Yevgen Nebesov on The Architecture of PowerIn this episode of the Leanpub Podcast, Len Epp speaks with Yevgen Nebesov, an independent systems architect and consultant based in Bruchsal, about his Leanpub book The Architecture of Power: See What Shapes Outcomes. Find Where You Can Act.Background and careerYevgen 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 agencyThe 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 LoopThe 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 CanvasTo 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 beliefPart 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 processYevgen 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 September 4, 2026.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.