Bring your team the timeless leadership development experience: The Organization Workshop.
The legendary Organization Workshop, pioneered by systems thinking expert Barry Oshry, is one of the best-known ways to help organizations change the conversation from politics and personalities to productive partnerships. Domain7 is certified by Power+Systems, the company founded by Oshry, to deliver the Organization Workshop.
You want your organization to adapt to the future, but old habits hold you back. You want to find people-centric ways to pursue innovation, but there seems to be some invisible pattern you keep stepping into. If only there was a way to help your whole team see a new path was possible.
Discover a new framework for seeing the systems in any organization.
Develop a common language for your team to communicate about their conditions and challenges, back at work.
Help team members choose partnership in their daily work lives.
Build a new vision for what your organization can become.
Provide a stimulating, memorable experience that brings your team together.
Step inside one of the world’s most infamous leadership development experiences.
“It was as though the light had just been turned on in a room that I previously thought was well lit; much of what I had learned about what drives human behaviour in organizations was being turned on its head.”
Truly interactive
Some workshops are just content delivery, where a lecturer monologues at you. In the OW, content delivery is built into the experience, so team members are being given a new framework and a common language that feels like learning through osmosis.
A safe space for dialogue
Some workshops are all about problems, with all your company and personal business all awkwardly on display. The OW creates a fictional organization, which creates a context for people to have tough conversations and personal epiphanies, without the baggage.
Game-like, but dead serious
Some workshops are about brainstorming and post-its: people can feel self-conscious about their ideas and contributions. The Organization Workshop is conducted as a simulation. This means it’s an immersive, game-like experience in which participants immediately find themselves lost in running a true-life organization.
"I don't think I've attended an all-staff event that has been more deeply transformative or that has more powerfully inspired in its participants a true sense of partnership in the organization."
“The profound insights…represented a tectonic shift for me,” writes James Phillips, in his Medium piece From System Blindness to Sight, describing his experience with the Organization Workshop. James goes on to say, “The realization hit me hard: I was suffering from system blindness, and even worse: in this blindness, I had participated in — and perpetuated — patterns of behaviour that consistently produced results that I didn’t want.”
“People in positions in any human system react in familiar, predictable ways,” says Organization Workshop creator Barry Oshry. “And we can help them choose better ways.”
Oshry has taken his learnings after 40 years of running experiential simulations for organizations, including his many influential books on systems thinking, and adapted it to a two-day experience that helps enlighten participants to the reality of system life. Out of this comes the Organization Workshop.
1. The activity: running a fictional company together
You create an organization that has all the parameters of a real organization: budgets, clients, deadlines, hierarchy, and more. It’s the job of the participants to run the company: serving clients, running projects, getting paid, and dealing with conflict. It’s a simulation, an experience, an event; but not a role-play. You are here to play as yourself, not as a persona. It’s amazing to see what emerges.
2. The framework: zooming out to name what’s happening
At the beginning, middle and end of the activity, participants come together to debrief, compare notes, and receive content on the topic of system life. You will see that what you’re experiencing so intensely in your groups is both extremely familiar, and extremely predictable—and not at all inevitable. You learn there are new, alternate, promising possibilities and discover what life is like for people in other parts of the system.
3. The application: putting it into practice
Now, we get to the components that can be taken back and applied immediately to your organization. You see how familiar patterns can be broken, how your organization can identify its own habits and patterns, and how what you thought was personal may actually be “life in the system.”
The Organization Workshop has been hosted for non-profits and charities, health organizations, education and instructional communities, startups, government bodies, technology companies, Fortune 500s and large enterprises.
Through the global network of certified facilitators, the Organization Workshop has reached many companies, including: Microsoft, Government of Canada, BC Teacher’s Federation, Fraser Health Authority, NASA, Staples University, National Park Service, and Medtronic.
What do I need for this experience, in terms on mindset, people and space?
A commitment to an immersive, enlightening experience; at least 16 participants (but it can grow to accommodate 100 or more!), and the right space (or willingness to move to the right space).
How much time is needed?
The OW can be customized for your needs. The original design is a two-day experience, but the most common adaptation is the one-day experience. A half-day experience is also possible, usually done in conjunction with other retreat-style or business planning activities.
Can we lead this workshop ourselves?
Our facilitators have been certified by Power + Systems to lead the Organization Workshop. You can certify trainers in your own organization to lead this experience through the Power + Systems’ training program.
Give your team the chance to experience the learning experience of a lifetime: an intense, illuminating, transformative event that helps participants see the system they are within, and helps organizations choose a healthier path.
James is a lifelong student of leadership, project management, and group facilitation. James' previous experience includes his work as an Accenture consultant on business systems, a Master's degree in Leadership from Royal Roads, and a PMP certification. James has presented on systems thinking, written extensively on organizational agility, and excels at understanding, dissecting, and reimagining the operations, processes, and workflows conducive to effective team functioning.
Kevan brings wisdom from over a decade of experience leading award-winning digital strategies for a wide variety of institutions and businesses. A seasoned and engaging facilitator and speaker who has been with Domain7 since 2010, Kevan has helped shape our collaborative and people-centric culture. He’s studied design thinking and innovation processes at the THNK School of Creative Leadership.
Your web browser (Internet Explorer 11) is out of date. Update your browser for more security, speed and the best experience on this site
