Katrina Barry, kirchbaumer consulting
Passionate about the power of mindful leadership, Katrina guides and supports people and organisations in their development and change processes to reach their full and true potential. Founder of „kirchbaumer consulting“ an organisational consultancy & development organisation, consultant and coach, trainer and lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences THM in Germany.
For over 20 years Katrina has been combining systemic leadership with the innovative method of organisational constellations, supporting organisations throughout Europe to see through complexity, identify core issues and unearth their existing potential.
Katrina has been a member of the Board of the international association for system constellations in organisations (infosyon) since 2008 and offers training courses in systemic leadership in Germany and Spain.
Embracing Chaos in a complex world using 4D mapping
In this complex, constantly changing world, it is helpful to gain insight quickly and easily, to be ready to successfully move forward with confidence.
Faced with the today’s disruption and chaos, we usually see parts of our challenges or issues, but not always the whole picture and unfortunately, we know that what is not seen, or stays hidden, has a great influence on a system.
What if we had access to this information? What if we were able to see through the complexity and gain insight?
In this practical workshop, I would like to show you a systemically intuitive method of decision making, and/or making sense of chaos, which doesn’t only include facts and figures, but uses 4D mapping and spatial representation.
So how can you benefit from this?
This method can be used to support you to look at a decision which you have to make, or you can also look at a situation of a client to gain more insight, which supports you to support them to achieve sustainable and unique results.
Kate Cowie, The Chaos Game
Kate spent her corporate career of 15 years with Royal Dutch Shell. In 2003, she founded The Chaos Game, an international, multi-disciplinary team of consultants who specialise in helping organisational leaders implement strategic change solutions in response to rapidly shifting and increasingly chaotic conditions. She is author of Finding Merlin: A Handbook for the Human Development Journey in our New Organisational World and Preventing the Tragedy of the Commons in Gestalt Practice: Living and Working in Pursuit of wHolism. She is a senior faculty member of the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science for whom she serves as founding editor its practitioners’ journal, Practising Social Change, and co-managing editor of its book imprint. She held the positions of Chair of the Board and Executive Director of the European chapter of the Organization Development Network during its four founding years and, in 2019, she founded the Wicked Company network of social-change professionals who are committed to the development of Self and Others in organisations. She is now Director of the iGOLD Center’s practitioner’s programme in Gestalt OD and lives on a small farm in Aberdeenshire, UK.
Awareness! Awareness! Awareness!
All OD consultants are intentional in their Use-of-Self as instruments of change. We all draw on our values, assumptions, biases, life-events, knowledge, skills, strengths and vulnerabilities. Use-of-Self allows us to be vigilant about ‘how’ the work is done. But in the Gestalt modality of OD, we understand in our heads and hearts that, even in the largest client system, there is nowhere to hide. We are responsible because we are there! And so, we strive to develop a personal Presence that enables us to take up this responsibility.
‘Awareness, awareness, awareness!’ is the fulcrum of Gestalt OD for, as physician Arnold Beisser taught us in his Paradoxical Theory of Change, the future can only happen when the present is embraced. Gestalt OD practitioners work to heighten awareness – ours and our client’s – of patterns and themes arising in the forever-territory of organisational change, with all its polarities, ambivalence and conflicting forces of push-and-pull. With awareness, we can support our client to recognise what is needed, commit and take action to meet the need, notice the shift and the learning from it, and then settle back into a new state of being. Awareness, therefore, refines our Use-of-Self so that we can make a difference with our Presence.
In this introductory session we will learn about the Gestalt approach to the discipline of OD and also practise our skills for noticing – noticing what we are noticing and, perhaps, noticing what we are not noticing! It will be led by Kate Cowie, founder of ODN Europe and Director of the iGOLD Center’s practitioner’s programme in Gestalt OD.
Graham Curtis, Roffey Park Institute
Graham is Director of Operations at Roffey Park, where his focus is on supporting people and organisations to be the best they can possibly be through maximising their potential. At Roffey Park Graham works with clients and senior stakeholders to support strategic thinking and organisational transformation. He supports senior teams to gain insight into improving team dynamics, developing an inclusive organisational culture and improving performance.
Graham has over 25 years of experience, working in the UK and internationally. He has designed and led the delivery of global leadership and management development programmes in the UK, Nigeria, Kenya and Columbia aimed at supporting and challenging participants to reflect on their practice and their relationships with their teams. He has also led global transformation programmes, supporting organisations to deliver more distributed and diverse governance and leadership.
Why is organisational life so repetitive and difficult to shift?
