What is an Adaptive Action Lab?

An Adaptive Action Lab (AA Lab) brings the best of consulting and training into a single event. It is a work session, as opposed to a training session. As a participant, you define and work on your most intractable challenge. Then you learn about human systems dynamics (HSD) as you apply your new learning to frame your challenge in a way that points to your best next wise action. You leave the session with two tangible outcomes. First, you have a clear plan for moving forward in your challenge. Second, you carry with you a new perspective and effective models and methods that help you address your next challenge.

Join us in an AA Lab to learn how HSD can help you leverage the complexity of your challenges to create powerful energy for change.

Upcoming Adaptive Action Labs

The Dragons of Complexity: Taming the Mindsets that thwart our embrace of a VUCA world

Apr 3, 17, May 8, 22, Jun 5, 19, 26 | 11a - 1:30p CDT

When people tell you to “think outside the box,” they don’t tell you where the box ends and the future begins. That is why we find ourselves so often trapped in our own blind spots and assumptions, driven by our ordinary worldviews.

Plan in Uncertainty: Create a Framework for Strategic Action

Apr 11, 13, 2023 | 12p - 3p CDT | Online

When the future is clear, planning is easy. Traditional planning assumed stable markets and slow-changing technology. Few stakeholders and long-term investment made it possible to plan toward predictable ends. For most people today, the future is not clear. Planning is as risky as it is hard. You don’t know what you don’t know. The rules keep changing. The clock is running. Expectations are challenged by multiple external forces.

Turn Assumptions into Questions: Tame the Dragons that Limit Your Potential

May 9, 11, 2023 | 12p - 3p CDT | Online

Our assumptions are like the water that holds the goldfish! We don’t know that we are swimming in our assumptions. They are like the air we breathe. We grow up thinking about the world in certain ways. We expect the world to respond to us according to perceptions and agreements that have established the curbs to guide and shape our lives at home, in the community, or at work.

Addressing the Challenges of NOW: Adaptive Action for Sustainability

Jun 11 - 14

Organization development professionals are taking a courageous stand. In place of their annual conference this year, they will gather to address three critical issues of our time. Climate change is, of course, on the agenda.

Create Your Narrative: Change Your Story, Change Your Patterns

Jun 13, 15, 2023 | 12p - 3p CDT | Online

A narrative is made up of the stories we tell. Narratives are powerful. They frame expectations and assumptions. They motivate and inform action. But narratives can also lock us into patterns of the past. In today’s world, we need a narrative that describes the emerging future we want to live into and steps we will take move toward that future.

Consult in Complex Times: Help Your Clients Navigate the Turbulence

Aug 22, 24, 2023 | 12p - 3p CST | Online

In simpler times, change came slowly, if at all. Consultants could build their careers on approaches learned in graduate school. They took successful solutions from one client to the next.

Build Networks for Complex Times: Create Bridges of Connection and Collaboration

Sep 12, 14, 2023 | 12p - 3p CDT | Online

In today’s world, everything seems to be connected to everything else. We live in a web of networks. News cycles run 24/7. We’re plugged into online platforms like email, Zoom, Whatsapp. Trade and freight lines deliver products from around the world. We engage with a broad spectrum of voices, views, and cultures.

Shape Resilient Systems: Build Adaptive Capacity to Move into Your Future

Oct 10, 12, 2023 | 12p - 3p CDT | Online

Personal and professional stress wears us down. Political and environmental disasters dash our plans, drawing our attention and resources. Obsolete infrastructures chip away at our sense of stability and safety. Sensational media threaten to overwhelm. In these challenging times, we need resilience to respond and thrive in the complexity around us.

Beyond Systems Thinking: Move from Mapping to Action

Nov 14, 16, 2023 | 12p - 3p CST | Online

Systems both constrain and enable change. The more you can see systemic patterns, the better you are able to choose success and learn from failure.

Deal with Patterns of Racism and Bias: Shift Patterns of Othering to Patterns of Inclusion

Dec 12, 14, 2023 | 12p - 3p CST | Online

Racism and the act of “othering” is an “intentional or subconscious act of separating or distinguishing oneself as superior compared to those we believe to look, live, act, or think differently than ourselves.” It often shows up as judgments, assumptions, disagreements, and defensiveness. It leaves people feeling ignored, irrelevant, and invisible. 

Join a global network of learning about HSD!

As a member of the network, you will receive weekly notices of events, opportunities, and links to blogs and other learning opportunities. Additionally, you will have the option to unsubscribe at any point, should you decide to do so.