Managing Complexity in Organisations

Booking form now available

Once a year, in January, we run a five-day Working Conference in Midhurst, West Sussex, entitled 'Managing Complexity in Organisations'. It combines learning about the dynamics of groups and organisations with opportunities to work on the issues which members bring from their own work situations, and is largely experiential.

Leaders of all kinds in contemporary organisations find themselves faced with increasing uncertainty as well as complexity. Leadership involves a future orientation and the establishment and pursuit of organisational goals: seeking growth and sustainability through change. This means facilitating the organisation's capacity to learn and develop. Organisations are evolving and changing, both as they respond to their relevant environments and, indeed, as they themselves contribute to that change. Globalisation, new products and markets, new technologies and 'green' issues, together with legislative, political and ethical changes are all contributing to the need for leaders, managers and consultants to review the situations in which they find themselves. They also face new organisational challenges introduced by 'green issues'. They need to develop the capacity to understand and act within individual, group and organisational dynamics as they interact with and mutually influence the work itself - a 'double task'. Managing the resulting complexity of forces cannot all be learned from books. What is needed is first-hand experience, within a learning setting, from which to gain experience and develop one's own ways forward.

Originating from Harold Bridger, this Conference is also sometimes known by its central distinguishing feature, that of the 'double task'. Members and consultants together create an organisation for learning and this represents a microcosm of our highly diverse environment. In this context we can:

• explore the various internal and external forces which affect us, our roles and in our organisations;
• design opportunities to explore the seemingly irrational and frequently unrecognised forces which may make for stress within groups and organisations;
• develop ways of making such forces and their functions more explicit;
• apply such understanding to the management of interdependencies and divergencies within and between groups, and to the management of 'boundaries' or interfaces with our environments;
• widen the capacity for consultation, recognising the part it plays in managerial and professional competence;
• the Conference is called 'transitional' in that it links several areas for exploring, understanding and developing organisational situations, involving different interactions: personal, intragroup, intergroup, whole organisation;
• It is also 'transitional' in being a reflective bridge between prior experiences within the organisations from which the participants come (and to which they will go back after the Conference) and the new experiencing which is ahead of them;
• The Conference as a 'transitional institution' will be reviewed by the members and staff at an interim point in the programme. This will be an opportunity to discuss together further and, indeed, new types of situations for learning.

The Conference is for those whose roles - in business, industrial management, specialisms, consulting, health and social services, finance and insurance etc - not only require the exercise of expertise but also offer opportunities for effecting change in operational practice and policy, and work organisation.

There is much value in having two members from an organisation where this is feasible. It contributes to both communicating and building on the conference experience in the back-home setting.

Membership is international. The working language is English.

Some organisations from which members have come in recent years are:

ACUMEN (Renfrewshire Association for Mental Health); Aerospatiale Group Institute, France; Caminade Participations, France; Caritas, Malta; Church of England; Clifford Chance; Colruyt, Belgium; Crédit Lyonnais, France; Croydon Health Authority; Degremont S.A., France; Deloitte & Touche, Prague; Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform; Emergency Medical Service Central Bohemian and Mid Bohemian Regions, Czech Republic; Ernst & Young; Essilor, France; European Commission, Brussels; EUTELSAT, France; The Hay Group; Hewlett Packard; HMP Grendon; INQUEST ; Kethea, Athens; Ministry of Defence, South Africa; Mosaada Centre; National Lottery Charities Board; Polaroid Corporation; Polaroid (UK) Ltd; A.K. Rice Institute, U.S.A.; SAP CR spol.s.r.o., Czech Republic; Scottish Power; sedqa Malta; Surrey Hampshire NHS Trust; Syncrude Canada Ltd; Unilever; UnLtd; University Hospital, Rotterdam; University of South Africa; Vigeo, France.

The Working Conference is a temporary community providing opportunities to experience and encourage exploration of the role relationships which exist between people from different as well as similar functions. Our high ratio of very experienced staff to the small number of delegates has the added benefit of affording almost individual attention and guidance throughout the week. Our high ratio of very experienced staff to the small number of delegates has the added benefit of affording almost individual attention and guidance throughout the week.

