Adaptive challenges (as coined by Ron Heifetz of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government) are new to the organization, have no easy answers, and typically generate contentious debate. Learn how Systems Thinking guides individuals and work groups through adaptive challenges with productive, communal learning, solution testing, and stakeholder buy-in.

This four-session recorded webinar series is a collaborative effort between isee systems, Pontifex Consulting and The Weber Consulting Group.

Overview

Adaptive challenges often bring opposing viewpoints to the table: executives from an acquired company and their counterparts from the buyer company; inventors with a specific product vision and marketers with their own (and vastly different) vision; Democrats with their healthcare plan and Republicans with another.
 
Instructors Chris Soderquist and Craig Weber introduce you to a process for turning fractured work groups into solution-oriented learning teams that successfully address adaptive challenges. Using real-world examples, Chris and Craig demonstrate how Systems Thinking can be used to develop high-leverage solutions by improving work team communication, analyzing issues holistically, and developing a more systemic view. You’ll develop practical skills for engaging team members with divergent viewpoints to reach common understanding and work together to achieve buy-in from other stakeholders.
 
Each recorded session includes approximately 50 minutes of instruction followed by questions and answers. Online access to handouts that summarize session content, sample models, homework exercises and supplemental reading materials will cement learning.

Course Syllabus

Session 1: Framing Adaptive Change Issues

Ensure your adaptive change process starts on the right track with an “out of the weeds” and “onto the balcony” perspective:

• define the complex, adaptive changes facing your organization
• identify the key stakeholders who should – and shouldn’t – be involved in the change process
• determine the group’s capacity for discussing the adaptive challenge and barriers to productive engagement in the work

Session 2: Engaging Others

Increase the group’s capacity for doing adaptive work by increasing the quality of conversations.

• surface and integrate disagreements through productive, rigorous dialogue
• use the stock/flow language of STELLA and iThink as a framework for group facilitation
• map systems to reduce defensive routines

Session 3: Building Simple and Effective Mental Models

Build collective understanding using Systems Thinking maps and simulation capabilities.

• distinguish symptoms from causes to understand what is happening in a rapidly evolving system
• determine where feedback loops and unintended consequences present hurdles to adaptive change
• find ways to engender buy-in from stakeholders

Session 4: Developing a Culture of Continual Learning

Create a framework for embedding Systems Thinking and the conversational capacities you’ve learned into your organization.

• use every problem, meeting, or conversation as an opportunity to learn and improve
• monitor change implementation with a dynamic dashboard and build a library of models to improve on-going Systems Thinking
• tie Systems Thinking and conversational skills into a decision-making process that works by generating “honest to goodness” buy-in

About the Instructors

Chris Soderquist has over 15 years experience as a system dynamics consultant and trainer, with a diverse set of clients from the private and public sectors. Chris is a guest lecturer at the Darden School of Business (University of Virginia) in their Executive Education Program, and on the Boeing Engineering Leadership Program’s development team. He is a contributing author to The Change Handbook (Berrett-Koehler, 1999) and has published several features in The Systems Thinker. 

Chris’s most recent focus areas include public health and environmental policy, NGO strategic planning, and local community-based sustainability efforts. Additionally, his research interests include linking dynamic modeling with dashboard/scorecard development, implementation, and monitoring.  

Craig Weber is the founder of The Weber Consulting Group, an alliance that helps managers, teams and executives develop actionable competencies for leadership, teamwork and change. His cogent work focuses on improving the caliber of collaboration as people engage difficult, complex, non-routine challenges.  

Craig's formal education in organizational development at BYU-Hawaii and organizational psychology at Columbia University, combined with his extensive consulting work, has led to a distinctive approach improving the caliber of collaboration as people engage their toughest challenges. He has worked with people and teams from such organizations as Boeing, Vistage, Pfizer, The US Air Force, Clif Bar, Sense Corp, Novo Nordisk, and Los Alamos National Labs. He has conducted graduate and executive development seminars at the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird), Santa Clara University, and the Work Place Learning Institute at Columbia University.  

Course Requirements

• STELLA or iThink version 9.1
• Web browser
• Apple Quicktime Video Player
• Adobe Acrobat Reader