November 9 – 13, 2009
Chris Nichols, Chris Seeley, Nick Ceasar, Hugh Pidgeon, Philip Franses
Already booked on the course? Click here for course resources
Recent economic events have told us that our present economic system is vulnerable. Can organisations be successful and genuinely sustainable – in the broadest sense? Is business capable of taking a different path?
This unique and innovative workshop brings together the joint faculty of Schumacher College and Ashridge, a leading European business school and consultancy.
Using both provocative teaching and highly experiential ways of working the course will explore and teach how holistic thinking challenges and changes traditional approaches to business strategy, planning and purpose.
“A workshop to create challenge, offer inspiration and invite change”
Chris Nichols, Director of Strategy Engagement, Ashridge Consulting
During this course we will:
You will leave with both an education into the frontiers of strategy and an action plan for actually doing something in you organisation or with your clients.
“My experience at Schumacher College was really challenging and inspiring. It helped me become more deeply rooted in my commitment to developing sustainable cities. I recommend professionals spend time at Schumacher College as I know it is a place where future leaders are developed.”
Peter Head, a Director of Arup
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This workshop will benefit:
Before the course
There will be some suggested (not compulsory) reading and invitation to do some personal reflection / inquiry into what strategy means in your workplace. For example, how it is made, the language and imagery used within it.
There will be a web group set up and an invitation to “meet” on a conference call to get to know each other and start the group working. This is not compulsory, but all participants are warmly invited.
Course Content
Monday: Becoming a Group
Tuesday: Engaging with Gaia
Wednesday: Deepening and Sharing Practice
Thursday: How Does Change Happen?
Friday: Developing a Community of Practice
Post course
Chris Nichols, Ashridge Consulting. Chris is a consultant with over 25 years of experience in creative group work. He has been with Ashridge for nine years, and co-directs the strategy engagement group. He is an accredited Ashridge coach. He has worked globally with almost every sector: government, charity and commercial. He currently specialises in board level facilitation and the design and facilitation of large group explorative learning. Chris embraces innovative styles of work. He is co-counder of www.groundedcreativity.com, developed to allow non-verbal exploration of complex issues. Creativity, writing, poetry and art all find a place in his way of working. Chris is a widely requested and provocative keynote speaker across the domains of strategic thinking, deep risk and creative leadership responses. A close associate of Schumacher College, Chris is dedicated to facilitating and developing profound examination of the role of leaders and organisations in working in right relationship with the natural world.
Chris Seeley, Course Director, Masters in Responsibility in Business Practice, Bath / Ashridge. Chris has extensive experience working with business service and economic development organisations and has worked in the micro and small enterprise development sector since 1992 in the UK, US, Africa and Asia. She co-founded a new technology-based business working in restoration for the water industry. She completed the MSc in Responsibility and Business Practice at the University of Bath in 2001 and her doctorate at the University of Bath’s Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice in 2006. Chris is also a Research Associate at the Social Sculpture Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University and works with students at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her involvement with sustainability issues foregrounded the need for our species to come to know the world in many different ways – including ‘presentational knowing’ or arts-based practice. Increasingly, she has found herself using the visual arts, storytelling, clowning, improvisation and forum theatre (in Sri Lanka) in her educational, business and development work practices. This interweaving of her concerns was articulated in her unconventional PhD – Wild Margins:Playing at Work and Life which explores the overlapping relationship between purposeful work and the arts, and arts-based practice which holds intentions around sustainability.
Philip Franses, Lecturer in Complexity and Holistic Science at Schumacher College. In September 2009 Philip joined the MSc in Holistic Science Faculty as teacher of complexity. Born in 1958 in England, Philip studied mathematics at New College Oxford from 1976 to 1980. Academia’s dull explanation of the world inspired Philip on a counter-journey into the depths of experience, travelling and a re-sensitisation to quality. In 2005, after a fifteen-year career designing intelligent software, culminating in a programme now used in The Netherlands by all Dutch courts, Philip had a chance encounter with Satish Kumar and was moved to come to Schumacher as an MSc student. Here he was especially inspired by the work and scientific approaches of Goethean scientist Henri Bortoft, the physicist Basil Hiley and the late Brian Goodwin, professor of biology.
Philip now runs local workshops in Goethean science, offering people a foundation to a “whole way” of seeing the world; and with Basil, Philip began the forum Process and Pilgrimage, inaugurated in 2009 at Birkbeck College. From 2006 Philip worked with Brian on a computer model exploring the interpretation of meaning within the DNA code. Taking up Brian’s work on complexity and chaos theory has also led to an exciting partnership with Aboca herbal health company, restoring the whole herb as the qualitative source of health.
Nick Ceasar and Hugh Pidgeon of Ashridge Consulting will also be contributing to this course.
Business for a Better World, by Chris Nichols & Chris Seeley
What if we thought about business as a relationship; a relationship with people and the planet. Forthcoming in Resurgence Magazine
For individuals, NGOs, educational & public sector organisations and businesses: One week £1,600
All course fees include accommodation, food, field trips and all teaching sessions.
Book your place now – click here to access our on-line booking system
Book by fax or mail – click here to find out how
10% for residents of South West England
20% with five or more people coming from the same organisation on the same course
(only one discount applicable per booking)
For further information about Schumacher College please see About the College
To provisionally reserve a place for 5 days, email us your contact details and the name of the course admin@schumachercollege.org.uk
We will hold the place for five working days for reservations – three weeks before a course or earlier. After five days we will automatically offer your place to someone else if we have not received your application.
This course is offered in conjunction with Ashridge Consulting
