Session M - Pre-Conference Session
Dave Flanigan and Tracy Huston on
The Leader's Real Work: Transforming the System from the Inside-Out

 


Dave Flanigan

Biography: Dave is co-founder of Menlo Lab, has 33 years of global business experience in the automotive and financial service sectors.  Dave was President of Ford Credit International where he led 9,500 employees and developed highly profitable financial services businesses in 38 countries.  After retiring from Ford, he now employs his leadership and business transformation experience to coach other leaders in building high-performing teams and creating whole-system, cross-sector change.  Clients include Exxon Mobil, the National Security Agency, the World Bank and Nissan. He is Chairman of the Detroit Institute for Children, serves as Trustee of the Society for Organizational Learning, and actively supports community transformation projects throughout the global Menlo network.

Website: www.MenloLab.org

Contact: Dave can be reached by email at davidflanigan@tampabay.rr.com for additional information about this post-conference session.

Tracy Huston

Biography: Tracy is the co-founder of Menlo Lab, a global, non-profit network of leaders from the public and private sectors dedicated to creating the social and economic conditions needed to ensure sustainable well being, for our institutions and the people they serve. She brings over 20 years experience in working with leaders from business, social services, government, healthcare, education, and non-profit organizations in effecting meaningful and sustainable change to generate the results they want. Her work with executives and line leaders from global corporations, as well as with leaders from school districts, social services agencies, civic groups, and youth, represents the breadth and depth of expertise required to successfully engage all stakeholders in complex systems to overcome barriers to collaboration and co-create the innovative solutions that work and last. Her approaches address both the personal and systemic transformation needed to not only initiate but to sustain real change.

Tracy is the author of the book Inside-Out: Stories and Methods for Generating Collective Will to Create the Future We Want (Society for Organizational Learning, 2007), and of numerous articles published in organizational learning and leadership development journals. She is engaged as a speaker at organizational learning, systems thinking, and other forums throughout the country, and is a member of the Society for Organizational Learning and the Presencing Institute.

Website: www.MenloLab.org

Contact: Tracy can be reached by email at tracyhuston@ca.rr.com for additional information about this post-conference session.


Title: The Leader's Real Work: Transforming the System From the Inside-Out

Date: Monday, April 27th

Length: 3 hours (8:30-11:30am)

Location: California State University, 18111 Nordhoff Street, Northridge

Cost:
 
None

Description: Menlo Lab's network of leaders has been using a series of whole system change practices that have proven to generate profound breakthroughs in record-breaking time, and very low cost. In co-leading Menlo Lab’s cross-sector change work over the past two years, we have significantly advanced our learning about the role of leaders in creating the conditions that allow for innovations across institutional boundaries, and in ways that generate sustainable economic, social, and ecological well being.

In our Saturday session, Menlo Lab co-founders will share learning from real-world social innovation projects in Detroit and LA, as well as from global corporations engaged in addressing the challenges of generating strategic breakthroughs within complex systems. On Sunday, attendees interested in exploring some of Menlo Lab’s reflection and observation practices used to stimulate generative thinking as the foundation for innovation may join us for a walk in Nature on Sunday afternoon. Monday’s workshop will provide hands-on experiences of Menlo pathways and practices used to move from deep learning to shared visioning and execution of breakthrough ideas via rapid prototyping.

Each opportunity to join Menlo Lab co-founders will provide both living examples as well as develop your own capacity to lead whole system change from the "inside-out." Please join us for any or all of these events.

Target Audience: Leaders who desire to create whole system change within complex multi-stakeholder environments, and to generate profound breakthroughs.

Organization Issues: this session will address...

  • Rapidly changing and unpredictable conditions—a state of “whitewater”
  • Working across institutions and public-private sector boundaries
  • Redefining the role of leadership in ways that develop our collective capacity
  • Moving from idea generation to execution through rapid cycles, in ways that expand learning and also deliver significant results
  • Improving results through both reflection and learning-in-action, at the speed of change

Objectives: Through the Menlo Lab events and Monday workshop, you will get:

  • New ideas about ways you can lead whole system change from the “inside-out”
  • Tools you can use to create breakthroughs in a generative visioning and prototyping process
  • Renewed commitment and will for leading change, even within the most complex conditions

Handouts: Available for download after Forum