New directions from Byline to RethinkX to the System Shift Lab

It’s 2024. While I haven’t used this space to post much in the way of updates that’s because I’m doing more than I’ve ever done before. I try to use this blog to highlight key milestones in my work - but things have moved at such intensity, I’ve barely had a moment to pause to do that. So I’m grateful that in early 2024, I’m finding myself with a bit of space to fill in those gaps.

I spent about 2-3 years ramping up investigative journalism as a senior correspondent for Byline Times, starting my focus in 2020 on the global pandemic, and then moving deeper into British politics. But increasingly I felt disillusioned about the impact of my work as a journalist.

So when I was headhunted to join RethinkX, a technology forecasting think-tank based in London and San Francisco, I jumped at the opportunity. I spent those years juggling complex investigations with my think-tank work on systems science, creative comms, and policy/media outreach. The end result was I finally made the jump into focusing full-time on systems change work.

The last few years has certainly been a huge series of learning curves. As a full-time reporter at Byline, I found myself breaking viral stories nearly every week. Life felt like a series of endless scandals. It still does, the difference being that when you’re reporting it from the coalface, you’re right there inhaling those toxic fumes.

The ‘light’ during such times often comes with glimpses of recognition. The New Yorker’s Jane Meyer, for instance - the world renowned American investigative journalist who has exposed Koch ‘dark money’ - retweeted my exclusive story revealing how Koch money funded the ‘Great Barrington Declaration’, the libertarian pseudoscientific conspiracy project demanding that the Covid19 virus be allowed to ‘let rip’ through society. I’m proud to say she’s not the first heavy-hitter to offer this kind of recognition.

I’ve had my reporting amplified on Twitter over the years by a number of celebrities, including for instance the Marvel actors Mark Ruffalo and Don Cheadle, Hollywood actor Elliot Page, Queen guitarist turned quantum physicist Brian May, British broadcaster Carol Vorderman, among others.

But looking back, I began to wonder. So bloody what? As the pandemic began to wane, I started to ask myself whether this was what I really wanted to do. I began to realise that I needed to do more than simply ‘call out’ power - I wanted to find ways to transform it.

During the two years I spent at RethinkX, I found I was privileged to experience what was effectively a hands-on ‘crash course’ in the intersection between technology disruptions and societal change, an area I had some familiarity with, but ultimately was a major blindspot for most of my career. My time at RethinkX - and I certainly don’t think the theories, frameworks and data there is perfect - helped provide the dot-joining I needed to help complete my two decades of research on earth and human systems.

Leaving RethinkX gave me the chance to throw myself into a year of real-world practice. While I’ve done a lot of consulting over the years for a wide range of organisations, companies and non-profits, this year was by the far the most productive in terms of the opportunities to focus on systems change work.

I had set up the System Shift Lab during the pandemic, desperate to create something that could respond positively to the escalating crises we were experiencing. This has now metamorphosed into my principal consulting vehicle. Through it, I’ve been able to train over a hundred grassroots leaders across Africa in systems thinking; I’ve contributed to the Club of Rome’s annual flagship 2022 report launched at the UN; I trained over a hundred civil servants, NGOs, and academics in Bangladesh on a systems approach to navigating the ‘global phase shift’; and perhaps most exciting of all, I’ve advised the governments of the Gambia, Malaysia, Nigeria, the UAE and beyond on as a delegate to the UN COP28 climate summit.

In that capacity, I got the chance toward the end of 2023 - courtesy of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) - to present the core ingredients of my global phase shift framework to a heads of state plenary at the UN COP28 summit in Dubai. This was undoubtedly the biggest platform I’ve spoken at in my career.

Last year I also took the step of setting up a newsletter platform, Age of Transformation (AoT), as my main new hub for writing, analysis, multimedia etc on systems thinking for the global phase-shift. AoT has now been operating for nearly a year. Set up in February 2023, I’ve put out about 24 posts since launch, many of them deep dives and long reads, and grew the subscriber base from 0 to just under 3,000 people.

So what’s next for AoT? I still see myself laying the groundwork over the next year - going deeper into the systems science that backs up the idea of a ‘global phase shift’, while continuing to closely monitor global trends to keep readers informed on how this global systems lens can powerfully not only make sense of what’s happening, but help underpin far better decision-making.

I’m also planning two other big projects: I’m working on a scientific paper to flesh out and bring together my global phase shift framework on a new academic footing that integrates my work encompassing earth system and human system crises, with opportunities for transformation, societal change and technology; I’m also now working on a major new book which will synthesise everything I’ve learnt about systems in one place that will make sense of everything.

I’m also now thinking about building on AoT to create new and more digestible learning materials and processes to disseminate whole systems awareness more widely, and indeed, systematically!

In the meantime, to keep this blog space alive over the next few days, I’ll post a few more updates with key highlights over the last few years that I’m particularly proud of. From contributing original RethinkX research published in Japanese by the Institute for Sustainable Energy Policies, to working as a Commissioner on the Club of Rome’s Transformational Economics Commission, I’m honoured to have been able to work with some of the most exciting networks and organisations on the planet, and despite the gravity of the challenges we face, I feel privileged to be able to focus my efforts on doing something about them.

Thank you for coming along and reading this post, and if you appreciate my work, do jump along to AoT and sign up to get free newsletter updates, and check out my stuff on my various social media accounts.