Forty four cards
For noticing the stories you were handed and choosing truer ones. The most tangible way into the thesis.
Leverage · ParadigmAbout the deck →
Work
One pattern, nested at every scale
The same pattern shows up in a person, in an organisation and in the wider system. I file the work by the scale it acts on and the leverage it reaches for.
By scale
A person, an organisation, the wider system
Scale 01A person
Scale 02An organisation
Scale 03The wider system
The Coherence Framework
Makes visible the gap between what an organisation says it values and what its structures actually reward.
Leverage · GoalsThe thesis behind it →
The Incentives Are Working
Conversations with people who paid the highest price for purpose-driven work, and what their stories say about how these systems are designed.
Leverage · Information flowsAbout the study →
The Long Way Back to Myself
Writing about burning out inside purpose, and the slow work of coming home to the parts of me I’d exiled.
Leverage · ParadigmRead more →
More organisational work to come
Story Circles
Circles for women leading purpose-driven work, where what’s been carried quietly gets said out loud and organised around.
Leverage · Information flowsRegister interest →
Leverage points
Where I intervene
Donella Meadows ranked the places to intervene in a system by how much change they can create. Most effort goes into the easiest to adjust and least likely to shift anything. My work sits higher up, where the stories and goals live.
↑ Higher leverageWhere my work sits
ParadigmThe stories a system runs on, and the beliefs it makes feel like identity.The oracle deck · writing
GoalsWhat a system is actually for, beneath what it says it’s for.The Coherence Framework
Self-organisationWho gets to reshape the system, and whether they’re resourced to.Story Circles
Rules and incentivesWhat gets rewarded, and what quietly gets punished.The Coherence Framework
Information flowsWho gets to see, say and count what. Silence is a flow too.The Incentives Are Working · Story Circles
ParametersTargets, budgets, headcount. Where most change effort goes.Not where I work
↓ Lower leverage
Adapted from Donella Meadows, “Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System” (Sustainability Institute, 1999). Six of her twelve leverage points, simplified and shown in her order.
Archive
Brand and product work, 2016 to 2021
Before systems change, I spent years designing brand and product systems. A few projects from that time, kept here because they shaped how I see technology and scale.
Whispir · 2020COVID-19 contact tracingContact tracing forms and two-way communications built in weeks, with privacy at the centre. Adopted by 22 Australian government departments and agencies and used by over a million people.→Whispir · 2019Bespoke typefaces with ColophonTwo typefaces, Capisce and Motivo, made with Colophon Foundry. A digital specimen with a type tester, and a printed booklet built around duality.→Whispir · 2019Marketplace and design systemA new product designed from discovery to UI, and the design system behind it: a React component library and style guide that gave design and engineering a shared language.→
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