Organising for change means creating a structure within the organisation that supports resilience, adaptability, and agility. This requires creative leaders to build diverse teams that can bring a variety of perspectives to bear on complex problems, as well as to foster a culture of collaboration, open communication, and continuous learning. Knowing how to effect change is just as important as knowing what to change. Having the skills and resources to take action and implement the necessary changes is just as crucial as having a clear understanding of what needs to be done. How to structure innovation? How to engage the right people, get buy in and secure commitment? How to make real progress toward purposeful transformation? This track focuses on all of that and more.

Session 1 - Resilient leadership - thriving in turbulent times
Team: Mariana Amatullo, Natsuko Hara and Moira Buzzolani

Not that long ago, leaders basically had to figure out what to do and then tell their teams what, when, where, and how to do it. Today’s creative leaders face not only a whole new set of expectations from their teams and internal stakeholders, but also from their ever changing external environment. How to cope with these challenges? How to weather storms, and lead others through the waters of change?

Authentic, resonant or servant leadership are some ways we are starting to talk about how leaders need to understand who they are, what motivates them, and how they manage themselves before they can help their teams. Resilient leaders make resilient organisations. In this perfect storm moment, design leaders must build change readiness and capability for themselves and their teams. In the first session, you’ll discover how to harness the power of change, stay true to your values, and remain relevant as a design leader.

Session 2 - Navigating transformation - intentful change leadership
Team: Natsuko Hara, Moira Buzzolani and Mariana Amatullo

When implementing organisational change, leaders often prioritise the ‘what’ over the crucial ‘who’ and the ‘how’. This oversight risks relying on old routines, resulting in busy actions without genuine transformation. It can lead to rushed decision-making, neglecting self-renewal, and resorting to problem-solving and micromanagement.

How can change be approached effectively? How to balance different leadership styles, from leading teams via discipline, prioritisation and critical conversations, to an idealistic leadership challenging status quo? The latter requires starting small and experimenting with new ways of working under similar circumstances. Get to know successful frameworks and define a series of actions focusing on encouraging and leading healthy teams during a time of change.

Maintaining a focus on the long run, rather than getting bogged down in short-term thinking, means having a perspective that looks beyond the immediate future to consider the potential outcomes and consequences of decisions and actions over an extended period. It involves prioritising goals and objectives that are important and meaningful in the long term and working towards them deliberately and consistently. By staying true to their organisation's vision and mission and taking a proactive, strategic approach to change, design leaders can help ensure that their organisation remains relevant and resilient in the face of disruption and uncertainty. This track focuses on long-range, big-picture thinking and how to move teams and organisations into the exciting unknown.

Session 1 - Finding patterns - looking backwards to move forward
Team: Phil Balagtas and Tino Klaehne

Conventional thinking about the future tends to assume a ‘business-as-usual’ mentality. However, in today's complex organisational and environmental realities, organisations and teams require servant leaders who can see clearly amidst confusion. Therefore, it is necessary to analyse the past and examine cultural and systemic events that have brought us to where we are today. By looking through various lenses, we can gain a better understanding of future trends and anticipate their impacts and outcomes.

The products, services, and organisations that ensured success in the past may not guarantee success today, let alone tomorrow. Hence, cultivating a critical and reflective mindset is essential to recognise the full realm of possibilities before us. By exploring new approaches, we can incorporate more critical thinking into both our leadership practice and our organisation.

Session 2 - Envisioning impact - creating actionable visions of the future
Team: Phil Balagtas and Søren Lethin

The future is inherently ambiguous. How can design leaders confidently support their organisations in addressing tomorrow's problems without their organisation getting lost in translation, overwhelmed by possibilities, and settling for short-term wins? By perceiving upcoming challenges as opportunities and adopting a need-based and solution-focused mindset, they can prepare to be intentional and authentic in their actions.

To foster a futures mindset within their organisation and maintain enthusiasm, investment, and advocacy for future visions, visionary leaders must exert discretionary effort and be willing to withstand opposition to gain maximum buy-in. Navigating their teams and organisation into the unknown by creating a vision of the future that can be acted upon today. Creating an environment where people choose to join and achieve great things.

