Governance encompasses the totality of mechanisms and instruments available for influencing social change in certain directions. While governance is a much broader idea than management or administration, it is not some abstract label but an action that has to be carried out.

Governance is the context in which adaptive planning, designing, regulating and then managing sits.

Governance that is ‘adaptive’ incorporates learning and change in response to uncertainty.

There are many good introductions to systems thinking and how it can be used.

Unfortunately too few people know what it is and how to use it. Most rarely make it to first base because they are trapped in a dominant linear, causal mode of thinking typified by projects, prescriptions, objectives, deliverables and blueprints.

Better governance requires a more skilled use of systems thinking.