Barry Oshry created the Organization Workshop as a practical, hands-on learning experience to bring to life his systems view of power and leadership in organizations. Oshry’s systems concepts are described fully in his books Leading Systems, The Possibilities of Organization, and Seeing Systems.

Robert Rehm and Nancy Cebula have been certified by Barry Oshry to lead the Organization Workshop.

The Organization Workshop can be done as a one-day stand-alone exercise or it can be combined with organization change projects. The Organization Workshop is frequently used by all kinds of organizations as part of their overall leadership and management development programs.

Purpose

The purpose of the Organization Workshop is to give you an opportunity to learn what life is like in different system spaces within any organization—Top, Bottom, Middle, and Customer—and to use these learnings to produce more satisfaction for you and more powerful results for your organization.

The Organization Workshop produces the following results for participants:

CLARITY—You will see organizational life and your role in it more clearly than you have ever seen them before.

LEADERSHIP—You will discover expanded possibilities for making happen what you want to have happen in your organization.

CONTRIBUTION—You will make more productive contributions to the various systems in which you live and work, and you will derive greater satisfaction from making these contributions.

RELATIONSHIPS—You will create organizational relationships that are more lasting, supportive, productive, and satisfying.

The Format of the Organization Workshop

The Organization Workshop involves a variety of learning activities:

ORGANIZATION SIMULATIONS

The workshop is based on the premise that people learn best through their own experience. Therefore, the unique feature of the Organization Workshop is a set of real-life simulations. These simulations recreate clearly the issues, dilemmas, challenges and opportunities each of us faces in day-to-day organization life. They are “living cases.”

The simulations enable us to put the organization under the microscope, to see how it works, to see what causes it to break down, and to discover powerfully productive alternatives for ourselves and others.

TOOTs (Times Out Of Time)

Periodically in these organization simulations the action is stopped. All members—Tops, Middles, Bottoms, and Customers—are brought into one place to examine what life in the organization is like for everyone. Times Out Of Time are unparalleled opportunities to see how organizations are experienced from many different vantage points, thereby deepening our insight into organization life and opening up more productive action strategies.

CONCEPT PRESENTATIONS AND DISCUSSIONS

We share our latest findings, observations, and analyses regarding power and leadership in organizations. These presentations and discussions provide powerful ways of seeing and comprehending organizational life. And you develop practical strategies to move from being stuck in relationship problems to creating healthy partnerships throughout your organizational life.

APPLICATION

You have the opportunity to work on application of the learnings from the Organization Workshop. Application sessions are crafted to fit the needs of you and your organization. In these application sessions you will be stimulated, challenged, and supported to carry forth the learning of the workshop into your day-to-day organization life.