The lessons from the past may not be enough in the new “post-COVID” world. Our leaders find themselves confounded by accelerated change in the already complex public sector, education, and global business environment.
The call to action for leaders at all levels “post-COVID” is to use this moment to break from the inertia of the past by dispensing with any suboptimal old habits and systems. To be successful, we need to shake up the “culture of the industrial age mindset” to catalyze a more fearless, inclusive, and agile way of leading - Leading Beyond the MASKS (TM)
Several members of ISPI Potomac were selected to serve on the core team as part of the Presencing Institute’s ulab2x program. You are invited to join us on this 4 month action learning project to help re-imagine Leadership Beyond the MASKS using advanced agile, design-thinking, and remote facilitation tools and techniques.
Here’s an outline of the program:
2/18 Prep for Co-Sensing I: 3D Mapping presented by Presencing Institute
In the co-sensing module your team begins mapping and co-sensing the system you are collectively trying to change through your initiative.
Use the methods and guidelines below to co-create a 3D model of the system in question. After creating the model, you go out into the real world—to the edges of the system—to gather the key observations and insights.
Learning Objectives
During this module you will establish a better shared understanding of how all stakeholders experience current reality - but in particular, the ones who are most marginalized or excluded from conversations about changes that will impact them.
3D Mapping Workshop Scheduled Separately
3/18 Prep for Co-Sensing II: Stakeholder Interviews & Sensing Journeys presented by Presencing Institute
Rather than a workshop, this module takes team members into the system, either in person or virtually. For that reason, the format differs from other modules. As a core team, you will decide whether your extended team members join you as interviewers or are themselves interviewed. If you are in a context that allows the team to design and take a Sensing Journey, we highly recommend it. If this is not possible, try to reach out to a wide variety of stakeholders, including those on the margins, to see the issue or system as a whole.
Stakeholder Mapping, Stakeholder Interviews, and Sensing Journeys Scheduled Separately
4/15 Prep for Presencing presented by Presencing Institute
In the Presencing Module, your team will come back together for a deep dive that brings together the horizontal connection of co-sensing with the vertical connection to our inner sources of knowing in order to connect with the social field of the system you are working to change.
Learning Objectives
During this module, you will transition from looking at the system from the outside to exploring what it looks and feels like from within. This will surface deeper leverage points for change and prototyping possibilities.
By the end of this module, your team will generate:
- A new shared perspective and language for moving from current reality to an emerging future reality.
- A further revised set of driving forces that shape the system you are collectively trying to change, along with core questions and insights into opportunities related to each of them.
- Prototyping ideas that you can explore together in the weeks ahead.
4D Mapping Workshop Scheduled Separately
5/15 Prep for Crystallizing & Prototyping presented by Presencing Institute
Vertical Prototyping is an awareness-based practice for translating an idea or a concept into experimental action. In the Crystallizing & Prototyping module, you will bring together the learning from your 4D mapping and your sensing activities to crystallize and evolve your prototype idea. The exercises below guide you through this process. You will then design and explore your prototype ideas by doing: taking concrete actions that generate feedback from relevant stakeholders and help you to iterate.
Learning Objectives
- Learn to explore the future by doing
- Listen to the feedback the universe is offering to you
- Develop a living microcosm of the future that is wanting to emerge
- Iterate, iterate, iterate
Vertical Prototyping & Storytelling Workshop Scheduled Separately
6/17 Prototype Demos and Celebration
It’s our moral obligation and legacy as leaders to cultivate the superpowers people - Leading Beyond the MASKS TM.
ISPI Potomac: We are the professional home for innovative leaders, educators, consultants, and designers in Federal, State, and Local Government; International Development; Education; and Non-Government Organizations around the world. Our people share a commitment to community, collaboration, and co-creation to help make our world a better place for all.
ISPI Potomac, founded on the Native American lands of the Piscataway, Nacotchtank (Anacostan), and Manahoac peoples of North America.