Organisational Development practice often rests on the quality of conversations in groups of people as they wrestle with how to get things done. We talk about Dialogic Practice to explain how change takes place in organisations and how the language we use and don’t use shapes how we see our world of work. We also talk a lot about the ‘Use of Self’ in how, as practitioners, we use what we say and how we act to offer opportunities for change and reflection.
In the session on ‘Functional Collusion’ Graham Curtis from Roffey Park will offer an opportunity for us to reflect, not so much on why things change but rather why, given the vast range of things that might happen, organisational life is often recognisably repetitive and difficult to shift.
The session will challenge assumptions that our practice is a matter of making individual choices and instead will suggest looking for opportunities to notice patterns of relationships as they emerge over time and our part in maintaining or disrupting them.
De praktijk van organisational development hangt vaak af van de kwaliteit van gesprekken in groepen mensen terwijl ze worstelen met hoe ze dingen voor elkaar moeten krijgen. We praten over Dialogic Practice om uit te leggen hoe verandering plaatsvindt in organisaties en hoe de taal die we wel en niet gebruiken bepaalt hoe we onze wereld van werk zien. We praten ook veel over ‘use of self’ in hoe wij wat we zeggen en hoe we handelen gebruiken om kansen voor verandering en reflectie te bieden.
In de sessie over ‘Functional Collusion’ zal Graham Curtis van Roffey Park ons de gelegenheid bieden om na te denken, niet zozeer over waarom dingen veranderen, maar waarom, gezien de enorme hoeveelheid dingen die kunnen gebeuren, het leven in organisaties vaak herkenbaar repetitief is en moeilijk te veranderen.
De sessie biedt enige uitdaging aan aannames dat onze praktijk een kwestie is van het maken van individuele keuzes en zal in plaats daarvan voorstellen om te zoeken naar mogelijkheden om patronen van relaties op te merken die in de loop van de tijd ontstaan, en ons aandeel in het onderhouden of verstoren daarvan.
Sharon Nash, Independent Consultant
Sharon is an award winning Organisational Consultant and Leadership Coach with over 20 years’ experience of leading transformational change. Her signature work in leadership development and culture transformation has seen her operate across geographical and cultural boundaries to establish scalable, purpose driven and inclusive cultures and structures, across media, technology, entertainment, healthcare, and financial services, working with iconic brands such as Sony PlayStation and Coutts & Co. In her most recent role as Head of Organisation Development, Sharon was entrusted with restoring trust in the leadership of one of the largest health boards in Wales through an aspiring programme of leadership and cultural transformation.
Sharon is a member of the ODNE Board.
Leadership challenges in holding the field as OD-institutes.
Any field of theory and practice needs to answer questions about itself: What is it? What does it do? Why? How? For whom? Organisation Development, ‘scavenger discipline’ or not, is no different. In a vibrant field these will be live questions: who is it that takes on the responsibility of asking and answering them?
Although all practitioners do that to a degree, there are some organisations – one might refer to them as the institutions of OD – that hold this responsibility quite clearly. And some of those organisations are supporters of ODN Europe.
ODN Europe’s purpose is to advance the theory and practice of OD, and we want to both recognise the importance of these ‘holders of the field’ and explore their similarities, differences and connections. Because many of the challenges they face are probably not just organisation specific, they ripple out into communities, societies and industries across the global spectrum.
We are curious about how these organisations lead those who are all experts in OD themselves, who are part of the system in which they practice and contribute to its success or failings, but also stand apart from it. How do these organisations balance economic/business values with the OD values of being humanistic? How do they embrace their own learning as they encourage other organisations to do the same? How do they enable others to stand in uncertainty and emergence, in a complex world that thrives on complexity and demands certainty?
There is a lot to be learned from these organisations, and yet learning from each other as OD institutes is currently underdeveloped in our industry. And it becomes more important for the future of the field as we consider the vulnerable position that OD holds in institutions, in OD groups and in relation to OD programmes in universities.
We will be hosting a special session at the conference to share the results of conversations to be held with a number of OD institutes before the conference. This session is open to anyone who has a leadership or managerial role in OD organisations, and has an interest in exploring some of the tensions and dilemmas that OD institutes are grappling with.
The session will be hosted by Jesse Segers and Sharon Nash. Jesse Segers is Dean at Sioo, an independent interuniversity institute, specialising in Executive Education in change management, organisational design, consulting and leadership in the Netherlands. Sharon is an award winning Organisational Consultant and Leadership Coach, a specialist in behavioural science whose work explores the role that group dynamics, neuroscientific nuances, and systemic complexities in inhibiting or enabling successful transformations. Jesse and Sharon were recently elected to the Board of ODN Europe.
