Power of Three – Towards Self-Organising

It’s time to adjust to the next future together  

Is your organisation straining at the seams?  Have you out-grown your “old ways”? Would you appreciate experienced guidance towards self-organising? 

This online programme will move your organisation deliberately towards a more sustainable future. You will grow your own and your team’s capacity to self-organise, to be alert, aware and adaptive.  

Give yourself and your team time and space to prepare to face tomorrow in a more collaborative, shared style. You may already be “reinventing your organisation” towards being increasingly self-organising, or you may just be beginning this inquiry.  If yesterday’s thinking and structures are not serving you today, and you are keen to embark, or build, on a more collaborative approach, then this closely guided initiative is for you.  

“The Power of three – Towards Self-Organising” online programme brings together groups of three people from four to six organisations across the world over 14 weeks. It will help your team and organisation focus on how you can adapt to suit today’s context of constant change. If you want to build on self-organising processes, or begin the process of becoming more transparent, having more distributed leadership, being increasingly co-managed – this is for you.  Magic happens in your organisation as diverse perspectives and voices are brought together, deeply heard, and wisely responded to.  We offer a significant nudge towards this with our maturely facilitated innovative process.   

This programme is for senior people with the ability to take the business and teams into a new norm. It’s for people who believe that the time is right to seize the opportunity for transformation and regeneration. It’s for professionals who see the value in building the resilience of your people and leading your organisation, and its operations, wisely into the future – understanding that this is not a quick fix. You are probably in the senior management team – you may be HR, Operations, C suite, or advisory group/board member.  Each organisation will engage three people in this exploration.  These three leaders ideally work closely together in the organisation and are active in their intent to steer deep transformation at multiple levels.  

This is unlike traditional training programmes in that we use an active, inquiry-based learning approach. Each trio will work in 3-week cycles over about 14 weeks, individually (I), within their trio (we) and in facilitated sessions with the other trios capturing collective wisdom (it/organisation/system).  These 3 threads or levels of growing awareness continue through-out. 

This closely guided process supports pragmatic passionate individual learning, team, power and conversational shifts, as well as having proven impact at the wider system level. It includes –  

• Reading, listening to or watching inspirational material and speakers about specific themes – getting started with co-organising – the leadership needed in self-organising and courageous Action Inquiry through experimentation.  
• Guided journaling and notetaking for one’s own learning and deepening into the topic   
• Trio sessions, with a pre-set agenda and task to be facilitated by one of the trio members or, if you wish, by one of your Amara partners – growing awareness and practices of mutual power through conversation.  
• Amara facilitated sessions with all trios, to collaboratively make meaning of the topics, gain from the diversity of ways of seeing, and brief the next topic   
• Support as needed from Amara facilitators for each trio    

What is the value of investing the time?

• You will learn and practice Action Inquiry, the only approach statistically confirmed to generate individual and organisational transformation   
• Increasing the likelihood of your organisation thriving and being creative as you become more fit for the complexity of today’s environment. 
• Support in exploring and defining how to best operate on three levels: the individual, the team and the organisation during these times of uncertainty   
• You will deepen into your own unique voice of leadership  
• You will learn the cyclical process of reflecting, inquiring and acting wisely, emergently, when moving towards a next normal in your organisation  
• You will receive individual support to understand your own emotions and reactions and learn how to better support others through this time   
• You will learn to facilitate better thinking and action through conversation  

You meet every 3 weeks as a full global group with the other trios from other organisation (collective wisdom), and in between you meet yourself with increased curiosity, and your trio, with compassion and challenge. The trio members should expect to spend about 3-4 hours a week with this process.  This time will vary but this includes your online time in conversation plus your own reflection and learning time.

Experiences from the Power of Three programme in 2020

“For years it’s only really been a couple of us trying to initiate change within the company, as a result of the Power of Three, I’ve now got a bigger team. So, the end result is a bigger pool of trained people to help us take the company to a point where I’m sure we can go.”  

– Mark Hamilton, CEO of Alexander Construction

“As I was doing the final presentation, I realised how far we had come. The beginning and the end, there was actually a lot that happened in between …so I was actually blown away as I put that all together and saw that actually, we have come such a long way.” 

– Carmel Bird, Administrator in Alexander Construction

• Here you can find a blog post about Mark’s and Carmel’s experiences if you wish to read more!
• Here you can find a case study about an organisational transformation towards self-organising in a Finnish company Vertia we have had the pleasure to work with.

Facilitation

The Power of Three is facilitated by two people with diverse backgrounds: Lisa with local kiwi roots and Heidi from Finland with extensive international background. Both facilitators have worked both as CEOs in organisational settings and as leadership development and transformational consultants. Heidi is one of five people globally with the right to certify people to use Action Inquiry and the GLP, a profile assessing individuals’ stage of leadership maturity. She is a Master practitioner in this field of transformation. You can find her blog post about the role of leadership maturity in self-organising here. Lisa has 30 years of experience as a Psychologist in both the UK and NZ.