After seven weeks of exploring systems thinking through the lens of leadership, culture, and transformation, the 2025 Cosmic Conference comes full circle with a powerful closing conversation.

Professor José Santos, Affiliated Professor of Practice in Global Management at INSEAD, joins Marilyn Zakhour to challenge and deepen the conference’s central idea: Is the system really the strategy?

Together, they explore how leaders can move from managing parts to understanding the whole and why seeing organizations as living, interconnected systems may be the most strategic mindset of all.

They discuss:
🔹 Why most leaders struggle to see systems and how to learn to see them
🔹 The difference between simple, complicated, and complex systems
🔹 How emergence and interaction shape performance over time
🔹 Why resilience comes from managing relationships, not parts
🔹 How imagination, observation, and time help leaders design better systems

This closing session is a reflection on the essence of systems thinking, a bridge between theory and practice, between how we lead and how we live.

Culture isn’t the soft stuff, it’s the system that makes everything else work.

In this lively conversation, Marilyn Zakhour and Tala Ode from Cosmic Centaurs unpack how culture shows up not in slogans or posters, but in the invisible systems that shape how organizations operate: how decisions are made, how meetings run, how feedback flows, and how people feel when they show up to work.

Using the Omnichannel Organization™ framework, they explore how leaders can design culture through structure, process, people, and controls, so that it’s not an HR initiative, but a way of working that delivers results.

Together, they discuss:
🔹 Why culture isn’t a “project” but the operating system of an organization
🔹 How strategy and culture reinforce (or destroy) each other
🔹 The signals your org structure and workspace send about your values
🔹 How to measure and reward cultural behaviors, not just performance
🔹 What startups and fast-growing companies must know about scaling culture

This episode redefines culture as something built, measured, and lived. A system that connects purpose to practice.

Time is the one system every leader struggles to manage — and the one that reveals how well all the others work.

In this energizing conversation, Diren Bhatia, entrepreneur, coach, and founder of Cloudscape Technologies, joins Tala Ode to explore how leaders and founders can redesign their relationship with time. From his own journey of moving from a 14-hour-day founder to a “part-time CEO,” Diren shares how systems, rituals, and mindset shifts can help leaders free themselves from firefighting and refocus on what really matters.

Together, they explore:
🔹 Why working harder isn’t the answer — designing smarter systems is
🔹 How to move from founder to CEO and build teams that thrive without you
🔹 The art (and unlearning) of delegation and trust
🔹 Simple rituals and rhythms that reclaim focus, energy, and white space
🔹 Why every effective system must be agile, imperfect, and human

This conversation is a powerful reminder that time freedom isn’t about doing less — it’s about doing what matters most, by design.