Developing practical capability to design, manage and facilitate productive collaboration in the messy reality of work and life

Based on the research of Julian Day, PhD.

“The Design of Collaborative Projects”

The Creator of the Systemic Stairway®

I believe

Collaborative projects are the driver of organisational effectiveness.

Facilitation methodologies are necessary to ensure intelligent collaboration.

Mastery in practice requires deep insight into collaboration theory

This video introduces Deliberate Collaboration and why it is important to you and your organisation

This PDF Download gives a map of my training courses, facilitation service, free masterclasses and self-study offerings.

Learn the methodologies that I have practiced, refined and taught over 30 years

Designing Collaboration

Whether we are aware of it or not, collaborations have designs, some more productive than others. Systemic Collaboration is a practical methodology that enables you to design and facilitate intelligent collaborations for unique situations, projects or organisational initiatives that you need to manage.

Managing Collaboration

The Systemic Stairway® is reusable collaboration design that I use as a professional facilitator for the bulk of my work. It will enable you to enter messy, unstructured, complex situations and make sense of them rapidly, create executable decisions and secure commitments necessary to “get things done”.

Facilitating Collaboration

This advanced training course will appeal to people who want to offer a facilitation service within their organisations. It emphasises the practicalities of facilitating small and large group collaborations using the Systemic Stairway® methodology and is a pre-requisite for people who want to train the Systemic Stairway®.

Understand collaboration theory

My white paper published by Henley Business School on Deliberate Collaboration offers deep insight into the underlying theory of human collaboration.

Feel free to download the paper or view a 30 minute masterclass

Practical management for anybody who needs to manage anything

This book helps to fill a gap in management development. It provides a practical methodology that enables anybody to manage anything. It offers universal principles and reliable tools and techniques that can be applied to any complex situation that needs to be managed. The Systemic Stairway® will enable you to answer four fundamental questions:

1. What is going on?

Learn how to enter a complex, ‘messy’, unstructured situation and rapidly make sense of it using a systemic approach. Quickly identify priorities and where to direct your energy.

2. What should we do?

Learn how to generate interesting new ideas that will enable you to rethink your mindset and make executable decisions with massive potential to bring about positive change.

3. Who will commit to action?

Learn a reliable approach for project managing change and also learn how to execute strategy through a powerful commitment management process.

4. What have we learnt?

Because management is messy and we learn from experience, good managers need to be quick learners, so an action learning process is built into the methodology to accelerate experiential learning.

The Systemic Stairway® also provides real-life case studies that may resonate with your own private and work life. And because most complex situations inevitably involve collaborating with other people, you will understand the role of facilitation and how to help other people to help themselves.

Facilitation Service

Do you need to develop new business strategy?
Do you need to make an important strategic or operational decision?
Do you have an organisational challenge you need to overcome, an issue you need to resolve?
Are you trying to increase your teams collaboration and performance?
Do you need alignment to shared goals, priorities and strategy?

Strategy

Decision-making

Change Management

Problem-solving

Project Management

Team performance

For any business or team, in any industry, I facilitate 1-2 day sessions (in-person or virtually) enabling you to get things done. Using Systems Thinking approaches I help groups or teams to:

Collaboratively agree on their strategic or operational priorities
Make high-leverage, executable decisions
Drive commitment management to ensure implementation
Create real impact and real change

References and testimonials

I can fully endorse Dr Julian Day and the Systemic Stairway™. The method was enormously helpful in creating the great success we have had at Henley in Africa.

Jon Foster PedleyDean, Henley Business School

We would like to thank Julian for the contribution he has have made to our critical thinking process and using your Systemic Stairway™ decision making is really powerful.

Yvonne WilliamsHead Employee Experience | People and Culture, Standard Bank Group

Our success in the Region lay in obtaining the input of every single employee in the structure into the overall view of the business, and then of course processing this input through Dr Day’s tried and tested Systemic Stairway™ methodology. Using the principals of the methodology I was able to extinguish fires and settle the Region on a path to success.

Avi RamgoolamRegional General Manager, Old Mutual