Organizational Learning and Strategy Development
Workshop · 2 Days · For Strategy Leaders and Executives
How do organizations learn -- and how do you develop strategies when the future cannot be planned?
Organizations learn -- but rarely in the way one might imagine. They assimilate the new into existing patterns rather than changing their patterns. Strategies are developed but not lived. Transformations are proclaimed, but the organization does not transform.
This workshop connects two themes that belong together: how organizations learn (and why they often don't) -- and how strategies can emerge that do justice to the openness of the future.
What You Will Learn
Understanding Organizational Learning
You distinguish between assimilation and accommodation: When does an organization fit new knowledge into existing structures -- and when does it change the structures themselves? You recognize typical learning barriers and understand why organizations often learn precisely what confirms them.
Thought Collectives and Blind Spots
You understand how shared thought styles emerge in organizations -- and why they simultaneously enable and prevent innovation. Thought collectives make action possible, but they also produce systematic blind spots.
Adaptive Strategy Development
You learn to think of strategy not as a plan, but as a process. How do you develop orientation in uncertain environments? How do you keep options open without becoming arbitrary? How do visions of the future become the capacity to act?
Expectation Management in Transformations
You explore how expectations arise in transformation processes -- and why their disappointment is almost inevitable. You develop strategies to consciously navigate this dynamic rather than fighting against it.
How the Workshop Unfolds
Learning: Recognizing Patterns
Strategy: Creating Orientation
“The future is not the space of our hopes and fears. It is the space of our uncertainty.”
— Heinz von Foerster (paraphrased)
Who Is This Workshop For?
This workshop does not offer best practices. We work with the insight that in complex environments, there can be no best practices.
What Should You Bring?
“Recognize the situation. Reckon with your defects. Proceed from your resources, not your slogans.”
— Gottfried Benn
Practical Information
Pre-Sensing and Post-Sensing
The workshops are accompanied by two online sessions:
The Pre-Sensing session gives us the opportunity for a first introduction and to build a shared foundation. We clarify organizational questions and align expectations.
The Post-Sensing session supports reflection on the experience after a few weeks, exploring what has proven useful in daily work.
Interested? Register now.
Who Leads the Workshop
Falk Engelmann
Thinks in systems, works with people. For over 18 years, he has been accompanying teams and organizations in understanding their own patterns -- and intervening where change is actually possible.
Questions about the workshop?
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Schedule a conversation (30 min)Also of interest:
Organization beyond the agility dogma Strengthening decision-making capacityTheoretical Foundations
Assimilation and Accommodation
Organizations process new experiences in two ways: They adapt the new to existing structures (assimilation) -- or they change their structures (accommodation). True learning requires both, but accommodation is incomparably harder.
Thought Collectives
Groups develop shared thought styles that determine what counts as true, relevant or possible. These thought collectives enable efficient action -- but simultaneously make certain insights invisible.
Learning Barriers
Organizations develop systematic obstacles to their own learning: defensive routines, selective perception, success attribution. Recognizing these barriers is the first step toward addressing them.
Strategy as Orientation
Strategy is not prediction. It is a framework that provides orientation without fixing the future. Adaptive strategy development works with scenarios, options and experiments -- not with five-year plans.
Expectation Structures
Transformations create expectations they cannot fulfill. Disappointment is built in. Those who understand this can consciously shape expectations -- rather than being surprised by their inevitable non-fulfillment.
From Projection to Practice
Visions of the future are projections -- not predictions. They become effective when translated into concrete experiments. The path from vision to practice leads through small, testable steps, not through grand programs.