“Viable System Model” expert Mark Lambertz joins us on today’s podcast to help us unfold organizing in complex ecosystems. 

Mark, a long-time Agile practitioner and a renowned expert on the Viable System Model has a deep understanding and a curious mindset toward all things organizing. We met Mark as an Organizational Coach at Bosch, where he’s driving the adoption of key concepts of the VSM. From his extensive experience, Mark has helped us understand how to use the VSM lens to build autonomous and self-sustaining organizational systems. 

He takes us through the model’s components and practical applications and compares it with other organizational frameworks that we use widely, more specifically, Boundaryless’ Rendanheyi-inspired implementation of the Platform Organization with the 3EO Framework. 

The conversation - where we discover a lot of resonance between the two perspectives - is filled with valuable insights from the ground and helps you move towards a more inclusive model that balances operational efficiency with strategic adaptability.

Tune in, and don’t miss out. 

As one of the first attempts to use cybernetics in organizational management, the Viable System Model was conceived by Stafford Beer in his book - “The Brain of the Firm” in the 70s.

Mark connects the dots in this podcast and explains why cybernetics is important for building adaptive organizations. The podcast highlights the importance of viewing organizations as adaptive, complex ecosystems emphasizing decentralization, coordination, and collective and emergent strategic planning. 

He takes us through the depths of VSM, explaining how it starts with an outside-in perspective, focusing on the environment, and then further breaks down the 5 systems within VSM. 

In this conversation, you get practical insights into incorporating a VSM informed perspective in your organization, helping you stay dynamic and ever-evolving.

Key Highlights
👉 The Viable System Model (VSM) is crucial for understanding and designing organizations that sustain themselves through complex environments.
👉 VSM emphasizes starting with an outside-in perspective, focusing on the environment, customers, and markets first.
👉 VSM incorporates a form of hierarchy based on responsibility and inclusiveness, aiming to preserve the whole while allowing for local interests and self-organization.
👉 VSM includes five key systems to ensure organizational adaptability: operational units, value production, tactical management, future planning, and organizational identity. 
👉 VSM has a fractal nature meaning each operational unit contains its systems, mirroring the larger organizational structure. 
👉 The Rendanheyi/3EO model complements VSM by emphasizing decentralized decision-making and enabling constraints.
👉 The future of organizational design is evolving, with an increasing emphasis on creativity, optionality, and diversity. 


Topics /chapters
(00:00) Decoding Viable System Model - Intro
(01:27) Introducing Mark and VSM
(13:12) Hierarchies and Structures in VSM
(16:13) Fractal Structure of VSM
(22:12) Orchestrating the organization, market, and VSM
(27:20) Culminating learnings from VSM, Rendanheyi, and 3EO 
(39:46) Using the VSM Framework  
(44:09) Coming of Age of Organizational Design and Development
(47:45) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions 

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/mark-lambertz

Episode recorded on May 10, 2024

Get in touch with Boundaryless:

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_
Website: https://boundaryless.io/contacts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo


Music
Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music

The Boundaryless Conversation Podcast: Season 5

#102 - Decoding the Viable System Model with Mark Lambertz

Renowned author and complexity thinker Jennifer Garvey Berger, co-founder of Cultivating Leadership, joins us in this episode to explore how organisations can evolve by unlocking the mental traps that limit adaptive capacity.
She helps us reframe leadership as a practice that fosters engagement and thriving amid uncertainty, and guides us through why individual development is essential to creating truly functional and effective collectives.
She highlights gaps in organisations that often overlook the importance of actively attending to a team’s health, which harms the relationships and connections that hold systems together.
She shares a future-focused insight, stating that “organisations are not merely serving markets, but constantly co-creating them,” redefining the deep implications for how organisations define their purpose, value, and long-term responsibility.
This episode offers a powerful and timely reflection that embraces a more ecological and co-creative approach to organizing. Tune in.

Jennifer, widely known for her books “Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps” and “Changing on the Job”, has guided organisations worldwide in revisiting their mindtraps and reshaping traditional leadership.
In this episode, she continues to challenge conventional views of customer-centricity and urges organisations to recognise their role in shaping society and ecosystems, advocating for a purpose that is deeply embedded rather than merely performative.
On a timely note, she reflects on generational shifts in how people relate to work and meaning, alongside the rise of values-led business models that call for designing with longer horizons in mind.
She helps us stay present, emphasising it as essential for preparing for the future, and guides us in visualising and designing what it means to be a complexity-informed leader.

Key Highlights
👉 Value in complex systems is co-created and fluid - organisations must shift from simply "serving customer needs" to becoming conscious shapers of society.
👉 Younger generations are increasingly unwilling to invest their life force into organisations that prioritise profit over planetary purpose and human well-being.
👉 Leadership requires working with, not eliminating, conflict.
👉 Escaping cognitive mindtraps (like certainty, control, or simple stories) is essential for leaders navigating complexity and change.
👉 In complexity, defining and enacting value is a collective, recursive process - it’s shaped by individuals, teams, and ecosystems in continuous dialogue.
👉 Purpose in complexity-friendly organisations must be lived and systemic, not just performative; it's about genuine social contracts and ecosystem stewardship.
👉 True systemic change begins with slowing down, listening differently, and allowing space for emergence.

Topics /chapters
(00:00) 00:00 Leadership in Complexity: Purpose, Failure & Conflict - intro
(01:55) Introducing Jennifer Garvey Berger
(03:45) The Polarities in Leadership
(06:48) A new mindset at the Leadership Level
(08:54) Personal Pattern and Complex Ecosystems
(13:03) Operationalising individual and collective patterns
(16:49) The boundaries of leadership in an organization
(19:05) The “How” and the “What” to Addressing Complexity
(25:21) Organizational Readiness for Handling Complexity
(28:08) Are Purpose-Driven Markets the Future?
(42:37) Breadcrumbs and Suggestions

Remember that you can always find transcripts and key highlights of the episode on our website: https://www.boundaryless.io/podcast/garvey-jennifer 

Episode recorded on Jun 03, 2025

Find out more about the show and the research at Boundaryless at https://boundaryless.io/resources/podcast

Get in touch with Boundaryless:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/boundaryless_
Website: https://boundaryless.io/contacts
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/boundaryless-pdt-3eo

Music
Music from Liosound / Walter Mobilio. Find his portfolio here: https://blss.io/Podcast-Music

#123 - Leadership in Complexity: Purpose, Failure & Conflict with Jennifer Garvey Berger

Boundaryless helps global customers with Business Strategy and Organization Design for the age of Ecosystems.
We do it by creating openly accessible frameworks and by supporting a community of organizations, institutions, and individuals through workshops, training, and consulting services. 

In this space we host all our audio recordings, including the Boundaryless Conversations podcast, a show focused on exploring the future of large scale organising by leveraging on technology, network effects and shaping narratives. We explore how platforms can help us play with a world in turmoil, change, and transformation: a world that is at the same time more interconnected and interdependent than ever but also more conflictual and rivalrous. 

We used to be online at platformdesigntoolkit.com... now find us on our new website: www.boundaryless.io!

Email: hello@boundaryless.io

New tracks tagged #AdaptiveOrganizations