The System Sensorium for project leaders

Introduction

Project leaders today are navigating environments that no longer behave as planned systems. Authority is dispersed across networks. Accountability is shared, contested, and often retrospective. Decisions are made under conditions of ambiguity, ethical pluralism, and accelerating technological change. In this context, traditional models of prediction, control, and standardisation no longer fail occasionally. They fail structurally.

System Sensorium: Discretion, Design, and Distributed Governance begins from this reality. Rather than offering another methodology or maturity model, the book addresses a more fundamental problem. Before leaders can make better decisions, systems must become better at noticing what matters.

The System Sensorium names a system’s capacity to perceive itself, its impacts, and its obligations in real -time. It frames governance not as command and control, but as the stewardship of attention. For project leaders working in public, non-profit, and hybrid environments, this shift is not theoretical. It is practical, ethical, and unavoidable.

Discretion as a Capability, Not a Liability

At the heart of the book is a reframing of discretion. In many project environments, discretion is treated as risk. It is something to be minimised through policy, escalation, or automation. The System Sensorium takes the opposite view.

Building on the LaFrance Target Model of Discretion, originally developed in law enforcement contexts, discretion is redefined as a core human capability. It is the ability to perceive, interpret, and respond responsibly when rules, plans, or metrics are insufficient (LaFrance, 2025). In complex systems, discretion is not a deviation from governance. It is governance in action.

This reframing has significant implications for project leadership. It shifts attention away from compliance toward judgment, away from individual blame toward system design, and away from retrospective control toward ethical sense making in the present.

Seeing Systems, Not Just Deliverables

The System Sensorium is grounded in systems thinking, but it does not stop at abstraction. It integrates human centred design, Agile and Lean thinking, evidence-based management, and sustainability frameworks into a coherent approach to perception and action. Systems thinking provides the language of interdependence and flow. Human centred design and UX practices inform how stakeholders experience decisions before outcomes are measured. Agile and Lean reinforce iterative learning and value -focused delivery rather than adherence to plan (Project Management Institute, 2021).

The book is also informed by scholarship on governance complexity and moral reasoning. Donald Kettl’s work on public sector governance highlights the structural challenges of accountability in networked systems (Kettl, 2009). Jonathan Haidt’s research on moral intuition explains why ethical disagreement persists even among well intentioned actors (Haidt, 2012). Giles Paquet’s emphasis on governance through social learning underscores why adaptation depends on shared understanding rather than centralised authority (Paquet, 2000).

Together, these perspectives support a central claim. Projects fail less often because teams lack tools, and more often because systems fail to perceive ethical, social, and long term consequences early enough to matter.

From Framework to Practice

The book is deliberately structured to move from perception to practice. Early chapters establish the conceptual foundations of the System Sensorium, linking discretion, systems thinking, and distributed governance. Rather than separating accountability, authority, and ethics, these chapters show how they coevolve through attention and design.

Subsequent chapters focus on sensing, learning, and adaptation. Ethics and sustainability are treated not as add-ons, but as perceptual requirements. Sensory value stream mapping makes visible the tributaries of information, influence, and consequence that shape project outcomes long before deliverables are produced.

Later sections translate these ideas into roles, tools, and techniques relevant to contemporary project environments. Boundary spanners, system coaches, and governance facilitators are introduced as essential roles in distributed systems. Practices such as kata coaching, Jobs to Be Done, Evidence-Based Management, and Lean flow are reframed as ways of sharpening perception rather than enforcing process. Artificial intelligence is examined not as a replacement for judgment, but as an amplifier of whatever the system already notices, or fails to notice.

The final sections of the book consolidate these ideas into practical resources. Glossaries, reflection prompts, decision scenarios, value stream maps, and integrated toolkits are provided to support real- world application. The intent is not to standardise behaviour, but to support better judgment across diverse contexts.

Governance, Sustainability, and Ethical Responsibility

One of the book’s distinguishing features is its integration of sustainability and ethics into everyday project governance. Drawing on Green Project Management’s P5 and PRiSM frameworks, the System Sensorium expands definitions of success beyond cost, schedule, and scope to include social and environmental impact (Carboni, 2013). Sustainability is framed not as compliance, but as responsibility across time.

Haidt’s moral foundations theory reinforces the argument that ethical disagreement is not a failure of reasoning, but a difference in moral perception (Haidt, 2012). The System Sensorium therefore emphasizes pluralism. It encourages leaders to design decision environments that allow diverse moral signals to surface before decisions are locked in, rather than attempting to resolve ethical conflict after harm has occurred.

Technology Without Abdication

As data-driven decision making and AI become more prominent in project environments, the book offers a clear stance. Technology can support perception, but it cannot replace responsibility. AI systems embed assumptions about value, risk, and legitimacy whether designers intend them to or not (IBM, 2023). Without a healthy sensorium, automation accelerates error rather than insight.

The System Sensorium provides project leaders with a way to integrate technology without abdicating judgment. It asks not only what systems optimize for, but what they make visible and invisible in the process.

Conclusion

System Sensorium is written for project leaders who sense that existing models no longer match the environments they are responsible for navigating. It is for those working in public, non-profit, and hybrid contexts where authority is shared, consequences are unevenly distributed, and ethical clarity is rarely given in advance.

Rather than offering another framework to implement, the book offers a way of seeing. It invites leaders to treat governance as an ongoing practice of perception, discretion, and care for consequence. In doing so, it provides not certainty, but something more durable. The capacity to notice what matters, in time to act responsibly.

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