Archive for category: Innovation

This Changes Everything (Kathy Taberner)

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We live in a complex global world where demands of leaders are increasing everyday. With a focus on transparency, inclusion, equality, agility, possibility and collaboration, how can leaders leverage themselves to live, work and play in a way that is respectful, sustainable, and most important, fun?

The answer is simple. Curious conversations. Hiding behind texts, emails and social media, conversational skills are the most important skills leaders are failing to engage in. Research out of Stanford is showing that 9 out of 10 conversations miss the mark. Research is also showing organizations are focused on ‘soft’ skills that have hard impacts: communication skills, critical thinking, agility – all of which require curiosity. These are skills that are expected of leaders but are never taught. Curious conversations are the disruptor needed to thrive in our global, multigenerational workplace.

In our interactive workshop, participants will experience how curious conversations are at the forefront of innovation and collaboration in a time where demands are high and resources are low. Participants will experience and learn: -The value of different perspectives, there is never just one way to do anything – Communication skills to shift leaders from reacting to intentionally responding – Self-awareness, clarity around how they are showing up as a leader, their impact and turning barriers into bridges – The skills needed to collaborate, innovate, problem solve & manage emotions. Skills that are currently expected of leaders but have never been taught Canada’s success lies in our leaders’ ability to confidently disrupt the status quo, step out of comfort zones while also being inclusive and collaborative, as they reflect rather than react.

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What’s worth tracking? (Scott Tate)

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Bio and psycho-metrics are Easier to track and record in this digital age, but what’s worth tracking and recording, and what analog activities matter to change them? This foundational workshop will introduce some digital tools and apps in mental and physical health and connect them with actual practices that will make an impact on health and performance at work and at home… instead of just hoping from app to app hoping to find better health along the way!

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Developing Change Management Sponsorship with Lego® Serious Play® (Rich Batchelor)

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Change Agents are constantly challenged by senior leadership to show the value of change management to deliver successful change initiatives. Before we can discuss the right approach, we need get them sponsoring the change and supporting the change management presence. This workshop will use Lego® Serious Play® as an approach to show the value of change sponsorship, change management and leadership by SHOWING its worth and understand how to develop a psychological contract to support change management activity for organizations and their leadership teams.

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Conversation Catalyst (Nathan Bragg)

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People often avoid talking about thorny issues together. This workshop provides an avenue into nonviolent discussion.

Treating a given space like a giant piece of graph paper, participants position themselves in specific places to silently declare their opinion of a concept. Individuals are then offered the opportunity to create a sculpture to help illuminate why they have chosen their position; this image is further defined in words by viewers outside the given sculpture. This is important because when viewers “read” a sculpture, they short-circuit any judgement which might arise from a Sculptor who would otherwise use spoken words. In addition, when those at the opposite pole help describe offered images in words it effectively humanizes all individuals who might otherwise appear to be in bitter opposition.

The participants will:

  • learn the power of making interactive non-verbal polls
  • practice creating images to illustrate a deep truth
  • be encouraged to practice deep, empathetic listening
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The Art of Human Interaction (Jouke Kruijer)

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Organizations have an inherent world of values, emotions, fears and desires. This most human, and often unconscious or hidden, world is an important part of organizational life. It is the bedrock of power and trust – these two vital forces that shape an organization’s culture, its people’s day to day behaviours, and thereby the outcomes it creates. Those leading transformational shifts in organizations need to be able to work with these forces. Traditional interventions addressing the why and what of transformation are important but not sufficient. To get to the heart of transformation, we need to address the heart – the human dimension. For this, we can draw on work in these three domains:

  1. Organisational Change interventions like Deep democracy, Agile and Scrum, Design Thinking, Storytelling, Pattern Recognition to release creativity and help designing meaningful change.
  2. Coaching, workshops and events engaging people not only at the intellectual level, but also at the level of feelings and emotions, using mindfulness, interactive exercises, rituals, art, and bodywork, to connect people to their humanity and to each other
  3. Design a change process allowing groups and individuals to challenge established ways of doing and being, explore and establish new ones, to better serve the purpose of the organization

To illustrate this, we will present a case study of the European Investment Bank. In this we show why and how different forms of art and artistic expression are incorporated in training, team development and away days. And we will also share the initial results of a project about the development of constructive work relations through art and artistic interventions. This project is sponsored by the Bank’s Personnel Directorate, and at the same time intentionally set up and empowered as a bottom up initiative. In this project staff from across the organization design a series of events to bring about connection and dialogue between people in the organization, thus creating small steps towards a shift in the organization’s culture . Finally, we will engage and inspire participants to co-create their own change design using scrum methods to leverage art to surface Power and Trust in transformative design.