Tony Nicholls, Mayvin
Tony is a Principal Consultant at Mayvin. With an inquiring mind and ability to see patterns in complex situations, he brings insight, commercial experience and practical solutions. Underpinning his approach is a focus on exploring context, surfacing perceived realties and inviting alternative ways to articulate individual needs and organisation goals. Central to his practice is the development of more grounded, resilient individuals and more collaborative, innovative organisations.
He works with the private, public and third sectors. Private sector organisations include Zurich, Capital One, The Co-operative Bank, Direct Line Group, Close Brothers and Virgin Media O2, plus numerous small-to-medium manager-owned businesses. In the public sector Tony works across the UK Civil Service and with Local Government organisations. Tony is co-faculty lead
The Future of OD Practice: Individual and Collective Responses to Ongoing Disruption.
How do we respond to the world as it generates and experiences ‘disruptive change’, as OD practitioners and as a network? Carolyn & Tony from Mayvin invite you to join a conference-long inquiry into our individual and collective practice, exploring and sense-making together what we are noticing, what works and where the opportunities are. To add to the mix, Carolyn and Tony will bring Mayvin’s experience in developing capability and capacity in organisations experiencing severe disruption with unclear, sometimes opposing leadership visions for their futures. They will open the inquiry on day 1 with an invitation to the whole community, run a focused parallel track session on day 2 and aim to offer some insights on the conversation on day 3. They will share their views on what is needed based on developing OD practitioners and communities using Mayvin’s practice-based learning approach and invite you to consider your practice. Where the inquiry goes from there will depend on our conversations and where you want to take it…
Carolyn Norgate, Mayvin
Carolyn is a Principal Consultant at Mayvin, passionate about developing the adaptive capacity of people and systems to learn and thrive. She is known for her leadership, relationship-based approach and strategic and creative thinking and brings both a mindset and set of methodologies from complexity science to her work.
She has 30 years of public sector experience leading teams and services in a variety of L&D, change & OD roles and was a part of the setup and growth of the OD function at one of the UK’s largest and most successful NHS organisations, Guy’s & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust. Moving to the Civil Service OD&D function in 2015, her organisation development and design consulting included working with various Departments, Agencies and Civil Service Professions. Additionally, she worked across the whole Civil service system on developing and implementing a model to enquire into and work with culture at multiple levels – a process still being used there today.
The Future of OD Practice: Individual and Collective Responses to Ongoing Disruption.
How do we respond to the world as it generates and experiences ‘disruptive change’, as OD practitioners and as a network? Carolyn & Tony from Mayvin invite you to join a conference-long inquiry into our individual and collective practice, exploring and sense-making together what we are noticing, what works and where the opportunities are. To add to the mix, Carolyn and Tony will bring Mayvin’s experience in developing capability and capacity in organisations experiencing severe disruption with unclear, sometimes opposing leadership visions for their futures. They will open the inquiry on day 1 with an invitation to the whole community, run a focused parallel track session on day 2 and aim to offer some insights on the conversation on day 3. They will share their views on what is needed based on developing OD practitioners and communities using Mayvin’s practice-based learning approach and invite you to consider your practice. Where the inquiry goes from there will depend on our conversations and where you want to take it…
Lei Pan, Shell
Lei Pan joined Shell’s People Analytics team in 2017 and is currently Global Head of People Insights and Analytics. She focuses on maximize the value of people & organisation data and shaping HR strategy on data and analytics. Lei holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Before joining Shell, she has had various global roles ranging from academia to business covering consultancy, publishing and banking industries. Her expertise is combining data science with behavioural science to understand how people make decisions, improve performance and drive innovation. Lei is a frequent speaker at external events and has a passion to bring external best practices to drive organizational people strategy.
Getting the best out of data on working closely with Organizational development and People insights to drive business outcomes
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges the world faces today and necessitates a rapid transformation of the energy system to net-zero emissions. Shell must play its part, purposefully and profitably, in helping to make these changes happen. To realize the full potential of Shell’s Powering Progress strategy, a strong focus is needed on performance and ability to accelerate the delivery of the transition.
Join this session to hear from Lei Pan, Head of People Insights and Monique Timmermans, VP Organisational Development & Learning, OD Consulting on how to enable the business to drive for performance in a focus way by working closely between People Insights and Organizational Development
Sophy Pern, Metalogue
Sophy is an experienced organisational consultant and executive coach. She brings 25 years of international experience to organisations that are transforming and renewing themselves. She works with executive teams on strategy engagement, organisational design and culture change, and her practice is founded on the understanding that change happens at individual, team and organisational levels, and always in the context of relationships.
