Getting to Maybe: The Art and Practice of Leading Social Innovation

with Brenda Zimmerman

"It is not a good time for control freaks. But it is a good time for those capable of living with uncertainty. Times of great complexity offer the possibility of transformation."
— Getting to Maybe: How the World Is Changed

Many of today's challenges seem overwhelming in their complexity and scope. Even within organizations, traditional ways of implementing change and achieving goals are often too narrow and rigid in the face of pressures to innovate across boundaries. Multi-stakeholder collaborations pose an even more daunting set of challenges.

Complex living systems defy linear problem-solving. Leaders who set out to make a significant difference cannot rely on off-the-shelf solutions. It is difficult to find answers when even the questions are unclear.

In this module you will strengthen your ability to manage systemic change. You will apply the fundamentals of complexity science to your own project, while seeing yourself as part of the system you wish to change. You will recognize the barriers (or traps) of social innovation and learn how you can move through them. You will also learn how to support truly innovative projects, as leader, partner, funder, or champion. The module format will include presentations, small- and whole-group interaction, reflection, and story-telling from case studies.

Brenda Zimmerman, Ph.D. is an associate professor at the Schulich School of Business, York University, where she recently founded and now directs the Health Industry Management Program. She teaches leadership, problem solving and creativity skills, strategy, accounting, and control systems to MBA students and qualitative research methods to doctoral students. Her work for the past few years has focused on applying lessons from chaos theory and complexity science to human systems. She is the author of many articles applying these theories to organizational strategy and change. Previously, at the Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal, she helped lead the McGill-McConnell master's program for national voluntary sector leaders.

A frequent keynote speaker, Dr. Zimmerman has worked with a diverse group of clients and research sites including financial services, social service agencies, government and the health care sector, wholesalers, a chemical company, a steel mill, and manufacturing firms. Her research with the VHA (Voluntary Hospitals of America), a group of about 1700 non-profit hospitals and community health care organizations in the USA, resulted in several papers and a book co-authored with Curt Lindberg and Paul Plsek titled Edgeware: Insights from Complexity Science for Health Care Leaders. More recently she co-authored, with Frances Westley and Michael Quin Patton, the best-selling book on social innovation Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed (Random House Canada, 2006).

Regional Intensive Ontario Modules

Leading for Profound Innovation & Change with Otto Scharmer & Arawana Hayashi
Getting to Maybe: The Art and Practice of Leading Social Innovation with Brenda Zimmerman
Cultivating Authentic Leadership Presence with Toke Moeller, Barbara Bash & Bob Wing
Mapping & Leveraging Social Networks with Karen Stephenson
The Future of Leadership: Scenario Planning and the Changing Nature of Organizations and Communities with Art Kleiner