Measuring, mapping and maximising organisational value amidst complex human dynamics

Overview

This module is designed to support participants in understanding and working with fundamental energies that exist in all human relationships, organisations, communities and even societies. Enough experience when working with human systems will reveal that they often, if not always, do not behave in the way that we intend and plan for - seemingly carried by motivations, interests, energies, compulsions or mindsets that can cause immense divergence in a system. The course will comprehensively unpack for participants the various forces that contribute to the dynamics that eventually play out as diverse human beings interact, and provide tools to diagnose these dynamics and which inform possible design of interventions.

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the concept of "Organisation in the mind" and its implications on the coherence of human systems
2. Apply forcefield analysis on a human system to identify invisible dynamics at play

Format

2-day in-person workshop.

Creating a felt sense of purpose, ambition, and values in your organisations while working with resistance

Overview

This module equips learners with the understanding of how to effectively generate the energy to move an organisation forward and create momentum and movement that can sustain itself over time and disruption. In the context of fluid, decentralised, porous and interdependent systems that characterises organisations today, leaders and managers need to understand how to engender alignment and coordinate work within their systems and teams to optimise work for all, beyond the traditional measures of carrot or stick. Through the course, learners will understand the elements of human motivation as well as human resistance, and gain insight to practical narrative-based tools that will allow them to have better leverage in leading and influencing human systems.

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the elements that contribute to human motivation required to bring sustainable movement and change in human systems and corresponding patterns of resistance
2. Deploy appropriate narrative-based tools to shift human systems toward desired change and/or behaviours

Format

2-day in-person workshop.

Identifying the Elements that Support Our Systems to Work (Or Not Work) Together

Overview

This module unpacks the phenomenon of power and power dynamics in a human system, and the impact of an effective and trusted intervenor over and above the use of tools, frameworks, or strategies. Shifting mindsets, beliefs, assumptions, prejudices or blind spots of people is primarily an exercise in trust and the assignment of power to another to allow that shift. Aside from hierarchy and designated positions of authority in a system, multiple other dimensions of power exist in and actively influence a system. Participants will learn how to diagnose their own use of power, understand how that bias affects the way they see others, and finally how they can build range in their use of power to shift the organisations they are a part of. In addition, participants will learn how to identify and map the power dynamics that any team is subjected to, and also learn how external forces or circumstance can similarly shift that power dynamic.

Learning Objectives

1. Describe the different types of power at play in human systems
2. Identify the four pillars of trust and how they facilitate or block one's willingness to interact with each other
3. Recognise the habitual ways individual learners personally gain power and trust in their systems of interest, and discover opportunities to grow range

Format

2-day in-person workshop. 

Understanding How a System Sustains Itself and the Roles We Take to Preserve Our Emotional Reserves

Overview

This module unpacks the concept of socio-emotional resilience in organisations and how it supports response to threat, change, or transformation. Learners will understand how we keep our organisations in abundance and healthy enough to weather prolonged strain in the context of resource and manpower constraints. It comprehensively explores elements such as the strength of relationship between colleagues, the quality of conversation across groups and divisions, the interdependence of systems across functions, and the embodiment of values that deepen the reserve that organisations can draw from.

Learning Objectives

1. Discuss factors contributing to emotional resilience in human systems and analyse their impact on a given human system
2. Identify strategies to manage and increase emotional resilience across individuals, groups, and organisations

Format

2-day in-person workshop. 

Working Through Dilemmas, Tensions and Conflict in Organisation

Overview

In working with human systems, one would often encounter paradoxes and dilemmas that seem to demand inevitable trade-offs. This often results in deepening fault lines and resentments that can threaten to fragment human systems particularly in resource scarce contexts, or shows up as resistance and difficulty in moving human systems towards a desired state.

Learning Objectives

1. Discuss the approach of polarity management in contrast to traditional problem solving approaches
2. Recognise common polarities at play within human systems and describe the inter-dependent relationship of seemingly opposing poles

Format

2-day in-person workshop.