She combines intellectual rigour and process, as well as empathy and creativity, particularly in processes of structural change and redesign. She has worked globally with international organisations such as Sanofi, Pepsico, Swarovski, Brittany Ferries, Nexans and Ultra.
“Partnering well: holding good enough tension between internal and external consulting teams”
In this applied session Sophy Pern and Andrew Day share their experience of partnering with client systems in 3 different recent OD projects and the challenges of working systemically in the post-pandemic context.
They will explore the richness that can emerge from combining an inside and outside perspective in the consulting process. They will equally describe some of the difficulties that often arise in the dynamics between internal and external teams, including confusion around responsibility, contracts and boundaries, and how when handled well these can prove to be points of learning and insight for both parties revealing assumptions, projections and systemic dynamics.
Attendees will have an opportunity to explore their experience of partnering as an insider or as an outsider to the system.
Jesse Segers, Sioo
Jesse is the Dean of an independent interuniversity institute, called SIOO, specialized in Executive Education on change management, organizational design, consulting and leadership in the Netherlands. He’s also an Honorary Professor at the University of Exeter, UK, and a former Associate Dean of Education & Master Programs at the Antwerp Management School, Belgium.
He aims to develop mildness and wisdom in himself and others and try to make this world a better place through (re)building institutes that are able to combine stability and openness, institutional and transcending values.
Jesse is a member of the ODNE Board.
Leadership challenges in holding the field as OD-institutes.
Any field of theory and practice needs to answer questions about itself: What is it? What does it do? Why? How? For whom? Organisation Development, ‘scavenger discipline’ or not, is no different. In a vibrant field these will be live questions: who is it that takes on the responsibility of asking and answering them?
Although all practitioners do that to a degree, there are some organisations – one might refer to them as the institutions of OD – that hold this responsibility quite clearly. And some of those organisations are supporters of ODN Europe.
ODN Europe’s purpose is to advance the theory and practice of OD, and we want to both recognise the importance of these ‘holders of the field’ and explore their similarities, differences and connections. Because many of the challenges they face are probably not just organisation specific, they ripple out into communities, societies and industries across the global spectrum.
We are curious about how these organisations lead those who are all experts in OD themselves, who are part of the system in which they practice and contribute to its success or failings, but also stand apart from it. How do these organisations balance economic/business values with the OD values of being humanistic? How do they embrace their own learning as they encourage other organisations to do the same? How do they enable others to stand in uncertainty and emergence, in a complex world that thrives on complexity and demands certainty?
There is a lot to be learned from these organisations, and yet learning from each other as OD institutes is currently underdeveloped in our industry. And it becomes more important for the future of the field as we consider the vulnerable position that OD holds in institutions, in OD groups and in relation to OD programmes in universities.
We will be hosting a special session at the conference to share the results of conversations to be held with a number of OD institutes before the conference. This session is open to anyone who has a leadership or managerial role in OD organisations, and has an interest in exploring some of the tensions and dilemmas that OD institutes are grappling with.
The session will be hosted by Jesse Segers and Sharon Nash. Jesse Segers is Dean at Sioo, an independent interuniversity institute, specialising in Executive Education in change management, organisational design, consulting and leadership in the Netherlands. Sharon is an award winning Organisational Consultant and Leadership Coach, a specialist in behavioural science whose work explores the role that group dynamics, neuroscientific nuances, and systemic complexities in inhibiting or enabling successful transformations. Jesse and Sharon were recently elected to the Board of ODN Europe.
Sarah Storm, Independent Consultant
Sarah’s OD experience started as part of her corporate HR roles in the Chemicals industry. She slowly realised that this is where her strengths and enjoyment lie. Following the Masters in Organisational Change at Ashridge she took the plunge and decided to work as an independent consultant. Since then she’s worked with a range of clients from global automotive companies to small partnerships in the health industry supporting their leadership development and strategic change. Sarah’s worked as an Associate with Roffey Park and Ashridge-Hult.
Sarah’s led Street Wisdom events in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK since 2015.
Street Wisdom
The principle behind Street Wisdom is that inspiration and answers are all around us – if we just remember to look. It’s a creative practice that you can use every day, even for short bursts of time, to gain insights into something that’s on your mind.
Simply, it’s about noticing what you notice as you walk around, and making meaning from this through conversation and reflection. There’s also the benefit of different perspectives as you discuss your experiences with other participants. It’s a lovely way to get to know a new city or to see a familiar place with new eyes.
This event will be in English and Dutch.