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Curiosity & Disruptive Change (Nik Beeson)

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Real disruption is a deep wound to the integrity of organisational identity, so real disruption requires radical adaptation, structural transformation… a transformation in identity. The question that disruption is asking is not ‘what is the problem?’ or ‘how do I survive?’ or ‘how do I make it go away’, the question that disruption is asking is ‘Who are you?’. How you navigate that question determines the path of your evolution. Will you react or respond? Or will you deflect, dismiss, resist, deny or hide? Will you be willing to wrestle with it and, more importantly, with yourself? Will you seek to understand it and, more importantly, seek to understand yourself?

‘Curiosity & Disruptive Change’ focuses on curiosity as the strongest motivation and most useful aptitude for navigating and instigating disruptive change. We will explore what it means to be disrupted, how we react to disruption, what curiosity is, and how to cultivate a curiosity towards disruption that enables us to discern the possibilities and realise the potentials in any challenge. Myth, fairy tales, problem solving, perceptual challenges, crafts & play, current affairs… any or all are possible approaches we might take. Prepare for a little disruption… We’ll create situations which will instigate your curiosity, and we’ll analyze and reflect on our experiences and how they apply to your current situation.

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The Act of Creation – Working with Dilemmas in Organizations (Jacques Chlopczyk)

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Seemingly incompatible alternatives and either/or problem definitions are common in consulting and managing organizations. Starting with Arthur Koestler’s theory of humour and creativity we will explore concepts and tools to understand how these dilemmas offer a great starting point for the development of creative and novel approaches. This workshop will introduce a powerful framework to address and harness these dilemmas as an opportunity for development on a personal, team and organizational level. The approach is based on three distinct models from

a) the field of intercultural consulting,

b) personal development and

c) systems thinking.

The workshop provides a great setting to experience how the approach can be facilitated with groups before we will discuss its conceptual background and the application of the framework in organizational, personal and team development – and in telling jokes.

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What Makes us Human (Marlou de Rouw)

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What changes if I come to a group not as an expert to share knowledge, but rather as a human being coming to learn from the experience of the other so that I may transfer it into my own context?

This workshop will take participants on a deep exploration of the question “What makes us human?”, and will help them think through the consequences of taking our common humanity as a starting point to any work we do. At the heart of this workshop is the approach used by the international NGO the  Constellation, SALT: Stimulate/Support – Appreciate/Authenticity – Learn/Listen/Link – Transfer/Trust/Transform/Team.

Facilitators of this approach know from experience that people within the communities and groups they work with have what it takes to dream, act and transform – they trust that as facilitators they need only to host a space that is ‘human’ enough for people to express themselves freely and find their own solutions – trust that building from strengths and aspirations any group of people has enough in common to overcome their differences and work towards a shared dream.

Participants will leave the workshop with renewed energy, connections and concrete ideas of taking next steps in a change process of their choice.

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Theory U as a change catalyzer (Barbara Zuber)

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Experience Theory U by Otto Scharmer, MIT as a tool in an interactive setting to deeply understand its implications and collect ideas how you can implement it into your own work. Why Theory U? It implies Co-Initiating, Co-Sensing and Co-creation. It provides a sound orientation in change processes as it shows you where you are in your own process and what could be the next meaningful step. It helps you to generate solutions  from different perspectives, get in touch with your Future potential and activate the courage to prototype.

In our approach „ Facilitating Change“ we are using Theory U by Otto Scharmer as a change guideline. We combine it with the art of facilitation to deal with complexity and change dynamics.

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Percussion & Disruption (Nik Beeson)

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Percussion & Disruption uses rhythmic disruption as a metaphor for organisational disruption. In the course of this workshop participants learn how to play three rhythmic patterns used in Afro-Cuban music. Afro-Cuban percussion is a rich and complex tradition which is played both in 4/4 time (typical of almost all western music) and in 12/8 time. Participants viscerally experience the disruption of trying to bring rhythmic patterns in different time signatures together. They then learn and experience how the third very simple rhythmic pattern, called the ‘clave’, is designed to be played in both time signatures and hence serves as a ‘hinge’ or ‘bridge’ across the disruptive forces from one pattern to the other.

‘Disruption & Percussion’ is a fully integrated hands-on workshop. Participants learn rhythmic structures by actually clapping them out, and are carried through a journey in which they viscerally experience rhythmic disruption and work to resolve it by learning new skills. The fundamental theme of disruption, and how it relates to organizational strategy and culture, are consistently returned to through ongoing conversation, questioning, reflection and analysis.

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