Perspective

The world churns in complexity, conflict, change and uncertainty.

As people and whole organizations strain to keep up, peace and high performance, by any other names, are the central challenge of every enterprise. In corporations and communities, startups and silos, from team rooms and committee meetings to executive leadership and governing boards – we need to do more, and do it more together.

When given the chance, ordinary people handle what’s charged and challenging in extraordinary ways. Even, and especially, in the most trying times, it’s possible and necessary to keep finding and feeding those things that still work. Together, we can:

  • Create more satisfied customers and engaged employees
  • Invite faster and smarter innovation and adaptation
  • Deliver more business value and bigger social and environmental impact

In any kind of organization or working group, we can mobilize fully-engaged all hands initiatives, translate pain points into roadmaps that teams can rally around, and cultivate the collaborative relationships and practices that drive results in turbulent times. We can regain balance and momentum.

The things we want can emerge, in spite of everything, faster and easier than you’d expect. That’s been my experience in corporate strategic planning, agile transformation, and in the middle of an armed civil war; in economic development and employee engagement; with start-ups, community groups and foundations; students from grade school to grad school, every level of government, and many religious organizations and denominations. I think we should try.

Practices

Everything is urgent. We’re expected to respond quickly and effectively to all kinds of change or disruption. In spite of everything, we can cultivate resilience. Engage, learn, adapt, transform. Breathe. Invite new focus, catalyze action, sustain effort, scale and grow. These simple shifts can help us work in more powerful, humane and sustainable ways:

  • Invite Everyone to Focus and Engage (open more space)
  • Visualize Everything to Plan and Manage Effectively (create a canvas or marketplace)
  • Commit Incrementally to Deliver Dependably (synchronize efforts)
  • Learn Together to Improve, Replicate, Scale and Evolve (review, refine, repeat)
Cycle Practice: Invite Everyone Who Cares, Visualize Everything, Prioritize and Refine, Commit and Deliver, Review and Improve, Rinse and Repeat.

This approach is immediately practical, for any kind of business or community intiative, with the people and resources you already have. It works with all of the outcomes you need to achieve (your high performance) and everything that’s getting in the way (disturbing your peace).

Start with one or a few teams. Link product and marketing, sales and finance, or any other sorts of teams, in reinforcing, collaborative cycles. Connect supporting functions and allied groups. For best results, leaders go first. Start with the senior team, board and committee chairs, or any other core group – and work out from there.

Possibilities

What are your biggest challenges or needs? Increasing engagement and improving performance? Catalyzing change and adaptation? Accelerating innovation and learning? Restoring balance and vitality? Growing something new and amazing? OR… solving something very specific, local and/or technical?

Consider these possibilities:

Gain PerspectiveContact me to talk about what you’re up against and the outcomes you want to achieve. Identify priorities. Involve key partners and stakeholders. Chart a more direct course to the results you want.

Mobilize Teams and Networks – Invite and engage any size group (from 5-500+ people) in a wildly productive conference, summit, retreat or other strategic or tactical meeting. The more complexity, diversity and urgency, the better. We pioneered large online meetings in 2015, by the way!

Leverage Resources – Maximize the impact of the people, tools and resources you already have. Support champions, engage innovators, coordinate efforts, catalyze conversations and experiments. Make learning contagious.

Increase Agility – Accelerate innovation, adaptation and growth, from the C-suite to the team rooms, to improve customer experience, employee morale, business value and social impact.

Ride the Wave – Leverage the turbulence, lead the transformation, scale and grow, gain and regain balance and momentum, and keep your head above the water!

Experience

I’ve been inviting and supporting peace and high performance, with clients and colleagues on six continents, for more than 30 years.  The common threads are bringing people together and getting stuff done – getting the old work done easier and making new things possible.


In 1990, I was an Outward Bound wilderness course instructor with an MBA in Finance from a top-ranked business school. Since then, I’ve been recognized for my teaching, writing and facilitation of self-organization, team learning, and enterprise agility.

A tenacious learner, I get pretty excited about discovering, sharing and co-developing better ways of working together on things that matter. The “Inviting Organization” I first described in this website, in 1998, is still a useful roadmap for the biggest challenges facing organizations today.

My work with clients connects time-tested principles and leading edge practices — for transforming established organizations, engaging networks and communities, and guiding energetic startups.

I serve as a strategic partner to leaders and champions, innovators and learners, disrupters and transformers. Please have a look around – and contact me if I can help you cut a more direct path to the outcomes you really want.

More Bio | Case Stories | Writing

Resources

Here are my two most important and frequently shared resources: detailed practice guides for Open Space and Business Agility.

The Resources Library offers a small heap of other original material, including papers, checklists, practice tools, plus links to supporting materials written by others.

click to view/download – 60 pages
click to view/download – 31 pages

Let’s Talk

What are you working on? 

I serve as a strategic partner. Clients call me a process designer, facilitator, teacher, consultant, project manager or coach.

My work brings people together, gets things done, and grows more of what works in teams and organizations.

How can I help you?

Email: michael@michaelherman.com

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