Recent economic events have told us that our present economic system is vulnerable. Can organisations be successful and genuinely sustainable – in the broadest sense? Is business capable of taking a different path?
Schumacher College is hosting a unique and innovative workshop in February 2011, bringing together the faculty of Schumacher College and Ashridge, a leading European business school and consultancy. Readers of Sustainable Economics are invited to attend to share their own wisdom, and to gain an understanding of different ways of thinking about, and doing, strategy and business planning.
Chris Nichols and Chris Seeley will lead the course, using both provocative teaching and highly experiential ways of working. Participants will explore how holistic thinking challenges and changes traditional approaches to business strategy, planning and purpose.
Chris Nichols is a consultant with over 25 years of experience in creative group work. He has been with Ashridge for nine years, and co-directs the strategy engagement group. He has worked globally with almost every sector: government, charity and commercial -- and currently specialises in board-level facilitation and the design and facilitation of large group explorative learning.
Chris Seeley is Course Director of the Masters in Responsibility in Business Practice, Bath/Ashridge. Chris has extensive experience working with business service and economic development organisations and has worked in the micro and small enterprise development sector since 1992 in the UK, US, Africa and Asia.
The aim is for everyone attending the week-long, well-packed course to leave with both an education into the frontiers of strategy and an action plan for actually doing something in your organisation or with your clients.
"My experience at Schumacher College was really challenging and inspiring. It helped me become more deeply rooted in my commitment to developing sustainable cities. I recommend professionals spend time at Schumacher College as I know it is a place where future leaders are developed."
"Only a crisis — actual or perceived — produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable."