
An Egalitarian Systemic Design?
Birger Sevaldson: Systemic design needs to develop along both paths, the academic and the practice-oriented. We should turn energy from academic exercises to practice. There is no time to wait for the perfect theory. We need small steps of improvement on all frontlines. This implies nurturing “imperfect” practices on a very wide scale.
Stirring the Sediment: The material practices of systemic design
Chloé Oru: I considered that the river, as a natural system, offers an easy-to-grasp perspective to explore the definition of materiality and systemic outcomes, to explain the power of systemic design in practice, and to explain its strategic potential to support organisational change and fluxes in navigating complexity.
Redrawing the Arcs in Healthcare: On relationality, systemic design, and the weight of where we place our attention
Ng Yeuk Fan: And yet, when we speak with people—not as patients, but as human beings—they do not ask for services, nor do they ask for departments … They ask to make meaning of medical conditions they live with, and to hold onto their identities in the face of decline. These are not unreasonable things.
Systemic Design Inquiry—Open or Closed? Broadband Inquiring Systems
Harold Nelson: It is obvious that we need to reestablish new broadband designs of inquiry to supplement and balance the dominance of narrowband inquiring systems in a world recognized to be more complex and entangled than imagined, and more challenged by complex technologies than ever expected.
Crossing Algebra and Systemic Design
Louis Kauffman: What if one also knows a theory? How will that affect the process? Can new theory also evolve with the help of systemic design? What does it mean to creatively use theory and reasoning? Will not such use, if creative, go beyond standard logical reasoning into the use of dialogue and imagination? Will not creative use of theory lead both to new designs and to new theory? It is our contention that the answer to all these questions is a resounding yes.
Co-Creating Social Worlds in Relationship with Others
Abbie VanMeter: CMM has evolved into an important perspective and practice that foregrounds relationality as central to meaning-making, is increasingly applicable in everyday life, and remains rooted in a strong theoretical foundation.
Human Relationships in Complex Challenges—What can we design?
Mieke van der Bijl-Brouwer: I find human relationships incredibly fascinating, because they are so difficult to grasp and at the same time so important and meaningful to being human.