2007 Authentic Leadership Summer Program

Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities with Adam Kahane, LeAnne Grillo & Arawana Hayashi

Today's most pressing challenges are characterized by enormously high complexity. Relying on past experience to figure out what to do is no longer sufficient. We need to find new ways to problem solve that allow us to uncover powerful innovations with the potential to bring forth a better, more robust future. We have to shift how we think and act-from mechanistic to systemic, from closed to open, from downloading and debating to reflective and generative dialogue, from a heroic leadership model to one of shared or collective leadership. But most importantly, we have to be willing to change ourselves before we can change the system.

In this module, we will explore an advanced problem-solving approach called the "Change Lab." A practical application of the U-Process, the Change Lab gives us tools that enable us to

• cultivate an in-depth understanding of our current reality
• connect to our innate wisdom so that we can identify and bring a new reality into being
• design and test alternative solutions that can dramatically shift the system

Whether you are working within a single organization or across sectors — integrating business, government, and civil society — the Change Lab helps individuals, organizations, and multi-stakeholder groups address problems in a systemic, creative, and participative way.

In order to actually experience this methodology and practice with the tools, we will apply the Change Lab to an issue of critical importance today — climate change. Whether you have a passing awareness of what is happening with global warming or you are an expert on greenhouse gases and emissions standards, this is a subject that must now matter to all of us on this earth. Through pre-program briefings, reports by stakeholders, coursework, and interviews within the larger community, we'll build our understanding of the issue, come to know it from a deeper place inside ourselves, and identify how we can act in new ways in Halifax and in our own lives elsewhere. Our overriding objective is to create an experience that gives participants both a firsthand experience of using the tools and an understanding of how they can apply the methodology to their own work.

The following books are strongly recommended reading for participants in this module:
Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future by Peter Senge, Claus Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers (2004)
Solving Tough Problems: An Open Way of Talking, Listening, and Creating New Realities by Adam Kahane (2004)

Adam Kahane is a founding partner of Generon Consulting and of the Global Leadership Initiative. He is a leading designer and facilitator of processes through which business, government, and civil society leaders can 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 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, he lives in Boston and Cape Town with his wife Dorothy and their family.

LeAnne Grillo joined Generon Consulting from Pegasus Communications, Inc. LeAnne was vice president and conference director for Pegasus 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. Designing and managing large events has given her the project management skills she needs in her multi-faceted position at Generon.

Before going to Pegasus, LeAnne spent ten years working for Patriots' Trail Girl Scout Council, in Boston, in a variety of management positions. She has always felt strongly about working for values-based, mission-based organizations. Helping girls grow into confident, competent, and caring young women is important to her, and she continues to volunteer for the Girl Scouts.

LeAnne was president of the New England Chapter of Meeting Professionals International, a professional association for members of the meeting industry, and held other MPI board positions as well. She is a certified master trainer through Girl Scouts of the USA, and has her bachelor's degree from Kenyon College in drama (set and lighting design).

Trained as a dancer, Arawana Hayashi's pioneering work as a choreographer, performer and educator is deeply sourced in improvisation, collaboration and traditional dance forms. After five years as director of an intercultural street dance company in Boston, Arawana became Co-Director of the Dance Program at Naropa University in Boulder, CO. She was involved in experimental inter-disciplinary performance work that became the foundation for the University's current degree programs in performance and somatic psychology. Arawana's study of Bugaku, Japanese Court dance, began under Suenobu Togi and led to founding the Jo Ha Kyu Performance Group in Boston. There she continued to explore the creative process. In 2000 Arawana joined the faculty of the annual Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership. Arawana is currently an acharya (senior teacher) in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. She teaches workshops in The Art of Making a True Move for individuals and organizations throughout the U.S. and is leading the development of Embodied Presence Practice in collaboration with Otto Scharmer and the Presencing Institute.

"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, North York General Hospital, Canada

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