Follow the Rabbit Why Organizations Are Rediscovering Systems Thinking with Helge Tennø
Your organization has three departments that should be collaborating. Instead, they're locked in a silent battle—one's built a fortress, another's planning a hostile takeover, and the third is caught in the middle. The manager overseeing this chaos spends all day in meetings and has no map of what's actually happening. Sound familiar? Welcome to what our guest Helge Tennø calls "the Mexican standoff"—and it's precisely why systems thinking is making a comeback.
In this episode, we're joined by Helge Tennø, a designer-turned-strategist who spent seven years inside a global pharmaceutical company watching organizations fragment into competing silos. When he went back to consulting in 2024 and asked companies what they were buying, the answer was clear: "Not that old stuff." After 15 years of design thinking, customer journeys, and personas, organizations are exhausted. They've wrung out the cloth, and there's no water left. But here's the twist—nobody was asking for systems thinking by name. They just needed something that could help cross-functional teams speak the same language.
Here's what we're noticing: Organizations have spent a decade breaking themselves into smaller and smaller pieces, each with their own data, their own language, their own metrics. What was supposed to increase efficiency has created a coordination nightmare. The customer used to be this unifying force at the top of the org chart, but now they've become a divider—every department owns "their" piece of the customer experience and can't talk to anyone else about it. Meanwhile, managers are responsible for orchestrating these warring factions without any map of how things actually connect.
The conversation takes us through some unexpected territory:
- Why systems thinking has a "terrible first impression" but solves problems other tools can't touch
- How a simple causal diagram can help teams externalize their tacit knowledge
- The difference between complicated (where systems thinking works) and complex (where it might not)
- Why 95% of AI pilots are failing—and what that has to do with not having a map of your processes
- The real future of AI in organizations: not replacing coordinators, but giving workers direct access to coordination tools
Chapter Markers:
00:00 - Cold Open: The Corporate Mexican Standoff
01:21 - Introduction & Welcome
04:48 - What Is Systems Thinking? A Simple Definition
10:17 - Why Good Strategy Requires Good Information
14:04 - Why Now? The Comeback of Systems Thinking
19:44 - The Mexican Standoff: When Departments Go to War
23:44 - AI's Role: 95% of Pilots Fail Without a Map
29:21 - Complex vs. Complicated: The Valid Critique
37:46 - The Agency Problem: Maps Without Power to Act
39:47 - The Generalist's Moment
47:03 - Where to Start: Resources & Next Steps
48:46 - Outro
Links:
- Helge Tennø on LinkedIn
- John Sterman's Introduction to System Dynamics (MIT)
- Russell Ackoff on Systems Thinking
- Russell Ackoff - Systems Thinking (Clip 1)
- Omidyar Group Systems Practice Workbook PDF
- Simon Wardley on Wardley Mapping
- Simon Wardley - Introduction to Wardley Mapping
- Dave Snowden - Cynefin Framework
- Dave Snowden explaining Cynefin
- BJ Fogg's Behavior Model
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You can also watch this episode on Youtube
Follow the Rabbit feels like eavesdropping on a fascinating conversation between two well-read friends at a Berlin coffee shop—smart without being pretentious, critical without being cynical, and deeply engaged with contemporary culture while maintaining historical perspective. The podcast occupies a unique space between trend forecasting, cultural criticism, and philosophical inquiry, delivered with warmth, humor, and genuine enthusiasm for understanding how the world works.
Follow the Rabbit is hosted by Igor Schwarzmann & Johannes Kleske
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