Session

Economists say the next economy is just around the corner – some say it’s already here. The next economy is one that works for the benefit of all; we’re seeing it in trends like ESG, the B Corp movement, DEI, and other shifts in the way we think about business’s role in society.

In this session, Ryan will help participants see organization design through this “B” lens to prepare their organizations for the next economy. They’ll also walk away with a more tangible understanding of the social and environmental impact of their own or their clients’ businesses. A nod to ancient economic structure will give participants insights into a bold new structure for the future.

Bio

Worker-Owner at LIFT Economy, Co-author of The B Corp Handbook and The Next Economy MBA

Along with his LIFT Economy team, Ryan has helped over 50 companies—including Patagonia, Allbirds, and Ben & Jerry’s—become Certified B Corporations and integrate principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion into their organization. He is a co-creator of the Next Economy MBA, designed to answer the question “what would a business education look like if [the economy] was completely redesigned for the benefit of all life?”

Ryan has written articles for publications like the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fast Company, Entrepreneur, and Huffington Post. He has been a featured speaker at SOCAP, Bioneers, Summit LA, the B Corp Champions Retreat, the Sustainable Enterprise Conference, several prestigious business schools, and many other organizations.

Bio

Michael Arena is the chief science officer and co-founder of the Connected Commons, a research consortium that brings together business and academic thought leaders to develop and apply organizational network solutions. He is also a faculty member in Penn’s Masters in Organizational Dynamics program. Arena most recently served as the vice president of talent and development at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he leveraged network analysis to enable employee growth, organizational culture and innovation. He was nominated to the Thinkers50 Radar class of 2020 for his work on network roles in creating adaptive organizations.

Prior to joining Amazon, Arena was the Chief Talent Officer for General Motors Corporation where he was responsible for enterprise talent management, cultural transformation, leadership development, talent acquisition and people analytics. While at GM he launched GM2020, a grass roots initiative designed to enable employees to positively disrupt the way they work, which was highlighted in Fast Company and Fortune Magazine. This initiative and others are highlighted in his best-selling book, Adaptive Space: How GM and Other Companies are Positively Disrupting Themselves and Transforming into Agile Organizations.

His research on adaptation and networks won the 2017 Walker Prize from People + Strategy and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Harvard Business Review, and Sloan Management Review. Prior to GM, Arena spent two years as a visiting scientist with MIT’s Media Lab researching human networks. He also spent 3 years as a design thinking coach within the Stanford dSchool and served as Senior Vice President of Leadership Development at Bank of America, where he co-designed and launched the Center for Future Banking, to positively disrupt consumer banking.

Session

Today’s workforce is increasingly fluid. Many have spoken about where people are located (say, at an office or remote) and when work is happening (at the same or different times), but fewer have broadened the perspective to consider additional sources of fluidity, including who is doing the work, what kind of work is performed, how information is shared, which skills are required, and why people are doing their work. Organizations have an opportunity to carve out a unique approach to composing their workforce, gaining competitive advantage from leveraging specific sources of fluidity most relevant for their given business and talent context. Join us for this session to explore how fluidity can be a strategic choice rather than a tactical response to plug short-term talent gaps.

Bio

Session

Share the Nubank case conducted in 2022 with Kates Kesler/Accenture to bring relevant insights and lessons learned in the context of redefinition of an Operating Model for a digital hypergrowth company in the process of internationalization and how to build a customer centric model. Discuss the challenges related to the decision making process in a customer centric model considering the different teams – Global Platforms, Products and Regions. Alignment between strategic horizons and future model, decision making process in a customer centric operating model and capabilities for hypergrowth companies.

Bio

Session

Over the last 20 years working to design organizations to achieve improvements for the business and for the people, I have discovered there are three issues to how we think about design today. First, we design for machines, not around humans. Second, we design for individuals, and ignore how humans behave in groups and systems. And third, we design knowing only a small amount of information (hierarchy, sticks, boxes, jobs, compensation, targets, authority) and ignore the majority of the information (networks, trust, relationships, roles, teaming, incentives that drive behaviors, empowerment and agency). Now that we have data and insights to uncover all of the information on networks of trust, and make the previously invisible visible, we can transform work and our experience of work as humans. In this interactive session, we will introduce the Peopletecture model, an innovative approach to architecting the organizations around humans, and you will leave with practical experience and tools on how to make work better for all. We will spend 90 minutes with real cases, applying proven methods and tools, to transform the design of our organizations to get increased trust, intentional collaboration and connected silos, better teaming, a heightened sense of belonging, and improved performance.

