exercise · all tools
Iceberg Model
The systems-thinking staple: start from a visible event and dig down through the layers beneath it — patterns and trends, systemic structures, and the mental models and paradigms that hold the structures in place — then climb back up asking where leverage lives. Works solo on paper in fifteen minutes or as a group wall exercise.
- The mental-models layer turns reflective — in groups, examine 'our' assumptions as shared culture, not individuals' failings
Practical
- Time
- 15-45 min
- Group
- 1–∞ · individual, small-group, large-group
- Settings
- self-guided, in-person, online
- Materials
- Iceberg template; sticky notes for group use
- Mechanisms
- systems-sensing, cognitive-reframing
- Change scope
- state → skill · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- u-school.org/icebergdiagnostic — u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- CC BY (Presencing Institute)
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Systems-dynamics tradition (popularized via Donella Meadows, Peter Senge and successors) — Systems thinking; CLARITY's version adds Inayatullah's causal layered analysis
In this directory via Step Up! A Pocket Guide to Social Change for Young Leaders · CLARITY Toolbox and Teacher's Guide · u-school for Transformation — Theory U tools
The directory's current cross-pollination champion: independently carried by UNFPA's youth guide (Systems Awareness, p. 94), CLARITY's climate toolbox (Exploring the iceberg, 3.4.1), u-school's diagnostic, and echoed in Compassionate Systems practice — one tool, four worlds.
status: checked · added 2026-08-25