Events

Taught by Zaid Hassan, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Reos Partners, London, this one-day seminar aims to give participants an understanding and grasp of a theory of action around systemic change.

Drawing on a number practical examples, including multi-stakeholder change labs such as the global Sustainable Food Lab, the Bhavishya Alliance on Child Malnutrition (India) and the Leadership and Innovation Network for Collaboration in the Children’s Sector (South Africa), as well as other current “in-progress” change labs, the course will provide a clear theoretical outline of current practice.

The seminar introduces participants to key-conceptual distinctions and clear language for understanding systemic change. The seminar provides participants with a conceptual foundation for both more advanced training and also an understanding of how various tools, techniques and approaches can be leveraged in efforts towards systemic change.

A symposium by Adam Kahane.

Adam Kahane is a partner in Reos Partners, and has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists. Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004). Nelson Mandela said: "This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created."

In this symposium, Adam will be addressing ideas from his recent book, Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change(San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010).

For more information and registration contact Mikako Yusa at mikako.yusa@ap.effem.com

A course on how to facilitate profound change and innovation in teams and organisations

"What prevents many organisations and individuals from being innovative and fail to bring about the change they desire is their inability to access new data and new reality through attending to the leadership blindspot. Change makers and innovators have learnt the art of accessing their blindspot by learning the art of suspending their usual ways of perceiving reality in order to 'see' the emerging future possibilities."

“The success of an intervention depends on the interior conditions of the intervener.” – Bill O’Brien

Most of today's most pressing challenges are characterised by enormous complexity. Relying on past experience to figure out what to do is no longer sufficient. If we always do what we've always done, we'll always get what we always got. So, if we want to address our most complex social challenges, then we have to learn a different approach. This approach has to be not piecemeal, but systemic; not relying exclusively on authorities and experts, but including all key stakeholders; and not based on already-existing best practices, but creative. Furthermore, this approach has to be bilingual: it has to speak both the language of love - of connection, relatedness, and wholeness - and, at the same time and paradoxically, the language of power - of action, pragmatism, and force.

This course offers an opportunity to learn the Change Lab approach through a hands-on, experiential application to a global "problematic situation" that is being manifested locally – the issue of public healthcare. Using a combination of dialogue interviews among course participants, learning journeys, workshop exercises, classroom lectures, and artistic/physical expression, we will practice the Change Lab's three core movements: co-sensing, co-presencing, and co-creating. We will build our capacities to address, successfully and peacefully, our own most complex social challenges.

The Change Lab as an approach has been applied to challenges as diverse as the sustainability of global food systems and malnutrition in India to cultivating national & community based responses to the challenge of orphans and vulnerable children in South Africa. Two recent books describe the practice and theory that underpins their work: Kahane's Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities (2004) and Otto Scharmer's Theory U: Learning from the Future as it Emerges (2007).

Who should attend this course
• Managers in business, government, and civil society who want a fresh way to address the challenges facing them.
• Leaders at all levels in organizations who want to enhance their capacity to listen and observe, connect more deeply with others and themselves, and innovate in fresh ways.
• Facilitators and change agents who want to learn to facilitate more complex challenges with diverse groups.
• Anyone involved in innovation, policy, or engagement of stakeholders in complex environments.

Scenario thinking enables groups of people to create stories about possible futures that are relevant, challenging, substantial and clear. The scenario stories enable participants to think deeply about their context and to challenge their assumptions and mental models about the world.

In this workshop, Mille Bojer of Reos Brazil, and Adam Kahane of Reos Cambridge, facilitate the application of Reos' Scenarios Methodology to the issue of sustainability. Please join us for this unique opportunity to engage with two of our global Partners and explore the process of creating scenarios.

For more information or to register, please contact Mille Bojer at bojer@reospartners.com

with Adam Kahane & Wendy Palmer
"Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love with out power is sentimental and anemic." — Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this new module, social change facilitator Adam Kahane and Conscious Embodiment teacher Wendy Palmer will help participants build their capacity to work with the two fundamental drivers of social change and leadership: power and love. The module will bring together theory and practice, concepts and stories, dialogue and experimentation.
Adam will contribute the approaches he has developed over his twenty years as a leader of innovative multi-stakeholder processes to address complex social challenges. He will coach participants in reflecting on their own experiences of trying to effect social change — in communities, organisations, and societal settings — and in crafting new ways forward.

Wendy will lead the group through experiential exercises to examine and practice these new ways of working. Participants will have an opportunity to experience the energy patterns of reckless power and anemic love. Then in contrast they will have an opportunity to experience power that is effective and magnetic — empowerment — and love that is enhanced and supported by the wisdom of the collectiveÑinclusiveness.
Together this exploration will build the participants' capacity to combine power and love to work more effectively in and with social systems of all scales.
In preparation for this module, participants are encouraged to read Adam Kahane's Power and Love: A Theory and Practice of Social Change (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2010) and Wendy Palmer's The Intuitive Body: Discovering the Wisdom of Conscious Embodiment and Aikido (Berkeley: Blue Snake Books, 2008).

Adam Kahane is a partner in Reos Partners, and has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists. Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004). Nelson Mandela said: "This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created."

Wendy Palmer is the creator of 'Conscious Embodiment,' a profound approach to personal and professional development using embodied practices. She has been teaching classes and workshops in Conscious Embodiment for over twenty-eight years. She is a sixth degree Black Belt in Aikido and she teaches Aikido at Tamalpais in Corte Madera, California. Wendy is author of Aikido and The Practice of Freedom: Aikido Principles as a Spiritual Guide. She offers coaching in embodied leadership for individuals, groups and teams. Her clients include, Genentech, DaimlerChrysler, Oracle, McKinsey, NASA, Pfizer, Old Navy, The US Forest Service, and John F. Kennedy University.