A one-year intensive to cultivate deep mindsets and skillsets for leading systems change. Contact us for more information.

​​

How it Works

​

The System Leadership Institute brings together small teams from existing and emerging collaboratives in your system or network, advancing deep learning in a series of highly experiential and application-driven courses over one year. The training content and sequencing support the launch (or reboot) of effective systems change networks.

​

A Phased Approach

​

A year-long program with 9 days of course time plus coaching, while transformative, is an intense commitment for anyone. That’s why we suggest taking a phased approach to testing, building support for, and designing a System Leadership Institute. This helps minimize risk and maximize shared ownership of the program and avoids it becoming a top-down, flavor-of-the-month, or funder-driven initiative that no one actually asked for.

​

1. Initial Testing: To understand the current pain points in existing collaboratives and whether there is an appetite to deepen their skills in leading multi-stakeholder systems change, we conduct a set of initial exploratory conversations (virtual) with current and emerging leaders.

2. Assessment: If our initial testing indicates interest in exploring the capacity-building concept further, CoCreative provides potential participants with a Collaborative Assessment tool to evaluate their collaborative's performance against 36 indicators in 6 areas. CoCreative meets 1:1 (virtual or face-to-face) with your local leaders to review their assessments and understand their interests and preferences around training and coaching. When this is done in person, we conduct a live session with all potential participants where they can experience the Collaborative Innovation methodology and we can confirm their shared training and coaching interests for an Institute.

3. Training: Once we’ve contracted with the participants to move forward, we initiate the year-long Institute to deliver specific frameworks, mindsets, and practical tools to support participants in leading powerful change in complex systems.

​

Institute Courses

​

1. Collaborative Innovation Essentials (2 days) covers the basic process model, critical success factors, key dynamics, and the basic methods we use to lead effective multi-stakeholder collaboration toward powerful outcomes.

2. Facilitating Collaborative Innovation (1.5 days) is a highly experiential course focused on the nuts-and-bolts planning, facilitation, and leadership practices to help diverse groups move from goal setting to advancing real work together.

3. Leading with Purpose and Awareness (1 day) is a deep dive into effective "use of self" as an agent of change. The course focuses on developing awareness of what’s happening at multiple levels of the system in which you’re leading, from interpersonally to very large systems, working more consistently from a clear intent, and working effectively with discomfort, fear, and anxiety that can arise when we lead complex, high-risk endeavors

4. Leveraging Conflict for Innovation (1.5 days) provides a framework and tools for seeing, mapping and leveraging the fundamental differences among stakeholders’ values in order to convert conflict and polarization into authentic alignment and productive collaboration.

5. The Building Collaborations for Systems Change Action Lab (3 days) brings together all the learning from the previous courses in a high-energy, applied lab experience in which the work of each collaborative is advanced in real-time.

 

​Each of these courses may be adapted to better meet the specific interests of your constituents.
We're also happy to discuss developing alternate courses to meet your specific needs.

 

Who it is for

​

The leadership teams of existing and/or emerging collaboratives in your community or system and the consultants and facilitators who will support them over time.

​

Other Program Elements

​

• Coaching: To maximize the value of the training, CoCreative provides twelve 90-minute virtual coaching and integration sessions for all participants between course offerings. These calls would provide customized support for participants to integrate the training content into the current work of their initiatives. The virtual coaching sessions also serve to strengthen the connections across the learning community by facilitating peer-to-peer support and helping people to understand one another’s work and challenges more clearly.

• Backbone Support: We can also provide consulting support to organizations that will serve as “backbone” organizations supporting networks and collaborations that emerge during the program.

 

Program Requirements

 

We require a minimum of 24 participants and no more than 36 participants for this program. A “host” organization/fiscal sponsor will be needed to resource and coordinate training and coaching logistics, facilities, food, and training materials reproduction.

​

Interested in exploring the Institute format? Let's talk.