Change is quickening for individuals, communities, and institutions around the world. Often change brings excitement and opportunity, but sometimes it challenges us. How do we adapt to that change and cope with the messiness that results?

Judy Oakden recently collaborated with Glenda Eoyang, founder of the Human Systems Dynamics Institute to run this virtual Adaptive Action Lab.

The Adaptive Action Lab was a three-session online training programme. Most of the participants were from New Zealand and some attended our earlier workshop at the ANZEA conference.

Participants were shown and had a chance to use the methods and models of Human Systems Dynamics. Founder Glenda Eoyang originally designed these powerful tools to help make sense of the chaotic change around we see around us. Participants were shown that these methods and models were simple to use.

The Adaptive Action Lab covered:

• Telling the difference between complex change and merely complicated change
• Seeing and shifting simple patterns in their most wicked challenges
• Helping participants find language to understand and explain their intuitions about what works in complex change
• Exploring the challenges of planning, evaluation, communications, and leadership in times of radical and unpredictable change
• Leveraging the power and possibility of complexity.