Identifying and working with the unconscious, unspoken, and unspeakable, and that which contributes to system fragmentation and dysfunction

Overview

In every human system, there is that which is openly discussed, negotiated, planned for. In organisations, these often take the form of business strategies, organisational structures, and business processes. However, there is also that which is unconscious, unspoken, and unspeakable, which might be broadly referred to as dynamics. Left unaddressed, these dynamics can result in system fragmentation and dysfunction. This module is a deep dive into the covert processes at play in any given human system which contribute to organisational dynamics, unpacking them from the lens of organisational psychodynamics and trauma. Participants will gain insights into how these covert dynamics manifest in human systems and learn practical strategies to work with them to foster the resilience and well-being required to support sustainable change in human systems.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify and discuss the impact of covert dynamics on human systems
2. Make distinctions between the repressed, suppressed, unexpressed and untapped dynamics
3. Identify strategies that enable organisations to better address covert dynamics at play

Format

2-day in-person workshop. 

Identifying and Shifting Patterns in Human Systems for Vibrancy and Health

Overview

This module gives insight into the emotional moods that constitute organisational culture. Participants will deep dive into the often unconscious emotional habits i.e. moods of organisations that can be very deterministic of the kinds of behavioural patterns the organisation exhibits and the results produces. By understanding the structural nature of emotions, participants will also learn possibilities to shift emotional patterns in organisations from unhealthy to healthy.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify and distinguish between different emotions and their underlying drivers to better understand their impact on a human system
2. Illustrate how emotions can be strategically reconstructed to shift organisational culture

Format

2-day in-person workshop.

Managing Risk, Anxiety, and Resistance

Overview

The ability to create containment of anxiety is critical to encouraging the psychological safety necessary to raise new thoughts, authentic sentiment, or unpopular interests, which are often the seeds of innovation and creativity. This module explores tools and techniques used to build psychologically safe containers. Participants will understand what containers are, how they are made, and how they can be sustained across complex systems.

Learning Objectives

1. Identify human factors that impede innovation in organisations
2. Formulate strategies to manage anxiety and risk in human systems to facilitate sustainable change

Format

2-day in-person workshop.

Overview

This module is an experiential 4-day in person seminar that begins with personal awareness in the areas of perception and perspective management, emotional diagnosis and mastery, and introduces the significance of somatic awareness. Learners will learn core dialogic frameworks and language to better name and understand personal worldviews, stances, and dispositions that contribute to interpersonal dynamics and consequently also add to the complexity innate within any organisational or even family system.

Learning Objectives

1. Recognise and name intrapersonal and interpersonal patterns accurately
2. Describe the impact of intrapersonal and interpersonal patterns on complexity in human systems
3. Discover a greater range of ontological possibilities for self and organisations

Format

4-day in-person workshop.

Overview

This module is an experiential five-day in person seminar that will allow participants to personally experience the dynamics within human systems that cut across the contexts of organisations, families, and society. This includes understanding how complexity and tension unfolds within human systems and how to potentially address them. Through their experiences, participants will gain a deep understanding of each level of the human system and how they interplay with the other. The module will also introduce participants to the theories, models and tools to work with these human dynamics through accurate diagnosis and effective intervention.

Learning Objectives

1. Recognise dynamics at play at different levels of system and their aggregated impact at a system level
2. Identify potential dialogic interventions to intervene on dynamics in human systems
3. Recognise the diversity, impact, and efficacy of dialogic interventions to mobilise a human system towards health and functioning

Format

5-day in-person workshop.

Overview

This is primarily a hands-on module where participants practise and experiment with intervention design by working on a chosen challenge statement, supported by an introduction to tools and frameworks to guide and/or inspire their practice. The taught component of the module primarily focuses on imbibing in participants the ethics and care needed when intervening in client systems. We then further extend this learning into understanding the principles behind the OD Consultancy Cycle and how it has been designed to respect and preserve the autonomy and agency of any organisation that we choose to work with.

Learning Objectives

1. Apply frameworks and models to diagnose the socio-emotional condition of a given human system
2. Design appropriate interventions to mobilise a given human system towards desired, sustained change

Format

5 x weekly full day sessions + 20 hours of Action Learning Project.