Newsletter

Ongoing thinking,
published publicly.

On Complex Systems is a Substack newsletter developing the foundational knowledge and mental models underlying Parraghy Advisory's work. Written for board members, executives, investors, and anyone thinking seriously about how organizations function — and why they so often don't.

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The Three Series

How the newsletter
is structured.

Content Roadmap

The intellectual architecture
of On Complex Systems.

The following is the content roadmap published in November 2025, outlining the topics, their sequence, and the reasoning behind how they connect. Each section builds on the previous, progressing from foundational principles to applied organizational design.

Newsletter November 2025
The Content Roadmap of "On Complex Systems"
The intellectual architecture behind the newsletter, why it's structured as it is, how the topics connect, and where it's heading.

Overview

On Complex Systems covers general systems theory, its subdisciplines systems thinking and system dynamics, and organizational theory. It illustrates those concepts with real-world examples and provides actionable insights. The editions follow a progression from foundational thinking and scaffolding to how we analyze, design, develop or evolve, and adapt companies, economies, and societies.

1. Intro

  • OCS 1: Into the Depths of Purposeful Systems

2. Foundational Philosophy and Mental Models

  • How everything is evolving
  • How our methods to organize companies, economies & societies evolved (approx. 2 dozen editions covering tribal formation through the sociological view of systems)
  • How our methods to understand & solve problems evolved — the analytical approach vs. the systems approach

3. Behavioral Principles of Systems

  • Purposefulness as a systems behavioral principle
  • How openness influences the dissolution & adoption of ideas
  • Multidimensionality and the relations between opposing tendencies
  • Counterintuitive behavior of social systems
  • Emergence — the difference between the properties of the whole and its parts
  • Opinion: Why Friedman was wrong about the purpose of enterprise
  • Opinion: The interplay between innovation and stability

4. Understanding Sociological Systems

  • Self-organization — the essence of sociocultural systems
  • Culture's role as an "operating system"
  • Social learning — our difference to biological systems

5. Development of Sociological Systems

  • The development of social systems and the multidimensionality of its theories
  • A systems view of how social systems are developed
  • Impediments to the development of social systems

6. Modes of Thinking

  • Holistic Thinking — iteration, verification of assumptions, dimensions of sociological systems
  • Operational Thinking — feedback loops, delayed reactions, nonlinear effects
  • Design Thinking — rooted in Herbert Simon and Russell Ackoff; design as a systems method

7. Understanding & Formulating a Problem

In complex systems, problems rarely have a single cause. Across several editions, covering how to formulate problems in complex systems by mapping how they arise, persist, and interact — surfacing feedback loops, conflicting demands, and how structure, function, and process reinforce the current state.

8. Organizational Design

  • Why a system's boundary & environment are everything
  • The role of purpose in designing an organization
  • On alignment of functions, structure and process
  • Why organizational design is downstream of governance design
  • The essence of governance design: decision-making operationalization
  • The structural preconditions of organizational design

9 & 10. Analysis of Live Events & Closing Thoughts

After laying the foundations, the newsletter moves to analysis and commentary on current and live events, with cross-references to earlier editions. Guest authors from varied backgrounds will be invited to demonstrate how these disciplines play out in their own work.

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Co-authoring

Contribute to
an edition.

If you are working on a topic that intersects with systems thinking, governance, organizational design, or decision-making, and believe a guest contribution or co-authored edition would serve the newsletter's readers — get in touch. All guest contributions are subject to editorial review and alignment with the newsletter's standards.

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