An Action Learning Lab provides a reliable way—a unique forum, methods and tools—to foresee what’s needed next, and to show the way.

How does it work?
An individual or a group brings sensitive questions and dilemmas, and together we explore the associated patterns and dynamics. We go beyond talking about the issues and merely sharing opinions. We use simulation and modeling to conduct fast-cycle experiments. We also practice new behaviors, including ways to adapt to resistance and fatigue when trying to implement something new in a larger system.

How have others benefited?

• Dr. William Ury, co-author of “Getting To Yes”, and his colleagues at The Global Project on Negotiation at Harvard University developed a new approach to conflict resolution for the Middle East.

• HP anticipated and eliminated breakdowns associated with global deployment of enterprise software.

• Intuit leveraged its Learning and Development function to help accelerate transformation of a key business unit.

• The Whidbey Institute realized a dramatic turn-around for its entire organization.

Play Video of Dr. William Ury Discussing a Lab

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Mitch Saunders is the creator of “The Sensing And Shaping Process” (SM), our core method for understanding and creating change for leaders, organizations, and individuals. Earlier in his career, Mitch led groundbreaking research and taught at the Center for Organizational Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Mitch coaches executives, entrepreneurs, and practitioners and guides teams responsible for high stakes transformations.

Elizabeth Doty is an organizational consultant and author of Story as Organizational Learning (Pfeiffer HRM Annual 2006). She is the originator of the Business Storytellers(SM), designed to harvest insight from experience. Elizabeth has worked with Intuit, Archstone-Smith, Hewlett Packard and many more. Since 1999, she has been a steward of the Bay Area Society for Organizational Learning. Elizabeth received her MBA from Harvard in 1991.

Craig Fleck is the co-creator of the “Change Acceptance Process” (SM), which has been globally deployed by Sun and 3M. He specializes in leadership, change, and coaching. With over two decades of experience, Craig developed global-change processes for Sun, 3M and other major clients. Craig created his unique program for high-potential leaders during his eleven-year-long engagement with GE Capital.

Roger Harrison, Ph.D. is a pioneer practitioner in organization development. Since 1956, he has contributed to nearly every phase in the growth of his profession: survey research, team building, large systems change, organization transformation, and more. Roger is a well-known author of training programs, books and articles, notably The Positive Power & Influence Program, The Collected Papers of Roger Harrison, and Consultant’s Journey: A Dance of Work and Spirit. He has presented his work widely in Europe and the USA.

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Get in-depth articles on leadership, innovation, and change.

• Action Learning Labs Enter safe learning places and turn promising ideas into powerful innovations.

• Dynamic Dialogue: Practices For Learning From Experience Discover how parts of a system affect the whole. Experiment with patterns and energies to address immediate challenges.

• Gestures, the Key to Emergence Recognize what is trying to happen. Gestures often show generative movement. Listen to them. They can change an entire system.

• Leadership At The Inflection Point Inflection points mark where something ends and something new needs to be born. Experience ways individuals, product and organizational systems can evolve together.

• Personal Agility: Practices for Being Present & Resourceful When You Need It Most Originally developed for engineers and managers from Hewlett-Packard, these practices can quickly transform ineffective habits into responses and moves that work. Become more agile and use your instinctive responses.

• Sensing & Shaping Our Future Locate yourself in complex and conflicted situations and quickly identify and create what is needed.

• Sensing & Shaping Our Future: The Workbook This practical companion gives individuals, organizations and communities methods and tools to innovate or navigate high stakes transitions. Create exciting new possibilities.

• Transforming Healthcare: Bringing Dialogue To The Grand Junction Healthcare Community Discover how this three year research project brought stakeholders together to design a new integrated healthcare system for the region.

Inventing the future—together
Are you maximizing your team’s collective intelligence? Are turf-wars harming your organization’s ability to innovate and change? Is your intellectual capital underused?

Change forces organizations to be agile and innovative. Thriving organizations recognize and use their webs of distributed and co-creative intelligence because only the agile will prosper.

Action Learning Labs team coaching is a vehicle for development and change. Our unique group process addresses: agility, adaptation, co-creation, divergence, instability, conflict, purpose, and action.

Our coaching method is easy to incorporate, but also empowering. Action Learning Labs team coaching is for people who must collaborate to invent, share knowledge, share experience, and share perspectives. Team members gain a vantage point from which new and agile behaviors emerge.

New perspectives often uncover previously hidden possibilities—options for action. Participants will gain a new and more flexible approach to leadership, innovation, and change. Whether you need performance improvement, group agility, or you’re organization is in the midst of complete systems change, please contact Mitch Saunders.

Leadership teams must invent the future—not be victims of it.

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How do you approach an unseen future?

As a leader, the pressure is on. The buck stops with you. You need to be decisive. You need to lead.

