Institutions & Associations

Satire and Absurdity as Signals for Sensemaking in Complex Systems

Institutions shape the questions that define leadership, work, and organizational practice.

As those systems operate under increasing complexity, important signals are appearing outside traditional indicators.

They show up in stories people repeat, behaviors that quietly persist, and moments of irony or absurdity that carry meaning before language catches up.

This work partners with institutions and associations as inquiry collaborators to study those signals across leadership

and organizational ecosystems. Satire and observed absurdities are treated as data, not commentary.

They are read as indicators of where coherence is being stretched, where effectiveness is quietly eroding, and where action

is being demanded ahead of understanding.

The focus is not institutional self-diagnosis. It is shared sensemaking about what contemporary systems are producing, how people are adapting within them, and what these signals reveal about the conditions shaping judgment, coordination, and leadership today.

Who We Work With

This work is used by institutions that need to think carefully before acting, including:

Professional and industry associations
Leadership institutes and foundations
Think tanks and research bodies
Editorial boards and publishing organizations
Public sector and policy-adjacent groups
Cross-organizational or multi-stakeholder bodies

The focus is not on fixing institutions, but on supporting sound judgment under sustained complexity.

How Institutional Engagements Take Shape

Institutional work is shaped to support inquiry rather than impose a predefined format. Engagements are designed around the questions being explored and the signals under examination. This may include:

Curated sensemaking conversations focused on system-level patterns and signals
Executive or board-level briefings on observed behaviors, contradictions, and emerging conditions across leadership ecosystems
Roundtables or fireside conversations convening practitioners, researchers, or institutional stakeholders
Field briefings that synthesize recurring stories, satirical artifacts, and qualitative observations as data
Guided dialogue connected to live questions, tensions, or decision contexts without prescribing outcomes
Advisory conversations that support leadership judgment and interpretation rather than action planning

Institutional engagements sit within a broader orientation practice that also includes individual and team-level work. In some cases, this work stands alone as an inquiry. In others, it complements Orientation Sessions or Insight Sessions already underway.

The structure follows the conditions being examined. The work adapts to the inquiry, not the other way around.

What Institutes Come to Us For

Institutions engage this work when they are investigating questions such as:

What patterns of behavior, irony, or absurdity are repeatedly surfacing across organizations and leadership contexts?
What are these signals indicating about coherence, decision load, and coordination in contemporary systems of work?
Where do formal frameworks and metrics fail to capture lived experience on the ground?
How are people adapting when understanding lags behind action demands?
What conditions are shaping judgment, trade-offs, and leadership capacity right now?

These are not issues to diagnose inside a single institution.
They are system-level conditions to be examined collectively.

Areas of Focus

Engagements typically explore questions and patterns such as:

How sensemaking holds, degrades, or fragments under sustained complexity
What recurring behaviors, stories, irony, and moments of organizational absurdity reveal about system conditions
Satire and absurdity as qualitative data and early indicators of sensemaking strain, decision overload, and coherence gaps
How decision fatigue accumulates at the system level rather than within individuals
Coordination costs and the hidden tax of misaligned effort across roles, mandates, and structures
Why alignment initiatives often fail once they encounter real-world conditions
How judgment, pacing, and responsibility are shaped when certainty is unavailable
When pressure sharpens performance and when it quietly degrades it over time
The role of emerging technologies, including AI, in amplifying or masking coherence challenges

The work surfaces patterns shaping behavior and judgment across organizational and leadership ecosystems. It does not promote prescriptive models or frameworks to adopt.

What You'll Gain

Institutions, their members, and affiliated leaders gain:

A clearer view of the system-level forces shaping behavior, decisions, and outcomes across organizations
Language and frameworks to interpret recurring stories, contradictions, and moments of absurdity as meaningful signals
Stronger collective judgment about timing, trade-offs, and where intervention actually makes sense
Reduced reliance on reactive responses driven by urgency, headlines, or incomplete information
Greater capacity to hold complexity in view without rushing to premature conclusions

Often the shift is subtle but durable. Conversations change. Decisions travel further. Action becomes more deliberate, without lowering standards or oversimplifying reality

Let's Start a Conversation