Today more than ever it’s necessary to effectively navigate complex and uncertain situations, and develop innovative solutions in the face of ambiguity and changing circumstances. Leading in complexity requires a deep understanding of the systems and networks that operate within the organisation’s context, as well as the ability to collaborate and communicate effectively with a diverse range of stakeholders. How to go beyond understanding the interrelationships between various parts of this ecosystem and identifying potential points of leverage to developing interventions that can have a transformative impact on the system as a whole? How to anticipate and respond to complex challenges in a way that is both innovative and strategic? This track can help you create more resilient systems that can better adapt to changing circumstances over time.

Session 1 - Cocreating value - designing impactful solutions
Team: Peter Jones, Kristel van Ael and Shauna Carey

As crisis fatigue sets in, the time is ripe to seek potential solutions and invest in those with lasting impact. However, this cannot be achieved alone. Effectively intervening in systems requires innovative and adaptive approaches that engage broad networks of diverse stakeholders. By facilitating and fostering transformative value cocreation, distinctive and successful interventions can be established.

Like any other leader, design leaders must be well-equipped to tackle complex challenges that demand collective action. This involves building and mobilising alliances of diverse stakeholders around a shared vision for positive and lasting change, empowering widespread collaboration, innovation, and action. Supporting the capability of design leaders to lead in disruption requires a radical evolution of leadership. Let’s shift the paradigm and create systems of change!

Session 2 - Reframing innovation - Effective systems leadership in high complexity
Team: Peter Jones, Kristel van Ael and Shauna Carey

We exist within interconnected systems. Climate systems, economic systems, political systems, social systems overlap and interact in complex ways. Achieving progress and tackling current and future challenges requires abandoning traditional top-down, hierarchical, and linear approaches to implementing change. Instead, it demands an understanding of the complex systems that shape the challenges to be addressed. Yet, how do we reframe innovation to break boundaries and raise system-level challenges to management?

Leading transformation and designing for complexity challenges requires unlearning, rethinking, and innovating to contribute to positive system change. For addressing the complexity, dynamism and scale of multi-dimensional challenges, design leaders need to be able to assess barriers, leverage drivers and complexity dynamics. Systems skills help any manager become a confident and resilient system leader capable of understanding, examining, and positively leading in complexity. 

The leadership qualities of the past don't work anymore. A future design leader must be personable and proactive, with clear ethics and values. A servant leader who motivates and strives to empower their teams. A humble leader who is accessible, sitting among their team members and initiating dialogue with them. By creating an environment in which individuals feel empowered to take ownership of their work and contribute to the collective mission of the organisation, design leaders can create a culture of resilience that can withstand the challenges of a complex and uncertain world. This track focuses on developing self-awareness and being mindful – fully present and aware – to become a more effective leader, making wise and brave choices for the future.

Session 1 - Becoming a better leader - developing self-awareness
Team: Annahita Varahrami and Nina Warburton

Self-awareness plays a vital role in leadership development, serving as a fundament for various essential qualities such as empathy, emotional intelligence and radical candour. It is not only a prerequisite for learning and improvement but also forms the cornerstone upon which many other leadership competencies are built.

Being self-aware not only creates value but also empowers leaders to influence others. It is crucial for self-control, discernment, creativity, learning, and growth. A foundation of self-awareness leads to self-acceptance and, ultimately, self-actualisation, enabling individuals to reach their fullest potential.

Session 2 - Embracing the shadow - unleashing leadership strengths
Team: Annahita Varahrami and Nina Warburton

Creative leaders must be aware that even their strengths can become weaknesses if left unchecked. Each of us possesses a shadow, representing the parts of ourselves we try to hide or ignore. Recognising and addressing these aspects is vital, as solely focusing on the shiny parts of leadership allows the shadow side to grow. By embracing our shadows, we unlock untapped potential within us.

Through awareness and practice, we can access, embrace, and channel the energy of our shadows in healthy ways, enabling us to express our full potential. This integration of all aspects of our psyche into a cohesive and impactful whole is the key to great leadership.