Exploring Organization Transformation

Overview

This series of interactive presentations we are calling a "short lab series" is for consultants and leaders who want to learn about Arthur M. Young’s Theory of Process and participate in an exploration of its application to sustainability in organizations. It is also for people who are deeply bothered by current disruptions and want to learn how to think about and interact with them at a systems level.

An assumption is that advanced tools of perception and design are needed to face systemic worldwide disruption that are currently sweeping through organizations. What are the bases for establishing coherence? What are the predictable crises that require navigating a revolutionary period?

Although the ideas embraced in this series have been in development since the 1990s, application in the current climate of disruption is not clear and would be the focus of the presentations.

Key Questions to be addressed:

• What creates organizational stability and coherence?
• Can organizations evolve? What are the choices?
• How do truly new ideas get introduced?
• How can leaders prepare for disruption and change?
• Can organizations become regenerative and co-creative?

 A small group of experienced organization consultants will be supporting this series and co-developing leadership practices for each of the seven sustainable archetypes as we go along. 

Registrants will have access to post-presentation videos for review.

The Series Will Address:

• Learning about the core drivers of each of the seven archetypes of sustainable organization—Startups, Growth, Specialized, Institutions, Regenerative, Co-creatives, and Transformative.

• Understanding the crises that can disrupt the system coherence and trigger a shift to a new form.

• Exploring what is demanded of leaders in each type of organization and how to support revolutionary change when the organization transforms.

Learning Objectives:

• Exploring the cultural values and norms that tend to arise around each archetype.

• Examining relevant practices you can use as a consultant and leader.

• Exploring the metaphors of transformation that can animate new narratives and visions.

About the Sibbet/Le Saget Sustainable Organizations Model

In the 1990s Meryem Le Saget, then head of the Group Expansion Institute in Paris, sought new developments in consulting theory in the USA to bring back to Europe. She invited David Sibbet to present about the Theory of Process (ToP) and its then most current application, The Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Model®. Over several visits they began to look at how the ToP could apply to organizational evolution more broadly and developed the Sustainable Organizations Model (SOM). Strategic Visioning, Team Performance, and Leading Change work took precedence for many years, but current massive disruptions are calling for the SOM framework to be brought forward to help leaders and consultants understand what their choices are when it comes to transformational change.

The seven archetypal organizational forms described in the SOM are just that, universal patterns. How they manifest in detail is a function of different aspirations and contexts, but each pattern achieves its sustainability by consistently addressing one of the seven creative tensions at the heart of each choice. Ecologies of these archetypes make up larger organizations. The SOM provides a language for making sense out of this complexity.

At a more nuanced level, the formation, establishment, and evolution of each archetype itself presents a process that can be appreciated, such that leaders can be prepared when transformational jumps need to take place.

About David Sibbet

David is the founder of The Grove Consultants International. Since the mid-1970s he has worked with a comprehensive Theory of Process (ToP) developed by Arthur M. Young, a physicist and mathematician who set out to “upgrade the scientific paradigm” to re-include consciousness. Young was not interested in organizations directly, but David has used the ToP frameworks to develop many of The Grove’s well-known tools. The Sustainable Organizations Model is the latest, and arises now because the need to transform our organizations could not be greater. The central issue of combining subjective human values with objective, results oriented work is addressed directly in this theory.

This introduction video shares a bit about how David’s own consciousness was shaped by growing up on the east side of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California.