Leadership for Real Systems Change
Thank you for joining our sessions!
We’d love to stay in touch! Tell us what you learned. Or sign up for a free 1:1 consultation with us.
Additional Resources
KONU’S podcast On The Balcony
“Distinguishing Technical Problems from Adaptive Challenges” (book excerpt) by Ronald Heifetz, Alexander Grashow, and Marty Linsky
Video - Introduction to the Leadership Lab: including footage of the in-person workshop and participant experiences from the Philippines Leadership Lab
GELI Podcast: The Global Executive Leadership Initiative interviewed us about systems leadership.
“What humanitarian and development leaders can learn from scientists” by Amy Dong, Shyam Sundaram, Michael Koehler. Paper describing approach and impact of the Leadership Labs as a systems leadership intervention.
Session Materials
Why is it So Hard to Work Together? (Sep 26)
Mentimeter results – Difficult behaviors, losses, and learnings
What Does it Really take to Change a System? (Aug 28)
The challenge
From donors, organizational leaders and institutions seeking to achieve lasting progress on the world’s most complex development challenges, we hear a few common refrains:
We are stuck in a cycle of deploying frameworks and roadmaps, but the underlying challenges persist: Balancing the pressure for quick wins vs. long-term investments. Prioritizing false harmony over productive conflict. Avoiding true commitment to shared frameworks that don’t directly align with our own organization’s goals.
Progress requires cross-boundary collaboration, which can be exhausting. Making even the smallest changes often requires consultation and consensus from across the development spectrum. Yet maintaining relationships across sectors and siloes takes up immense time.
We don’t know where to start to achieve the change we need. ‘Systems change’ has become a centerpiece of development agendas. Yet there remains a lack of shared understanding of what the work involves. Agencies and organizations are under pressure to produce major political change, but lack strategies they can use to mobilize actors towards shared objectives.
In order to navigate complex, multi-layered challenges, we need a shared toolkit to diagnose obstacles to progress and mobilize change within social systems.
OUR OFFER
KONU and Dalberg are hosting open-enrollment workshops exploring the challenge of Systems Leadership. These workshops will invite change agents in international development to explore powerful concepts from the Adaptive Leadership framework, and make progress on the complex, systemic challenges they are tackling.
WHY IS IT SO HARD TO WORK TOGETHER? (AND HOW TO DO IT NEVERTHELESS!)
Virtual Session
September 26, 2023, 8:00-9:30am ET
Learn more and sign up here.
WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO CHANGE A SYSTEM? (AND WHY DO WE SO OFTEN FAIL?)
Virtual Session
August 29, 2023, 8:00-9:30am ET
Learn more and sign up here.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
These offerings are best suited for:
Executives and managers who have been tasked with implementing programs that depend on political work to shift stakeholders’ perspectives or behaviors
Agency and organizational leaders who sense that pathways to greater scale or deeper impact require engaging complex stakeholder ecosystems
Donors who support organizations or initiatives working to achieve systemic change
WHAT’S OUR EXPERTISE?
The material for these workshops draws from the Systems Leadership Lab, a recently completed initiative between the UN, GELI, KONU and Dalberg. Learn more in the video below.
“It’s rare for us to have such deep, frank conversations that cut across government, UN, private sector, and civil society.””
“It is amazing - the fact that we’re creating a coalition with all these senior leaders in gov’t and local communities - this is a new way of working for us.”