We live inside our thinking. Every choice, every system, every outcome we inherit from from thought.

Not just our conscious aware thoughts and understanding but deeper… by our own, psycho-dynamics, and the collective, socio-dynamics.

MetaCognition, the act of thinking about our thinking, and therefore how we are and act, sounds abstract. Yet it is the foundation of real growth, creativity, and leadership. It is the discipline of becoming aware of how our thought-patterns shape the worlds we inhabit.

When we notice the structure of thought itself, we open the possibility of thinking differently. The nature of curiosity and inquiry is critical to our future. It’s where change begins.

Part I Cognitive Bias: The Bind of Current Thinking

Our current thinking got us here. Every success, every failure, every condition we experience is the product of the paradigms we have inherited and the habits we have reinforced.

The world we inhabit is extraordinary in one sense. Cities, economies, cultures, and technologies are all artefacts of human thought made material. Someone held an idea, coordinated actions, gathered resources, and enrolled others until the idea became a reality. Human history is the long story of thought manifesting into form.

But there is a shadow side. When thinking becomes habitual, so too do our responses. When facing simple problems, habits are efficient. When facing conditions of complexity, where causes and effects are entangled, emergent, and unpredictable, habitual thinking deepens the very patterns we are already caught in.

Watzlawick and colleagues showed that attempting to solve problems with the same patterns of thinking that created them leads only to being stuck in repetition (Watzlawick, Weakland & Fisch, Change).

Most individuals and organisations remain in these first-order loops. We optimise. We rearrange. We double-down on efficiency. But the deeper structures remain intact. The result is drift: a slow slide into futures we did not choose, as the unseen part of our assumptions produce their results too.

“System 1 thinking keeps us alive. But it also traps us in old ways of seeing.”

Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)

This is not simply an individual challenge. It is civilisational. The meta-crisis, the interwoven crises of climate, ecology, economy, governance, and meaning, is a direct expression of our current thinking. Complexity theory tells us that linear solutions applied to complex systems often create unintended consequences. Optimising inside the current paradigm only amplifies fragility. We call these “wicked problems” because what we do to change them only reinforces the pattern.

From a meta-integral perspective, the trap lies in the narrow horizons of worldview. When our sense-making lens is too small, we confuse symptoms for causes, we confuse activity for progress, and we miss the deeper structures shaping our futures.

The issue is clear: our existing thinking is perfectly designed to deliver the results we currently see. No more. No less.

Questioning Industry Assumptions
Most personal care companies assumed liquid shampoos and other products were non-negotiable. Brianne West asked: What if the whole industry is designed around water, plastic, and waste? Ethique launched as a solid bar company, plastic-free, water-free, waste-free, and scaled globally. This thinking lead them to offer moisturiser and other products that had never been in bar form. By interrogating the frame, not just the formula, West built a company that challenged the default and influenced the entire cosmetics sector.

Part II Reflection: The Discipline of MetaCognition

New futures require new thinking. Not just more effort, not just sharper execution, but a fundamentally different relationship to thinking itself. Anyone who is curious can learn how to do this.

MetaCognition is a discipline. It is the practice of reflecting on paradigms, habits, patterns, dynamics and what I call “defaults” (like default settings). It asks us to notice not only what we think, but how we think, what got us ‘here’, and to question whether the frames we use still serve the futures we intend.

Three structures to observe:

• Paradigms. Thomas Kuhn showed how paradigms govern what we can see and which questions we can even ask (Kuhn, 1962). In complexity, the paradigm determines which futures are even imaginable. Leaders must learn to notice the paradigm, not only the data inside it.
• Habits. Research shows that as much as 40% of human behaviour is habitual (Wood, Quinn & Kashy, 2002). These thought-habits run beneath awareness, shaping identity and reinforcing worldview. In leadership, these defaults or thought habits create strategic blind spots and perpetuate cultural patterns.
• Drift. Without deliberate realtionship and authorship, we drift. Organisations drift when culture forms without design or intention, strategy follows inertia, and performance is shaped by pushing for momentum rather than emerging from design. In complex systems, drift leads to lock-in… where old solutions perpetuate the very problems they sought to resolve.

“The bottom line of systems thinking is leverage. Seeing where actions and changes in structures can lead to significant, enduring improvements.”

Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline (1990)

The method is simple but profound: pause, notice, reflect, and ask whether the current frame still serves the future you intend to create.

Part III Deep Inquiry: The Practice for Leaders

Thinking about our thinking is not a one-off exercise. It is a methodical practice, a leadership discipline for navigating complexity and creating futures. Keith J. Cunningham refers to a deliberate and regular practice called “thinking time” where he encourages professional to sit and think. Novel I know

First-order and second-order thinking:

• First-order thinking asks: “How do we do this better?”
• Second-order thinking asks: “Should we be doing this at all? What is the purpose? Is there another way to realise this purpose? What assumptions are we standing on? ”

Watzlawick’s metaphor still applies: moving the furniture in a burning house (first-order) versus realising you need to leave the house entirely (second-order).

In the meta-crisis, where interlocking systems amplify each other, first-order thinking is insufficient. It accelerates collapse because it’s assumptions and blind spots are the issue. It often fails to address the deepe structure of the current situation. Only second-order reflection, rooted in MetaCognition, can generate pathways that are adaptive, resilient, and future-forming.

Three practices for leaders:

• Reflection Windows. Carve out structured pauses to examine your thought patterns. Which assumptions shape your strategy? Which possibilities are excluded by your current worldview?
• Question the Frame. In decision-making, introduce second-order questions. What if the problem is not the problem? What if the structure of thought itself is shaping the outcome?
• Surface Drift. Ask: Where are we moving by inertia rather than by design? Which outcomes are chosen, and which are the by-product of failing to choose?

Leaders who practise MetaCognition begin to lead not from reaction, but from authorship.

Turning Constraints into Innovation
James Watt and Martin Dickie launched BrewDog in a crowded UK beer market. The first-order path would have been competing on price and flavour tweaks. Instead, they asked: What if beer could be a platform for community and rebellion? Their “Equity for Punks” crowdfunding model turned customers into owners, rewriting how a craft brewery could grow. MetaCognition wasn’t just about product—it was about the mental model of funding itself.

The Invitation

Our thinking got us here. It will not get us there. It can’t. And new thinking is one of the largest issues of our time.

The work of leadership today is not simply to think harder, but to think differently; transformative. MetaCognition is the discipline of seeing the patterns of thought that shape our present. It is the courage to question paradigms, the boldness to resist drift, and the methodical practice of reflection. To stand outside and look back in on the deep structure that dominates the issue, industry, problem…

This is not merely about solving today’s problems. It is about generating tomorrow’s possibilities.

Leadership in the Meta-Crisis

In the meta-crisis, leadership is not about faster answers. It is about deeper questions.

Complex systems will not yield to linear fixes. Interwoven crises cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that produced them. Leaders must cultivate MetaCognition—thinking about their thinking—as a daily discipline. It is this shift from first-order reaction to second-order authorship that creates adaptive, resilient futures. The invitation is to see more deeply, to think more integrally, and to lead with the courage to change the frame itself.

Rethinking the Business Model
Patagonia began with outdoor gear. Then founder Yvon Chouinard asked a second-order question: What if the way we source food is part of the ecological problem we’re trying to solve? That question created Patagonia Provisions, a food division experimenting with regenerative agriculture. The shift wasn’t about optimising product lines. It was about challenging the underlying frame: what business are we really in?