Inspiratie en antwoorden zijn overal te vinden – als wij eraan denken om rond ons heen te zoeken. Street Wisdom is een creatieve activiteit die je elke dag kun gebruiken, zelfs voor korte periodes, om inzichten te krijgen in iets dat je bezighoudt.
Simpelweg gaat het erom te merken wat je opvalt en betekenis te vinden door denken en praten. Ook heeft het het voordeel om nieuwe perspectieven te zien door het bespreken van ervaringen met andere deelnemers. Het is een leuke manier om een nieuwe stad te ontdekken of een vertrouwde plek met nieuwe ogen te zien.
Gwen Stirling-Wilkie, Seeds of Transformation
Gwen is a practitioner-educator in organisation development (OD) and applied behavioural science. A former executive leader in commercial and charitable organizations, she is an experienced consultant, educator and author who has been consulting globally in different industries and sectors for 25 years. Her work focuses on creating spaces for transformative conversations to take place. She places relationships and dialogue at the heart of her work, blending her business acumen with extensive consulting experience.
Her first book, ‘From Physical Place to Virtual Space’ (Feb. 2021) was one of the first books published on virtual consulting. It was an Amazon best-seller, and a finalist in the Business Book Awards 2022.
She is currently undertaking a Doctorate in Professional Studies at Middlesex University and writing her second book entitled ‘Omni-Working: A Practical Guide to Inclusive Post-Pandemic Working’ due for publication at the end of 2023.
Gwen is a visiting lecturer at Leeds University Business School and the RCSI University of Medicine & Health Sciences (Ireland). She is faculty on the BMI Dialogic OD Series at Cape Cod Institute (US), and NTL ODC Programme (UK).
Nicola Strong, Independent Consultant
Nicola Strong is an experienced facilitator, change agent, coach, researcher and future thinker. Through her consultancy, Strong Enterprises Limited, Nicola’s work focuses on virtual working, ethical artificial intelligence (AI) and Conversational AI systems. She has just completed a two-year role as a Visiting Research Academic at Institute for Ethical AI (Oxford Brookes University).
Nicola facilitates the “I am Echoborg” show where the audience debates with an AI. Also, she organises and chairs debates and presentations as a working member of the Tech for Good Programme Board, World Humanitarian Forum (WHF).
Can AI compete with a smile?
Conversational AI agents can seem accessible, affordable, informative, collaborative, discrete and friendly. But is this technology really helping employees be the best they can be in their work? With innovative AI being integrated into systems, procedures and processes it would seem logical to assume that an AI agent can, at least, be a useful translator in the evolving complexities of the back office.
But would an AI agent make a good change agent?
“The idea of using the self as an instrument of Organisation Development and Design (OD & D) is central to the field. At the heart of OD & D is the notion that human systems are fundamentally different to mechanistic systems. As human practitioners intervening in human systems, we necessarily use our ‘self’ to do what we do.” (source: Mayvin.co.uk)
One of the many popular beliefs on AI right now is that we are outsourcing our reasoning to machines. As AI becomes more convincing, might we also find ‘Use of Self’ being replicated by machines? What would that mean for us?
In her keynote session on Wednesday 14th, Nicola Strong will explore the evolving relationship between AI and humans, and then open the discussion on what this means for Organisation Development. There may be no clear answers but bring your questions!
Monique Timmermans, Shell OD&L
Vice President, Organizational Development – Consulting, Monique is responsible for Consulting group to enable Shell and its partners to deliver systemic and sustainable organisational transformation to improve performance. Tackling the most complex organisational challenges required to progress the Energy Transition.
She is a People, Change & Leadership Development Executive with significant international experience in designing and implementing large and complex organizational transformations and leadership development interventions at global, regional, and local levels.
She is also a leader and trusted business advisor with a unique ability to leverage a broad set of HR skills and experiences across many different cultures and industries; she has a track record of delivering real business value and an ability to operate at a small as well as very large scale impacting the individual, team and organizational level.
Getting the best out of data on working closely with Organizational development and People insights to drive business outcomes
Climate change is one of the biggest challenges the world faces today and necessitates a rapid transformation of the energy system to net-zero emissions. Shell must play its part, purposefully and profitably, in helping to make these changes happen. To realize the full potential of Shell’s Powering Progress strategy, a strong focus is needed on performance and ability to accelerate the delivery of the transition.
Join this session to hear from Lei Pan, Head of People Insights and Monique Timmermans, VP Organisational Development & Learning, OD Consulting on how to enable the business to drive for performance in a focus way by working closely between People Insights and Organizational Development
