HORIZONS

ThREE

WORKSHOPS

What portrait will your colleagues create of your organization’s present, transition, and future?

It usually begins with the realization that a team has hit an innovation wall or feels constrained by iterative approaches. There is a willingness to expand beyond the boundaries of conventional thinking and a desire to avoid replicating the same set of values and conditions structuring the dominant present. The team yearns for different futures but can’t imagine how they get there from here.

Through an adapted version of Bill Sharpe’s Three Horizons*, groups acknowledge the past-present, imagine alternative futures, and identify disruptive interventions to business-as-usual. This process enables groups to move beyond reductionist, binary thinking and into spaces of emergence and possibility that unlock the innovation capacities of everyone participating.

  • “The Three Horizons framework was really good—the recognition of decline of base ‘dominant’ business, and the growth of the alternative, and helping the stuff that needs to die, to indeed die.”

  • “My favourite part of the workshop was enabling imagination in a mostly technical group of people.”

  • “I found the workshop very useful in the expansion of thought, and in beginning to manage the emotional impact of the changes we need to make”

  • “Great facilitators that were able to evolve the conversation organically to opening up mindsets.”

  • “My favourite aspect of the workshop was seeing team members from different parts of the organization explain their thinking/mindset.”

WORKSHOP FORMATS

In-person, virtual, or hybrid

  • Th half-day is ideal for groups wanting to get a taster of what is possible within Three Horizons, and if you are trying to fit it into a broader retreat agenda. We begin with a discovery call to shape your objectives for the workshop. We present a design plan for approval, and invitations to circulate to colleagues. Over three to four hours, we facilitate myriad breakout groups to populate most of the horizons. Pre-readings help participants open themselves up to other ways of being and knowing. A short report documents what emerged during the workshop for participants and colleagues.

  • The full-day is the most popular option as it enables us to dive deeply into all the horizons, with longer breakout groups for the participants to surface deeper responses. We introduce both practices and a guest speaker that further expand the group’s thinking and being. The time can be broken into two half-days or one full-day. In addition to the scope for the half-day, we also create a survey for participants to evaluate outcomes, write a report with emergent findings, and prepare a presentation for internal audiences.

  • A two-day workshop is for teams who are deeply committed to emerging concrete outcomes for transitions. While the first day is similar to our full day workshop, the second day enables us to move from the “what” to the “how”—bridging strategy and implementation. We invite other guests to join us for the second day who are steeped in the groundwork of transitions. We will also have more time dedicated to developing participants’ capacities to hold change and remain in the productive zone of disequilibrium (Heifetz & Laurie).

Design Your ROOM

In identifying “solutions” within a Three Horizons context, we examine what kinds of change we are inviting and how those interventions might shape alternative futures or perpetuate business-as-usual.

TRANSITIONS

Client
WELLBEING PROJECT & GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY

Year
November 2023-JANUARY 2024

FORMAT
Three-month Learning Journey

Participants
50

Client
Royal Roads University & Resilience by Design Lab

Year
December 2023

FORMAT
Two-day hybrid

Participants
30

Client
TRU Gaglardi School of business & economics

Year
May 2023

FORMAT
half-DAY futures

Participants
24

WORKSHOP
TRANSFORMING EDUCATIONAL FUTURES

Year
April 2023

FORMAT
75 MINUTES

Participants
61

Client
Prestigious Washington DC University

Year
April 2023

FORMAT
Three-day

Participants
90

Client
Parkland Refinery

Year
September 2022

FORMAT
FULL-DAY

Participants
20

Client
AACSB Innovation Committee

Year
April 2022

FORMAT
Half-day

Participants
29

* Three Horizons Framework created by Bill Sharpe (Shared by CC BY-SA 4.0)