A live issue
Choose questions and tools for a recurring barrier, a difficult conversation, a team pattern, or an intervention you need to design. Download a note of your decisions and next step.
antlerboy
Benjamin P Taylor
systems | cybernetics | complexity
public | service | transformation
I help people work through complex issues: seeing what is really happening, making useful distinctions, and finding practical ways to act and learn.
This photograph has opinions.
Practical routes
Start with your situation
Develop your practice
Bring a consulting, facilitation, or transformation problem to a small practitioner cohort, or choose supported modules.
Find a source
Search my writing and selected public resources. Results distinguish the writing archive, curated library entries, and the broader SysCoI link stream.
Work
Public services, transformation and systems practice
Most of my work sits where public service practice meets organisation, change, systems, cybernetics and complexity.
RedQuadrant
Public service transformation consultancy, working with councils and other public bodies on difficult organisational and service challenges.
Public Service Transformation Academy
Learning, development and practical support to build public services' own capability to transform themselves.
SCiO
The professional body for systems practice. I am on the board and contribute to systems practice development and events.
Systems Community of Inquiry
I curate SysCoI: an open stream of systems | complexity | cybernetics material, events, papers, oddities and useful rabbit holes.
The Necessary Tangle
A living, evidence-backed atlas of systems, complexity and cybernetics: ideas, people, methods, lineages, practices and the different kinds of connection between them.
Latest news and social media
Three things worth a look
Selected for relevance, not simply whatever was posted last.
Chosen Path · 5 November 2026
Who are we trying to help, and how would they know we’d made their lives better?
Chrissie Gregory and Sharon Davidson describe moving from service thinking to system thinking, bringing staff and family experience into leadership decisions, and what effective coproduction asks leaders to give up.
Read itSysCoI · original essay · 7 October 2026
Myron’s maxims: participation, power, and the work of change
An examination of participation, direction, real work, and responsibility. What do useful maxims hide when they are treated as universal truths?
Read itChosen Path · 18 October 2026
Where are the systems in ‘systems leadership’?
Investigating and changing recurring patterns, including our own part in them. A combined essay on leadership development, public health, power, and the conditions that keep problems recurring.
Read itThinking and writing
Where the longer thoughts and public work live
Systems, public services, organisation, power, learning, operational practice and whatever else has got stuck in my head.
Public work library
Things I've put into the world
Talks, tools, papers, models, videos, reports and recordings, organised by theme and form. Browse the bodies of work or search across talks, publications, surveys, podcasts, videos and communities.
chosen path
My main blog and archive of essays, working notes and arguments.
Medium
Many older pieces are also available on Medium.
Transduction / Transformation
My LinkedIn newsletter on systems, transformation and public services.
Rabbit hole
Show me something unexpected
A random piece from the writing, systems archive, recordings, diagrams and workshop material.
AI experiment
Argue with a digital approximation of me
I've put an AI version of myself on Delphi. A bit of fun: try an argument on it, then tell me where it's useful, wrong, or unnecessarily pompous.
Groups and communities
Some places I own, support or recommend
Groups and communities I convene, support or recommend.
- Public servicesSupported by PSTA and RedQuadrant.
- Lean Six SigmaI co-own this group.
- Organisational developmentSupported by RedQuadrant.
- PwC employees and alumniUnofficial group.
- Community engagementSupported by RedQuadrant.
- Customer Transformation ClubSupported by RedQuadrant.
- Systems Thinking NetworkI own this on behalf of the collective.
- The ecology of systems thinkingFacebook group, owned collectively.
- Systems sciencesFacebook group.
- SCiO eventsSystems and Complexity in Organisation.
- Systems Community of InquiryOpen curation and discussion stream.
- model.report archiveThe static archive of the earlier repository.
- Worldwide systems-thinking events mapThe worldwide systems events map, continuing Nick Ananin’s work.
- All groups and communitiesThe full linked list.
Useful now
Direct routes
- Systemic consulting practice guideThe full guide, session account, resources, and practical downloads.
- Public work librarySearchable catalogue of talks, tools, papers, models and recordings.
- Podcasts and conversationsHosted shows, guest appearances and programme archives.
- Groups and communitiesNetworks, groups and events routes.
- RedQuadrant's local government reorganisation hubCurrent support and material on LGR and devolution.
- PSTA events and offersLearning, development and public service transformation activity.
- SCiO eventsSystems practice events and community activity.
- Systems | complexity | cybernetics readingThe live route and main published reading lists.
- Relational public servicesRelationships, outcomes and the organisational conditions relational practice requires.
- The Operational Excellence SocietyI am on its advisory board.
- Why @antlerboy?The origin story.
Meet the living field
Find systems events worldwide on The Necessary Tangle’s events map, and follow the discussion through the Systems Community of Inquiry.
Practice and connections
Ways into the work
The Tool Shed and Leading Transformation
Small practitioner cohorts, co-coaching, mentoring, and the 24-module Leading Transformation programme.
Breaking the Shell
A practical exercise for surfacing barriers, examining assumptions, and choosing action.
Greebling
Writing on greebling and a map of the connected public work.
Practice tools
Tools for working on a real situation
Four team dynamics
Segment, blend, empower, and harmonise. Diagnose a pattern, examine its relationships, and design an intervention you can test.
The arms-lengthiness tool
Compare delivery arrangements across 21 dimensions. Examine relative fit, mismatches, and the conditions a model would need to work.