Change management isn’t easy, and change leadership is even harder. Sometimes you get stuck, and you don't know what to do next. The greatest planning, courage, and commitment won’t guarantee that your change efforts will succeed. Do you want to see your work culture change for good this time? Do you want to learn to be truly, sustainably, innovative?
You need three things to create the future you imagine:
- An understanding about complex systems and how they change—and why they don't.
- Tools to see the transformative energy that is locked inside the system, and how to get it unblocked.
- A change method that generates hope, rather than sucking energy out of people and processes.
Glenda and Laura will be your guides on this journey. Dr. Glenda Eoyang, founding Executive Director of Human Systems Dynamics Institute, is a pioneer in the theory and practice of applied complexity. Laura Williams is the Director of Strategy at the Institute for Community and Adolescent Resilience. She has dedicated her life to support people through complex, systemic change. Both are certified professionals of human systems dynamics (HSD), and they will use HSD to help you navigate the challenges of change you face today.
In this Adaptive Action Lab, you will focus on your own challenges with change and:
- Learn about complex change and how to leverage its power.
- Hear stories about how others learned to see, understand, and influence change for people, teams, organizations, and communities.
- Explore opportunities to turn resistance into support.
- Bring every voice into the conversation—and action—of change.
- Develop a sustainable approach to initiate, manage, adapt, and sustain change over time.
- Leverage present power structures and work within unhealthy ones when you aren’t “top dog.”
- Learn and practice three, simple tools to get change moving for you.
Faculty & Coaches
Dr. Glenda Eoyang works with public and private organizations to help them thrive in the face of overwhelming complexity and uncertainty. She is a pioneer in the field of human systems dynamics (HSD), which she founded. Through Human Systems Dynamic Institute, Glenda uses her Models and Methods to help others see patterns in the chaos that surrounds them, understand the patterns in simple and powerful ways, and take practical steps to shift chaos into order. Her clients include Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oxfam International, Canada School of Public Service, Cargill, Fraser Health Authority (BC), and Roche/Genentech.
Glenda’s latest book, with co-author Royce Holladay, is Adaptive Action: Leveraging Uncertainty in Your Organization (Stanford University Press, April 2013).
Laura Williams first encountered the early seeds of human systems dynamics when, as a young professional, she was given a wicked problem. Serendipitously, she met Dr. Eoyang early in her project and made quick and frequent use of her consulting and coaching to innovate a ground-breaking approach to improving systems' responses to sexual assault. Later, as a founder and former program manager of the Sexual Violence Justice Institute, Laura wove human systems dynamics into her coaching, writing, and teaching with multi-agency, multi-disciplinary response teams across the United States.
Today, Laura supports other leaders of local, state, and national initiatives with the concepts and methods they need to influence change within complex systems. Her consulting focuses in the areas of human systems dynamics, institutional change, sexual violence intervention and prevention, youth resiliency, adaptive action and social justice. In addition to this consulting, Laura is the Director of Strategy at the International Institute for Community and Adolescent Resilience (ICAR-US, LLC). This rapidly growing enterprise translates youth development research into a framework that provides both teens and adults pathways to enriching their developmental ecology. In addition to designing client initiatives and supporting the Institute’s growth and reach, she loves the time she spends in classrooms, church basements, conference rooms, and around campfires with youth and adults building webs of support.
Laura holds a Master of Public Affairs in public and non-profit leadership and management from the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College.
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