Bio

Tiffany McDowell, PhD is a principal at Ernst and Young, LLP. She has advised dozens of CEO’s and hundreds of executives and team leaders on the topic of organization design, has published in academic and business journals innovations in the field of organizational design, and has taught the subject at multiple universities over the years. Dr. McDowell is uniquely positioned to be the authority on this topic, having bult one of the largest and most successful organization design practices in the world by bringing scientifically proven ideas together with a long and successful consulting career. Dr. McDowell focuses on delivering operating model, organization design, network analytics, decision optimization, workforce strategies, and change management solutions for large-scale transformation projects. As clients design and implement digital, agile, cost reduction, and future of work programs, she helps them with capabilities assessment, decision rights, role and accountability design, leadership development, talent planning and workforce transition. She completed her BA in Psychology at the University of British Columbia, her MBA at Simon Fraser University and her PhD in Industrial Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology.

Session

From the outside, government organizations often appear complex, impossible-to-navigate monoliths full of cushy management jobs. We’ll pull back the curtain and peek at one municipality’s efforts to anchor its structure in organization design theory and shift the narrative, putting the pieces together to support a more positive employee and customer experience. In this session, participants will review a case study about the questions the City of Edmonton faces regarding its ‘middle management’ positions and how this set the stage for a journey to mature its approach to organization design. This workshop includes:

• An opportunity for participants to learn from each other about how to manage expectations in the face of external pressures
• An overview of stratified systems theory and how it can be adapted in a modern context, using it to combat the negative narrative around hierarchical structures and middle management
• A facilitated conversation about a draft organization design maturity curve, including where participants’ organizations fit and their future evolution
• A chance to look at and comment on organization design tools created to facilitate decision-making and a draft set of core accountabilities required of managers at different levels in a stratified structure to build horizontal and vertical alignment

Participants will engage in a world cafe and table discussions

Bio

Georgina Fairbanks has worked in a variety of strategic, operational, and human resources leadership roles. Her background in leading teams that deliver front-line service to the community drove her to transform the City of Edmonton’s HR service delivery model into one that is client-focused and data-driven. She has won multiple City Manager’s Awards of Excellence for projects related to diversity & inclusion, occupational health & safety and workforce optimization. Georgina currently leads the City’s HR Strategic Services team, which provides strategic support and advice to senior leaders across the organization.

Originally hailing from across the pond, Georgina now lives just outside of Edmonton, Alberta and holds a BSc in geography and education with certifications in change management and project management. She led the creation of the City’s organizational design dashboard, a data integration and visualization tool that complements the City’s Organizational Design Framework

Pam Sharpe worked in the private and not-for-profit sectors before shifting into government roles, working at both the provincial and municipal levels. A communications and change management professional, Pam’s always had a passion for enabling a positive employee experience for the people who deliver critical frontline services. She currently leads the organization development team at the City of Edmonton, which supports improved team effectiveness across the organization’s 70 service lines. She won a City Manager’s Award of Excellence for her role as project manager developing the foundation of the City’s respectful workplace program.

Pam lives in Edmonton, Alberta and holds a BA in Communications with certifications in organization development, project management and change management. She led the development of an Organization Design Framework to guide the City’s work in this space, and works in tandem with Georgina’s team on organization design projects.

Session

“Arizona State University has been named the most innovative university in the US for eight years in a row. In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, Enterprise Technology (ET) at ASU began the journey of transforming from a traditional unit that was largely seen as a utility for the university to the strategic partner that it is today. In addition to transforming the organization’s culture and leading digital transformation across the ASU Public Enterprise, ET changed the way work is done by creating an agile organizational structure.

In this highly interactive session, participants will learn how the Strategic Collaboration framework for change guided much of the transformational journey at ASU. They will engage in the first two practices of Strategic Collaboration – Radical Appreciation and Disruptive Inquiry – to collectively discover the essential elements for transformative change at scale and the challenges and gifts along the way.”

Bio

Christine Whitney Sanchez is the Chief Culture Officer for Enterprise Technology at Arizona State University and President of Innovation Partners International of the
Southwest LLC. She’s a social entrepreneur, consultant, coach, and architect of large-scale transformation. She has worked across five continents to build the capacity for mindful leadership, strategic collaboration and thriving organizations and communities.

Known around the world as a pioneer in blending collaborative methods and mindful practices to engage groups of 10 to 10,000, Christine has trained thousands of consultants and change leaders in strength-based approaches to leadership and organization development.

Integrating her expertise as a psychotherapist into her work as a higher education executive, consultant, professor, and coach, Christine has guided tens of thousands of stakeholders to dissolve barriers to communication, resolve thorny issues and generate new opportunities. Taking a holistic approach to change, she engages the whole system to build on strengths, disrupt the status quo, envision a desired future and create the conditions for success. She has facilitated some of the largest intergenerational conversations in the world. And that is what brings her joy.

She has a BA in Sociology from the University of Hawaii and a Master of Counseling degree from Arizona State University. She has been on faculty at Arizona State University where she taught leadership and at Claremont Lincoln University when she taught mindfulness.”