Frequently Asked Questions

No. And thank you for noticing.

We call ourselves theachers — and yes, we also teach. But we don’t just teach.

Everyone is teaching. Since childhood, we’ve been taught — facts, formulas, frameworks. Teaching is essential when our brains are still developing. It helps pass down humanity’s hard-earned knowledge.

But if teaching fills minds, theaching opens them.

• Teaching gives answers. Theaching builds understanding — so you can find your own.
• Teaching transmits knowledge. Theaching questions it.
• Teaching helps you think. Theaching helps you think about thinking.

The world is changing fast. What was once knowledge becomes nonsense in a new context. Because knowledge is system-specific, but understanding is system-adaptive.

That’s why at SystemsWay, we say we don’t just build thinkers. We build theachers. We’ve done the thinking about thinking — to expose where our inherited ways of thinking work, and where they trap us. Especially in human systems — where most suffering hides in plain sight.

If you’re unsure what the difference is between knowledge and understanding, check out our course: Systems of Knowledge.

And next time you spot “theacher,” ask yourself:

Are you still learning what to think, or are you finally learning how?

Next time you see that word, think about yourself. Do you want to be taught or theached? The difference is massive — and it will only grow as the world becomes more complex, where you must find your own answers using understanding while AI holds humanity’s knowledge but not its understanding.

These words throw many people off — you’re not alone. No wonder people who attend our courses call it a “paradigm shift.” It’s not what the rest of society will teach you.

Start with our foundational course on Systems of Knowledge and the core workshop. They build mental models for seeing structure, feedback, and delay in real work. Join a cohort, practice on your own systems, and iterate.

Systems change addresses root causes rather than symptoms. Culture follows structure.

When we redesign the system — roles, flows of work, feedback loops, constraints, incentives — the culture adapts to those new conditions. Focusing on culture first often yields rhetoric without reinforcement. Focusing on systems first creates conditions where the desired culture can emerge and sustain.

Because linear thinking hides feedback, delays, and unintended consequences. Systems Thinking helps you see patterns of interaction, not just events — enabling better decisions in complex environments where cause and effect are far apart in time and space.

Short answer: yes — with a disclosure.

Our workshops are not about technical architecture. They’re about the social systems technologists work inside: teams, departments, incentives, constraints, feedback, coordination. Many technologists arrive expecting tooling or architecture. They leave talking about how their org design, handoffs, and measures shape product quality, productivity, and engineering effectiveness.

We use tech-relevant examples (GitHub workflows, Log4j, software delivery), but the aim is to help you design techno–social systems — not just code. If you’re willing to examine how your ways of thinking create recurring problems, you’ll find the course transformative.

Manish Jain is an Applied Organizational Theorist and founder of SystemsWay.

His journey began with a simple yet profound question: Why do people suffer in systems they themselves have created? The inquiry extended to why employees complain about workplace systems they helped develop, and why citizens are dissatisfied with their country’s systems. Despite having the power to fix these systems, people often experience issues like poor quality, low productivity, and failed projects — almost as if sabotaged by outsiders.

Manish realized the root lies in a fundamental misunderstanding of how systems work. People instinctively create systems but often fail to understand their dynamics. He established SystemsWay to help people learn how to design, operate, and manage the systems they are a part of.

Read more in his story and courses.