The Wellcome Trust (London, UK)

The Wellcome Trust is an independent research-funding charity, established under the will of Sir Henry Wellcome in 1936 with an endowment of around £15 billion. Its mission is ‘to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health’.  To this end, the Trust supports biomedical research and applied clinical research.  It also encourages the translation of research findings into policy and practice.
 
The Trust wished to make a leap forward in terms of scope, depth and impact of their world-wide product offerings. Given his extensive background in health, international development and learning, Hal was invited to join the consulting team and assist the Trust in revising the strategic direction of their learning division.

The work included an assessment of the world-wide value networks (NGOs, ministries of health, WHO, health education institutions) for the disease areas such as dengue and malaria in which the Trust is active. Hal’s contribution focused on designing new approaches and products that support learning and knowledge management for doctors, nurses, ministries of health, clinical officers and community health workers world-wide.

United Nations Development Programme Country Office Timor-Leste (Dili, Timor-Leste)

Hal Richman and associate Jessie Combre (with a combined total of 25 years working in the UN system) undertook an assignment in the UNDP country office in Timor-Leste focused on an evaluation of the learning and development needed to improve leadership and staff performance.

Through document review, interviews and focus groups they asked (and answered) the following questions:

• Over the next three years, what demands will arise in a changing development environment, and how will these demands affect future office performance and staff competency requirements, given today’s realities?
• How do we create an environment where all staff members see their individual results and competency development linked to the Corporate and Country Office strategic goals, as well as their own career development?
• What factors might negatively impact performance, and how can they be addressed? Issues might include: supervisory practices (e.g., performance management), staff morale, incentives, access to assistance from co-workers and other UN affiliates, availability of software tools and technology, etc.

Their recommendations included a series of leadership and competency development initiatives to create an enabling environment for performance and learning. They saw that the role of learning and development is first, to create a safe, effective environment for learning and performance based on leadership, trust, respect, effective communications and teamwork. Without this enabling environment, retreats, organizational assessments, workflow analysis, isolated management training and more in-depth operational/program training would likely descend into a fog.

Part of the deliverables included a competency map with gaps for each unit and guidelines for the development of a “whole office” learning plan.

Chaos Leadership

Fast moving business environments resemble disaster management or military operations. Conventional leadership, organizational development and collaboration approaches, with their emphasis on process and left brain orientation that often ignores body, emotion and spirit, are just too limiting to be useful. Something new, something bolder needs to emerge that fits the on-the-ground realities faced by leaders in complex and chaotic environments.

To meet this challenge we have been developing programs in what we call Chaos Leadership©.

Chaos Leadership© is designed to help leaders and players achieve a rapid integration of brain, heart and body – individually and collectively – that enable flexible and adaptive responses to constant change. Elements of the program include:

• Rapid assessment of the environment and re-formulation of strategy and approach
• Collaborative techniques that draw out and maximize collective intelligence
• Establishment of concrete objectives and outcome measures for the program that link back to leadership challenges at work
• Practices for personal mastery

In conjunction with East Coast Outfitters in Nova Scotia we have been developing and piloting Chaos Leadership© workshops using ocean kayaking as a learning lab for leadership development.

Read a recent article on this in Adventure Kayak magazine.