Your team looks to you for direction, expertise, and authority. But where do you go to test your perceptions? And how do you challenge your assumptions? And what do you do when you discover some of those assumptions are wrong?

Our coaching method is for pioneers like you. When you face conflict, when your situation is complex and unstable, then our coaching expertise will help you adapt to new realities. You’ll gain a new perspective on your situation. You’ll uncover previously hidden possibilities—options for action. You’ll have space and help to incubate ideas and bold, new moves—in private.

Whether you need performance improvement, personal agility, or you’re in the midst of a radical change for yourself or your organization, please contact Mitch Saunders.

[See also team coaching.]

(831) 335 7713

The Action Learning Labs System
Our unique approach is based on a fluid and cyclical process of change. Any organization or system undergoes a developmental process with discrete stages in its life cycle. Each stage has properties defining it with its own potential risks, dangers and opportunities. Yet each stage is in conflict with others. Experiencing and understanding this life-cycle model, with its stages and transitions between stages, is foundational to our approach.

Why we don’t look for problems to fix
While simplicity and the quick fix may seem appealing, complex systems resist simple solutions. A band-aid solution can hinder change by hiding the real way forward.

Instead of searching for problems to fix, our first objective is to identify the stage the person or system is in now. We need to understand what is happening, or “trying to happen.” From this vantage point we can see more clearly (often surprising) opportunities.

Sustainable responses
We explore impulses for change and growth appropriate for the system’s developmental stage. Then we facilitate change using action learning, experimentation, and practice to develop sustainable responses to tough questions and high stakes transitions.

Our pedigree
Action Learning Labs is based on over twenty years of inquiry into leadership, innovation, and change. Our newest offerings are the result of a three-year-long intensive action research project, funded by the John F. Fetzer Institute in collaboration with, Global Project on Negotiation at Harvard University, Internet Infrastructure Platform Group, Hewlett-Packard, Formative Assessments Division, CTB/McGraw-Hill, and the National League of Cities/Hewlett Foundation.

Individuals and organizations facing critical crossroads can now benefit from the latest research into change, innovation, and leadership.

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Why social innovators turn to us

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Why corporations turn to us

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We take your privacy seriously. We do not sell or rent your information.

A highly experiential two-and-a-half day introduction to our core approach as described in Sensing & Shaping Our Future. You will learn how the principles of living systems and dynamic, co-creative practices are used for sensing and influencing the development of people, innovations, and organizations.

Presenters: Craig Fleck & Mitch Saunders

Rod Bacon and Mathew Frazer, both Silicon Valley, venture-backed CEOs, will bring their passion for this approach and some of their real business issues for us to work with.

Dates: February 11-13, 2009

Location: Faculty Club, University of California at Berkeley.

Program Fee: $1350

Discount: Bring a colleague/friend and get 30% off the 2nd registration. Contact us to take advantage of this offer.

Information: For more details call: 831-335-7713.

The Agility Lab
This is an ongoing learning laboratory for leaders who wish to boost their effectiveness. Each session, a member brings his/her most sensitive questions and dilemmas, or exciting opportunities, and together we explore the case in detail. We go beyond talking about the issues and merely sharing opinions. We use simulation and modeling and we conduct fast-cycle experiments to test likely consequences of proposed ideas, decisions and actions. We also practice new behaviors, including ways to overcome resistance and fatigue when trying to implement something new in a larger system.

Partnerships That Work
This two-day workshop will enhance your ability to form and evolve satisfying, resilient relationships—both personal and professional. You’ll learn about effective endings and beginnings, setting and changing expectations, as well as discovering ways to cultivate shared interests and passion. More dynamic and interactive than a typical class, this program will provide you an opportunity to experiment with simple yet powerful principles and practices you can take with you.

What’s Yours To Do?
You’re not unusual if you look into the mirror and hear yourself saying: “At this stage of my life, I have all these different opportunities. My world seems to be expanding not contracting; but which of these options makes sense for me to pursue NOW? What am I REALLY supposed to be doing? I’ve proven that I can accomplish many things. But I can’t help feeling at times that I’m acting out someone else’s script. What’s MINE to do?” This two-day workshop is designed to help you answer this question and begin to create a vision and focus for your life.

(831) 335 7713

A new way to uncover emerging possibilities
Action Learning Labs offers a new method of understanding and creating change for leaders, organizations, and individuals.

How can we adapt to a future we can’t see? How do we proceed when complex situations resist easy answers? What happens when we realize our old models no longer apply?

Leadership and innovation matter. You need a unique view of your situation from which to see opportunities. Organizations, leaders and individuals benefit from our action-oriented co-creative approach because it leads to new and agile behaviors essential to survival and success in today’s dynamic environment.

When it’s time to discover and develop what’s next, start here.