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Summer Institute Module

June 22-28, 2008
Halifax, Nova Scotia

Solving Tough Problems in Practice: The Language of Power and the Language of Love

with LeAnne Grillo, Adam Kahane & Bob Wing, plus special guest Jim Gimian

If we always do that we've always done, we'll always get what we always got. So if we want to solve our toughest problems in practice — more precisely, if we want to address, successfully and peacefully, our most complex social "problematic situations" — then we have to learn a new approach. This new approach has to be not piecemeal, but systemic; not relying exclusively on authorities and experts, but including all key stakeholders; and not based on already-existing best practices, but creative. Furthermore, this new approach has to be bilingual: it has to speak both the language of love — of connection, relatedness, and wholeness — and, at the same time and paradoxically, the language of power — of action, pragmatism, and force.

Adam Kahane and LeAnne Grillo and their partners in Generon Reos, a Cambridge-based consulting and capacity-building firm that supports innovation in complex social systems, are pioneering this new approach-both within and across business, government and civil society organisations-using a social technology called the Change Lab. Together with their international colleagues in Reos Partners, they are currently working with the Change Lab to address the inter-related challenges of development, education, health, peace and sustainability, in Canada, Colombia, Cyprus, Guatemala, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States. Two recent books describe the practice and theory that underpins their work and are required as module pre-reading: Kahane's Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities (2004) and Otto Scharmer's Theory U: Learning from the Future as it Emerges (2007).

This module will take a deeper — not an introductory — journey through the Change Lab/Theory U approach, using the subtle lenses of the languages of power and love. It is for people who already have some familiarity with the language and principles of Theory U, preferably through first-hand experience in their own work or through participating in a previous module or workshop with Grillo, Kahane, or Scharmer. However, if you have read the books cited above and feel ready to embark on this module journey without further introduction to the U-Process, you are also welcome. We will be joined in this deeper journey through the module by Aikido teacher Bob Wing, and also in one session by Jim Gimian, a member of the Denma Group that has prepared an important new translation of The Art of War.

This module offers an opportunity to learn the Change Lab approach through a hands-on, experiential application. Using a combination of dialogue interviews within the module team, learning journeys into Halifax, workshop exercises, classroom lectures, and Aikido, we will practice the Change Lab's three core movements — co-sensing, co-presencing, and co-creating — and thereby build our capacities to address, successfully and peacefully, our own most complex social problematic situations.

“Our current institutions and systems are at a breaking point, and traditional change methodologies are insufficient to address these complex challenges. The Change Lab takes stakeholders on a journey that has the potential to unleash creativity, innovation, and real solutions. I would recommend this module to leaders dealing with complex problems within organizations or with large-systems problems within regions and beyond.”

—Georgina Veldhorst, Vice President, (now retired) North York General Hospital, ON
2006, 2007 participant

Printable (PDF) module description

LeAnne Grillo is a founding partner of Generon Reos LLC, which supports committed groups of people from across a system to release the potential of that system. She has worked with Generon Reos (and its predecessor company, Generon Consulting) for eight years, contributing to a range of projects using the Change Lab and U-Process methodologies, including a community healthcare initiative in Columbus, Ohio, a Fortune 50 corporate transformation process in Europe, and the global Sustainable Food Lab.

Before joining Generon, LeAnne was vice president and conference director for Pegasus Communications, the premier resource provider in the fields of systems thinking and organizational learning, and spent over ten years designing conferences and gatherings that brought people together using a systems thinking lens to address issues that mattered to their organizations, communities, and the world. The Pegasus Conference is known for its finely-honed integration of content with design that creates the container in which deep learning can happen.

Prior to Pegasus, LeAnne spent ten years working for Patriots' Trail Girl Scout Council, in Boston, Massachusetts, in a variety of management positions. It has always been important to her to work with values-based, mission-based organizations, and she remains committed to helping girls grow into confident, competent, and caring young women.

LeAnne has a bachelor's degree in drama from Kenyon College, Ohio.

www.reospartners.com
leanne@reospartners.com

Adam Kahane is a partner in Generon Reos LLC, an international consulting and capacity-building firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Generon Reos is a member—together with colleagues in Johannesburg, London, and Sao Paulo—of Reos Partners, a global partnership that supports innovation in complex social systems. Adam is a leading designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can work together to solve their toughest, most complex problems. He has worked in more than fifty countries, in every part of the world, with executives and politicians, generals and guerillas, civil servants and trade unionists, community activists and United Nations officials, clergy and artists.

Adam is the author of Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2004). Nelson Mandela said: “This breakthrough book addresses the central challenge of our time: finding a way to work together to solve the problems we have created.”

During the early 1990s, Adam was head of Social, Political, Economic and Technological Scenarios for Royal Dutch/Shell in London. Previously he held strategy and research positions with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (San Francisco), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (Paris), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna), the Institute for Energy Economics (Tokyo), and the Universities of Toronto, British Columbia, California, and the Western Cape.

In 1991 and 1992, Adam facilitated the Mont Fleur Scenario Project, in which a diverse group of South Africans worked together to effect the transition to democracy. Since then he has led many such seminal multi-stakeholder dialogue-and-action processes, throughout the world. He was one of the sixteen outstanding individuals featured in Fast Company's first annual “Who's Fast”, and is a member of the World Academy of Art and Science, the Commission on Globalisation, the Aspen Institute's Business Leaders' Dialogue, the Society for Organizational Learning, the Global Leadership Network, and Global Business Network.

Adam has a B.Sc. in Physics (First Class Honors) from McGill University (Montreal), an M.A. in Energy and Resource Economics from the University of California (Berkeley), and an M.A. in Applied Behavioral Science from Bastyr University (Seattle). He has also studied negotiation at Harvard Law School and cello performance at Institut Marguerite-Bourgeoys.

Originally from Montreal, Adam lives in Boston and Cape Town with his wife Dorothy and their family.

Bob Wing - M.A. Theology, is director of Mountain Warrior Institute, an organization dedicated to cultivating compassionate and dynamic actions in the world. He co-developed Warrior of the Heart seminars and retreats, designed to teach and empower individuals and groups to live and work intelligently and courageously in skillful warriorship. He has been inspired by and worked closely in, The Art of Hosting Important Questions. He has presented workshops for The Shambhala Institute Authentic Leadership Program (Halifax), Omega Institute (Reinbeck), and The Crossings (Austin). Bob started studying Aikido in 1977 and is a direct student of both Kashiwaya Sensei and Ikeda Sensei. He has taught Aikido at The Naropa University (Boulder, Colorado) since 1982 and worked in the Contemplative Psychology (B.A.) and Contemplative Psychotherapy (M.A.) departments, as well as the Marpa Center for Business and Economics. He is honored to have worked closely with Milton Trager, founder of Trager Psycho-Physical Integration. Bob is also an artist (stone sculpture and ink paintings) and is especially interested in spontaneous and "in the moment" work, that often produces unexpected and brilliant results.