Workshops
&
Momentum
Zoom in, zoom out, pass on
How much variety does your organisation have in house for what is happening outside?
Three workshops, developed and delivered in Rotterdam, in a building awaiting demolition on the Beijerlandselaan, with the city's chief executive, the directors and countless teams. Each three half-days in three weeks, for two to ten participants, in a building that is itself in transition. Each with a story, a space and a product you can show afterwards.
Uitzoomen, inzoomen, doorgeven
Hoeveel variëteit heeft jouw organisatie in huis voor wat er buiten gebeurt?
Drie werkplaatsen, ontwikkeld en gedaan in Rotterdam, in een slooppand op Zuid, met de gemeentesecretaris, de directie en tientallen teams. Elk drie dagdelen in drie weken, voor twee tot tien deelnemers, in een gebouw dat zelf in transitie is. Elk met een verhaal, een ruimte en een product dat je na afloop kunt laten zien.
Why a workshop and not a plan?
What you need in a real crisis? One never knows in advance. What you can do is make sure your organisation has more different answers in house than it thinks, and that it knows them. That is called variety, and you don't grow it with a report but by doing: on a ten-metre wall, in a building being demolished, with your own colleagues. That is why these are workshops.
How we can work
What happens when you invite me, for whom, what do I bring and what do we want to achieve: that is what we settle in an exploratory conversation. My involvement can take different forms. Three examples:
Polycrisis Atelier
THREE HALF-DAYS IN THREE WEEKS · 2 TO 10 PARTICIPANTS · IN A BUILDING THAT IS ITSELF IN TRANSITION
The world around your organisation fills up, more and more often, with several crises at once. How does your organisation handle the tangle of crises? Give yourself and your team the widening and deepening you need to deal with growing complexity.
What you take home: the polycrisis map of your own organisation, a shared language, and a first answer to the question of who steers the ship when three storms rise at the same time.
For boards, management teams, programme teams and crisis organisations.
Developed and delivered in Rotterdam, in a building awaiting demolition on the Beijerlandselaan. The participants were the city's chief executive, the executive board and the directors, and after that a wide variety of teams from every part of the organisation.
Now for any organisation that dares.
What is learned here, spreads on.
Studio Awkwardness
THREE HALF-DAYS IN THREE WEEKS · TWO TO TEN PARTICIPANTS · IN A BUILDING THAT IS ITSELF IN TRANSITION
What does change do to you, and what does your organisation do to whoever brings it up? How much variety does your team, your organisation, have for changing contexts? Where do the awkwardness, the stomach-ache and the friction come from?
What you take home: a view of your own capacities in large changes, the pattern by which your organisation handles discomfort, and a set of ways to make awkwardness productive instead of managing it away.
For leaders and teams who notice that change in their organisation keeps breaking down in the same way.
Grown out of the Polycrisis Atelier, developed and delivered in Rotterdam.
Studio Awkwardness is a format in its own right. It can be done on its own.
For any team or organisation that wants to raise its variety.
What happens here, stays here.
Variety Lab
THREE MONTHS · ONE DAY OR HALF-DAY A WEEK
My version of what others would call "advice". Advice has no force if it generates no momentum.
You make me a temporary member of your team, programme or board meeting, with a jointly formulated assignment.
I join in, ask the questions that are no longer asked inside, bring new methods and help set in motion the movement the group itself chooses.
What you take home: a team or organisation that looks differently. Together we discuss how to anchor it and take it further. You can have a report, but that is not the main goal.
The outsider-insider is a format in its own right. It also combines well with the Polycrisis Atelier and Studio Awkwardness.
For programmes and teams stuck in their own pattern.
What moves here, keeps moving.
HOE HET WERKT
Drie dagdelen in drie weken. Telefoons en laptops uit. De leiding is erbij, en de mensen die het daarna moeten dragen. We werken niet in een vergaderzaal of een hotel maar op een plek die schuurt; in Rotterdam was dat een slooppand op Zuid. Ik vraag veel, omdat de urgentie groot is.
Don't know what you are looking for, but do know that something needs to be found?
"In his very own way he put the necessary approach to vital systems on the map. An approach that is now being followed in several other cities."
— Linda Molenaar, former corporate director at the City of Rotterdam, now Deputy Ombudsman at the Dutch National Ombudsman
"The polycrisis session
with the city's chief executive: epic."
— Marije ten Kate, chief urban planner, City of Rotterdam
What I draw on
Vital systems · resilience · polycrisis · ecologising · systems thinking · innovation (see the repertoire on the keynotes & masterclasses page)
Background: two master's degrees (Biology; Environmental Business Administration), ongoing research on the city as a living, self-regulating system; co-author of Rotterdam's first and second Resilience Strategy; co-founder and designer of the Vital Systems programme (now being implemented in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Utrecht and Nijmegen), co-creator of the Polycrisis Atelier and Studio Discomfort.