Episode Details

Yevgen Nebesov on The Architecture of Power

In this episode of the Leanpub Podcast, Len Epp speaks with Yevgen Nebesov, an independent systems architect and consultant based in Brussels, about his Leanpub book The Architecture of Power: See What Shapes Outcomes. Find Where You Can Act.

Background and career

Yevgen grew up in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and moved to Germany at eighteen, where he studied mathematics and informatics in Hannover. He progressed from software engineer to lead architect and technical project lead over fifteen years, working across regulated environments such as medical devices and defence as well as transport, retail, and logistics. He describes the systems architect role as a “glue” position that bridges business stakeholders, developers, and delivery teams.

The AI question and human agency

The conversation turns to AI as a driver behind the book. Yevgen argues that as intelligence becomes a commodity through large language models, and physical labour is increasingly handled by robots, what remains distinctively human is agency—the ability to act on people and arrangements rather than on software or hardware. Trust, he suggests, is the carrier through which human agency propagates change in ways an algorithm cannot replicate.

The Power Loop

The central model of the book is the Power Loop, which describes power as a flow across six domains: beliefs, institutions (rules, roles, and rituals), agendas, decisions, events, and narratives. Yevgen explains that decisions are far less important than most people assume—by the time an issue reaches a decision, it has already been filtered and framed at the agenda stage, which is itself shaped by institutions grounded in belief. Narratives select events and connect them into stories that either shift beliefs or move items onto agendas, completing the loop and reproducing outcomes.

Power mapping and the Power Canvas

To move from theory to practice, Yevgen introduces the Power Canvas, a static snapshot of the Power Loop applied to a specific situation. By working through each domain and its substructures, a practitioner can map which relationships are sustaining an unwanted outcome and identify where intervention is possible—even without full control of the system.

Narrative tactics and five types of belief

Part II of the book develops intervention tactics. Yevgen outlines five narrative jobs—name, explain, assign, project, and anchor—each designed to operate on a corresponding type of belief: ontological, epistemic, social-order, teleological, and identity beliefs. He illustrates the mechanics with an example from his own practice: logging system failures as a body of evidence, then constructing a narrative that links those events to a prior architectural decision in order to reverse it.

Writing process

Yevgen describes a writing approach inspired by the model-view-controller pattern from software engineering. He maintains a core conceptual model and generates multiple views from it—the book, his website, LinkedIn posts, and articles—rather than writing linearly. This separation of model from representation allows him to make incremental progress in ten-minute windows, fitting the project around full-time consulting work, three non-profit organisations, and three children.

This interview was recorded on [interview-date].

The full audio for the interview is here: https://s3.amazonaws.com/leanpub_podcasts/leanpub-podcast-template-1.00.mp3. The Leanpub Podcast is available on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/leanpub, in Apple Podcasts here https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/Leanpub/id517117137, and almost everywhere else people listen to podcasts.

About the Book

A proposal wins approval, yet nothing changes in practice. A recurring problem survives new leaders, policies, and priorities. What keeps producing the same outcome, and where can you act when you cannot command the whole system?

The Architecture of Power is written for professionals who carry responsibility without decisive formal authority: architects, engineers, product and project leaders, internal change agents, and others working across organizational boundaries. It helps you examine why an important change remains stuck and identify intervention points accessible from the position you actually hold.

The book’s central idea is that power has an architecture. People, beliefs, institutions, objects, and material resources form arrangements that make some actions possible, others costly, and certain outcomes durable. Understanding those relationships helps you investigate what would have to change for a different outcome to become possible.

Part I: Understand what keeps the outcome in place.
Part I introduces the Power Loop, which explains how power arrangements reproduce outcomes, and the Power Canvas, a practical tool for examining a specific situation. You learn to map an arrangement, trace a recurring problem, and examine conflicting interpretations. These methods help you develop a diagnosis: which relationships appear to sustain the outcome, what remains uncertain, and where further investigation or intervention may be useful.

Part II: Work from diagnosis toward intervention.
Part II develops that diagnosis into possible moves. It presents dozens of tactics for reshaping power arrangements, accounting for the access, resources, constraints, and exposure associated with different positions.

Current edition
This edition contains Part I, which is complete. Part II is 50% written, with release currently planned for October or November 2026. Your purchase includes all future updates at no additional cost.

About the Author

Yevgen Nebesov is an independent systems architect, consultant, and speaker with more than ten years of experience across transport, logistics, and medical technology. His work focuses on sociotechnical complexity: how technical decisions, organizational structures, and human behavior shape one another.

He created The Architecture of Power to help people understand why outcomes persist and where they can intervene. Through writing, workshops, and talks, he helps leaders, experts, consultants, and change practitioners create change from the position they actually hold, with or without formal authority.

Follow the author here!

Leanpub Book LAUNCH 🚀 The Architecture of Power: See what shapes outcomes. Find where you can act. by Yevgen Nebesov

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