Deep Work 
Exploring how our mind works and practicing intensity as a way to increase our effectiveness, awareness, create more time… and reach a state of flow.

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Based on the work of: Cal Newport (computer science professor); Daniel Goleman (clinical psychologist); John Medina (molecular biologist); Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (psychologist); Todd Siler (artist and educator)

 

COMPLEX SYSTEMIC Challenges
Observing and sensing the context, dissecting the layers embedded in a challenge, resisting the temptation to simplify its complexity…these are some of the practices that might help operating effectively in the (messy) space of entanglement.

 

Based on the work of: Prof. Ralph Stacey, Douglas Griffin and Patricia Shaw (Hertfordshire Business School); Danny Hillis, and Neri Oxman, (MIT); Jeff Conklin (developer of the Dialogue Mapping facilitation technique); Otto Scharmer (Founding Chair of the Presencing Institute)

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THE MESSY MIDDLE
When ambiguity increases and conflicts are higher and more abrasive than usual, practicing leadership is not about giving people direction and protection. The leader becomes a Social Architect: creating the space for people to perform the work.

Based on the work of: Prof. Amy Edmondson (Harvard Business School); Dr. Brené Brown (University of Houston Graduate School of Social Work); Prof. Ron Heifetz (Harvard Kennedy School); Scott Snook* (Harvard Business School); Peter Block (consultant)

 

COLLECTIVE GENIUS
How to build high-performance teams that are willing and able to innovate not just once, but time and again? How to harness the power of collaboration? How invite diversity, differences and colliding ideas?

 

Based on the work of: Prof. Linda Hill* and Prof. Ryan Raffaelli* (Harvard Business School); Ed Catmull and Greg Brandeau* (Pixar and Disney Animation Studios); Prof. Keith Sawyer (University of North Carolina); Prof. Rakesh Khurana* (Dean of Harvard College); Prof. Nitin Nohria* (Dean of Harvard Business School)
    

 

INNOVATION AND CHANGE STRATEGIES
Exploring and experimenting with several possible ways to shape the future – whether it’s about leveraging the power of positive deviance; inquiring into the adjacent possible; understanding the life of slow ideas…

 

Based on the work of: Richard Pascale (Stanford Business School); Steven Johnson (science and history author); Atul Gawande (surgeon and public health innovator); Jim Collins (researcher, expert in the life and transformation of organizations); Malcolm Gladwell (journalist and writer)

 

THINK.DESIGN
The most respected ways to approach “creative problem solving” mention engaging and mobilizing people to co-designing interventions with them, and creating an environment for exploring-learning-playing-experimenting.

 

Based on the work of: Matt and Gail Taylor (creators of the DesignShop methodology); Frank O. Gehry (architect); Christopher Alexander (architect and writer); Rick Rubin (music producer); Robert R. Carkhuff (social scientist); Kevin Kelly (writer; researcher); Hal Gregersen (researcher, former executive director of the MIT Leadership Center); Maria Montessori (Educator, founder of the Montessori method of education)


 

THE LIFE OF A KNOWLEDGE WORKER
Reflecting on one’s development is key to accelerate it: observing yourself in action, exploring your defaults, working to develop an opposable mind.

 

Based on the work of: Bob Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (Harvard Graduate School of Education); Jay Allison (independent broadcasting journalist); Robert Pirsig (writer and philosopher); Hugh MacLeod* (cartoonist and live-tooner); Seth Godin (marketing guru and writer)