Power of the Pen is PRACTICAL 2 day-course designed for facilitators, educators, presenters and leaders to gain the confidence to powerfully use live graphic practice to capture conversations and share thinking in their professional context. This is a unique opportunity to learn from one of Europe’s best graphic facilitators. Join us for one or two days! Click here to download the full invitation (pdf)

Meaningful conversations are needed at the best of times, and right now we need transformative practices and conversation spaces more than ever. Which conversations that transform problems into potential do I particularly want to initiate and host? How might conversation accelerate and amplify transformation? What do I need to learn about myself to create the change I wish to see in the world around me? If these are the kinds of questions you are asking yourself, come and join us!  Click here for the full invitation (pdf).

On the 4th of April there will be a one day taster training to experience some of the practices and approaches that form the Art of Hosting. This event is a great opportunity to try out some of the approaches for yourself at the lovely Roots and Shoots venue in London. Click here for more information.

12-14 January 2012, Egypt

What would become possible if we were to use the Art of Hosting as an operating system, to move beyond conflict, and united our efforts – to create meaningful, innovative and sustainable initiatives for a better Egypt?

If you won’t be able to join this time you can still participate by financially supporting young leaders from Egypt and elsewhere to participate in this training http://bit.ly/indiegogoaoh

In January 2012 (11th-15th) we are co-hosting the second edition of the Art of Hosting Social Transformation in Egypt. Stay tuned, the invitation will be out soon.

Last weekend it was the annual FoAM gathering to discuss long term ideas, some self reflection and consideration of external perceptions. We were guided on this mission by Simone Poutnik and Hendrik Tiesinga, members of FoAM and founders of Natural Innovation. They decided to trial a new method on us all, Lego Serious Play. Now, I’m a bit battle hardened when it comes to alternative business management strategies as I’ve been exposed to quite a few in various places over the years, but despite Lego’s high scoring buzzword bingo website, I can independently verify this approach as very much a success.

You start by building personal models that represent different aspects of the organisation in various states, and then work as a group to bring them together in different ways. This is done in a structured way, leading to certain questions at different stages of the process.

The core idea was to “think with your hands” and indeed the normal problem you get in these situations, a tricky question leading to an utterly blank mind, was removed as soon as you started searching for plastic bricks. Things seemed to build themselves somehow, while the indirect method of having to explain your odd constructions (usually in quite an abstract way) said a lot more than I would have managed in a more traditional situation.

Originally posted by Brett Scott on his blog SuitPossum

A few weeks ago a group of wayward individuals met at Waterloo station. We hitched a ride on a train going north into the English wilderness. Bertrand was forward-thinking enough to have brought beers for the journey, a skill he learnt in his 10 years working for Deutsche Bank as a structured equity derivatives trader. Next to him was Ingo. Ingo does things that make my mind hurt, which involves channelling and managing innovation and systems design, in Sweden. Behind me was Neil. He works for the Young Foundation, helping to design things called Social Impact Bonds, ways of allowing private investors to get involved in financing early interventions that might reduce social malladies. He was chatting to David, who specialises in design, and in particular, new means of mapping and visualising the financial sector. Bertrand started talking about social CDOs, and that’s when people on the train started to look at us funny. A girl sitting next to me asked me who we were. Um, how do you explain that? We kind of work in finance, but at the same time are trying to disrupt it, alter it, play with it. I gave her my card. “Come to the dark side”, I said, “there are cool things going on”. Enter the Finance Innovation Lab….

Continue reading this great report on Brett Scott’s Blog SuitPossum

Over the weekend of June 9-12, 2011 a group of twenty-six social innovators and change agents from the UK, Europe, Middle East, Canada – and from the Finance Innovation Lab itself – came together to explore the Art of Collaborative Leadership. We stayed at West Lexham, itself an ambitious, innovative model for rural social enterprise, a hub for community renewal and the homeplace of the founder and his family. And together we asked, What is the leadership needed to envision and host the fundamental systemic changes we seek for a sustainable future?

Initiated by the Hara Collaborative, in partnership with the Finance Lab and Tasting the Future, this was an incredible opportunity to take a deep dive into what we have been learning together in this work – and to invite others to learn with us.

Using a wide range of methodologies, we explored the forms of relationship, organizing patterns, conceptual models, hands-on practices and processes that catalyse and support systemic shifts that will sustain people and planet. We shared real-time projects, including the learning from our work together these past 2 years in the Lab and Tasting the Future, but also from nascent seedling projects to the real-time organizing in the revolution in Greece. More than a training or a workshop, it was a participatory enquiry into the diversity of all of the participants’ experiences, projects and movements.

What did we see together?

We need to be prepared to transform ourselves. Hosting this work changes us from the inside out – and the deeper we go with our own transformation – the deeper and wider we can hold systemic transformation,

Systemic transformation is about relationship. The level of relationship we have with ourselves and with one another in our core teams will determine the depth of, and level of complexity, we can work with “out there.” Cultivating core teams that operate from a deep level of commitment and intimacy can hold the depth and breadth needed for wider transformation.

Structures and processes create pathways for change. Transforming human systems needs process architecture and design that focuses on convening people and creating a minimal/optimal structure that cannot ensure specific outcomes but invokes the highest impact possible.

The capacity to learn together is essential. Learning is a core capacity for any kind of sustained systemic change – if we are not learning, we are not changing so cultivating learning and practice grounds for successes and failures.

We look forward to our next “deep dive” – stay tuned for more learning programmes with Hara, the Finance Lab and Tasting the Future this fall, 2011.

Click here to read our initial Art of Collaborative Leadership invitation.

When? June 23, 2011 to June 26, 2011
Where? Anafora village- Egypt

Since the beginning of this year we have witnessed the powerful impact of people standing up for a new way of living. With uprisings come the breaking open of old structures, but how do we actually transition to the new? How do we access our collective intelligence to help us live and work in ways that sustain both people and planet? The edge here is that learning itself is an essential individual and collective practice for our times.

As young Egyptians and as Art of Hosting practitioners, we have been inspired by Egypt’s non-violent revolution to help build a new Egypt. Through civil disobedience, the authoritarian rule of the former regime has been dismantled. We believe that in order to build in its place a new society that is just, thriving and diverse, we must nurture creative, agile and authentic forms of civic engagement.

With the Art of Hosting Social Transformation workshop we wish to create a safe space for collective learning for those, who have been similarly inspired and who are keen on shaping civic engagement in Egypt.

This workshop is mainly for egyptian young leaders and there a few places for people who want to come as fellow learners and be in inquiry together. You can download the invitation here.

Another way to participate is to offer sponsorship by making a donation – please read our Sponsorship Invitation and participate with your generosity.

This is not intended to be a stand-alone event, but the start of continuous learning and sharing between people and initiatives that are contributing to creating the fertile soil for democracy in Egypt, other Arab and African countries and around the world. Your contribution can play an important part in making this happen.

If you wish to participate and/or make a financial contribution please feel free to get in touch with us by email – simone (at) natural-innovation.net.