Scott Shirbin

Present | Future | Contact

Scotty

I bring people, ideas and systems together to create change.

I design for institutions, networks and movements that need to evolve - not just survive.

This website is ‘me’; or how I am figuring out who I am… kind of dense… kind of crazy… a WIP.

Read my thoughts on governance & change

Have a look at my CV (an overview)

Read my portfolio

The ‘simple’ what I do…

I help organisations navigate change, tell better stories, and make things happen. My work sits at the intersection of research, strategy, and design, turning complex challenges into clear, actionable pathways.

Sensemaking & Research – Finding patterns in complexity through deep listening, systems thinking, and futures exploration.

Strategy & Storytelling – Bringing clarity to change with narratives that align people and ideas.

Designing for Change – Creating governance models, decision-making frameworks, and structures that help teams work better.

Measuring Impact – Connecting vision to outcomes, ensuring change is practical and sustainable.

Making It Real – Moving ideas from concept to implementation through collaboration, experimentation, and iteration.

I work across public, social, and private sectors, helping teams design for the future, adapt to change, and build lasting impact.

I’ve worked across governance, organisational change, sustainability, and civic innovation, helping build structures that enable resilience. I love connecting ideas, designing new models, and making complexity clear.

But I also know that being a generalist in a world of specialists is both a strength and a challenge. The work I do spans disciplines; sometimes it’s strategy, sometimes it’s project management, sometimes it’s governance, sometimes it’s service design.

But at a point where I want to commit deeper to the things that matter most:

🌍 Humanitarian work & planetary governance—how do we design for long-term resilience?

🤝 Building collectives & networks—how do we structure collaboration at scale?

🔮 Developing governance as a core practice—how do we make governance adaptive and trust-based?

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Trust-based governance & Institutional Redesign

Problems I Help Solve:

• Governance structures are slow, bureaucractive and not fit for complexity.

• We need to move from compliance-driven oversight to trust-based decision-making

• Our institution struggles to balance accountability with innovation

Where I have practiced this:

• Governance Transformation for UKGD → Replaced bureaucratic oversight with a trust-based governance model, cutting decision-making delays by 30%.

• Cross-Sector Governance Frameworks for Climate & Social Impact → Designed governance structures that shifted power beyond institutions and into communities.

• Governance & Assurance Workgroup (UK Government Department) → Moved governance from compliance-based reviews to a capability-building model, embedding long-term strategic thinking.

How do we design governance that is fluid, adaptive, and embedded in relationships rather than rules?

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Organisation Design &

Adaptive Systems

Problems I Help Solve:

• Our teams and departments don’t work well together - we need a new operating model

• We’re scaling but struggling to maintain collaboration across teams

• Our organisation resists change, and we need to design a new or adapt structures that enable transformation

Where I have practiced this:

• UK Charity Digital, Data & Tech Transformation → Designed a target operating model, improving decision-making speed by 40%.

• Housing & Homelessness Service Redesign → Mapped systemic barriers, co-designed new pathways, and improved access and efficiency.

• Local Government Leadership & Decision-Making → Worked with councils to move beyond rigid hierarchies to more adaptive models of leadership and decision-making.

How do we structure institutions to be more human, more flexible, and more future-ready?

(I do love all seasons

of Housewives)

Collective Intelligence & Systemic Collaboration

Problems I Help Solve:

• We need to connect organisations, teams, and people working on similar challenges.

• We want to embed knowledge-sharing into how we work but don’t know how.

• We’re trying to break down silos, but struggle to shift mindsets and behaviours.

Where I have practiced this:

• Cross-Sector Systems Labs → Designed and facilitated collaborative spaces for government, civil society, and industry to rethink policy, governance, and service delivery.

• UK National Leadership Programme → Created a peer-learning network across councils, embedding community-led decision-making into governance.

• Learning Networks for Climate & Social Policy → Shifted institutions from siloed problem-solving to collaborative, distributed sensemaking

Speculative Strategy & Future Infrastructures

Problems I Help Solve:

💭 We need to design governance for uncertainty and rapid change.

💭Our organisation struggles to anticipate long-term risks and adapt accordingly.

💭We want to experiment with new decision-making models before fully committing to them.

Where I have practiced this:

• Policy Prototypes & Governance Experiments → Worked with institutions to test alternative decision-making models before embedding them in real-world systems.

• Systems Research on Governance, Sustainability & Digital Transformation → Helped institutions anticipate shifts and respond with structural agility.

• Future Governance Models for a Post-Industrial, Networked World → Explored new governance architectures for global, distributed institutions.

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Governance, strategy, and systems thinking are not just technical fields. They are deeply cultural and creative.

How I integrate this into my work:

🌀 Storytelling & Communication – Making governance and systems understandable, compelling, and engaging.

🎭 Art & Design Thinking – Seeing institutions as living cultures, not just structures.

🎨 Creativity as a Tool for Systemic Change – Embedding co-creation, imagination, and speculative design into governance and organisational strategy.

🚴 Co-founder of Queers on Wheels – Building an LGBTQ+ cycling community that’s about joy, movement, and belonging.

📸 Visual storytelling & creative side projects – Doodling, illustrating, and capturing the world through photos / videos / animation.

🌍 Writing & thinking about governance, systems, and sustainability – Read my Substack →

🏄‍♂️ Adventuring – Long bike rides, bad surfing, getting lost in new cities.

“Governance is at the heart of everything—how we decide, how we collaborate, how we build the future.”

👀 Right now, I’m looking for:

✔ Projects, collaborations, and conversations in governance, humanitarian work, and systemic change.

✔ Research opportunities & fellowships (Maybe even a Masters)

✔ People thinking deeply about resilience, power, and collective intelligence.

✔ Organisations ready to experiment, design, and build better structures.

Sexy links:

→ Read my portfolio

→ Read my cv

→ Read my thoughts

→ Let’s talk