• Search Groups will be made up of members of different backgrounds of professional and work experience. The group will have two tasks:
1. The first is to identify and compare areas of concern and growing points experienced by members in their different roles and settings; to select some central issues for the group; and to explore the choice of strategies or actions for dealing with them.
2. The second task is to suspend business from time to time to review the way in which the group is working. The staff will be concerned with enabling members to recognise and understand the processes operating in the issues as well as those in the group itself. It will, however, be the group's own responsibility to manage its choice of structure, methods, priorities and use of resources.
• Consulting Groups will be smaller groups of three or four members and will work on specific issues which each member is asked to prepare in advance for this purpose. Each member also has the opportunity of taking the consultative role in this activity.
• Talk-discussions will be introduced at appropriate times to ensure that the learning from experience, as well as the ideas generated from it, are given a useful conceptual framework.
• There will be some intergroup work. Intergroup relationships are of increasing importance in today's world of partnerships and strategic alliances. Attention will be given to understanding the processes going on between, as well as within, the interacting groups. The experience is also designed to provide individuals with practical opportunities for experiencing the 'ownership' involved in one's membership and the responsibility inherent in being a representative.
• Follow up sessions are available to delegates.

Dates:

Assemble: Sunday 18^th January 2009, 4.30pm

Disperse: Friday 23^rd January 2009, 4.15pm

Location:

Midhurst is a small, pretty market town, originating in the early Middle Ages, and with many fine old buildings. The conference is held in The Spread Eagle Hotel, which was first built as a tavern in 1430 and has a long history as a famous coaching inn. Standing in its own picturesque grounds, the Hotel has comfortable conference facilities and delegates have use of the health spa including sauna, steam rooms, Scandinavian hot tub, air-conditioned gymnasium, and a heated indoor swimming pool. The Hotel’s Restaurant offers the very best of modern British cuisine. All bedrooms have en-suite bathrooms, television and telephone.

The nearest railway station is Haslemere, fifty minutes from Waterloo Station in London and nine miles by taxi or bus from the hotel. Arrangements can be made to collect members from Gatwick or Heathrow airports.

Fees:

£2300 to include full board and use of health spa.

Cheques to be made payable to ‘The Bayswater Institute’. Payment should be in Sterling only and cheques drawn on a bank in the United Kingdom.

A small number of partial bursaries may be made available in exceptional circumstances.

Booking:

All reservations should be accompanied either by a deposit of £600 sterling or the full fee. The deposit cannot be returned if the application is later withdrawn.

The balance of all fees must be paid by 17^th December 2008; a surcharge of £100 will be applied to any registration or fees received after that date.

In the case of late cancellations the full fee will be applied if the place cannot be filled from the waiting list.

Joining instructions and pre-conference material will be sent out at during December.

Conference Administration

• The Bayswater Institute
• 9 Orme Court, London W2 4RL.
• Tel: 44 (0) 20 7229 2729
• Fax: 44 (0) 20 7229 2214
• Email: mail(at)bayswaterinst.org

Download the booking form in PDF format.

Conference Director
Derek Raffaelli is a free-lance organisational consultant and psycho-analytical psychotherapist. He is involved with both public and private sector organisations. Recent work includes consulting with a secure unit for young people in Dublin, facilitating transitional processes in the NHS and executive coaching in the USA. He is a frequent contributor to the International Professional Development Programme organised by the ProDev Institute, The Netherlands, member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and a Fellow of the Bayswater Institute.

Associate Conference Director
Lisl Klein is Founder and Research Director of the Bayswater Institute. She is an industrial sociologist with experience in organisational analysis and design and sociotechnical analysis and design, through research, action research and consulting. She has been Social Sciences Adviser in Esso Petroleum Company and consultant to the German Government's programme to 'Humanise Life at Work'. For nineteen years she was a senior member of the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations.

David Armstrong is a Principal Consultant at the Tavistock Consultancy Service, London. He works on consultancy assignments and development programmes with senior executives and teams across the private, public and voluntary sectors, both in the UK and abroad. He has worked for many years in the field of Group Relations and has published widely on the links between psychoanalysis, group relations and organizational consultancy. He is a member of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and an Associate of the Bayswater Institute.

Simon Bell is Director of the Bayswater Institute. He has worked in a number of multi-disciplinary organisations as both a consultant and academic. He studied international development at the University of East Anglia where his focus of interest became the impact of new technologies in various cultural contexts. In 1996 he joined the Systems Department at the Open University. As a Senior Lecturer he was involved in teaching and research both in terms of systems and information systems. Since joining the Bayswater Institute in 2007 he has been developing his research and consultancy in two key areas: in his “Imagine” methodology to sustainable communities; and with a programme for establishing and enhancing Reflective Practice in organisations of all kinds.

Jim Krantz is an organizational consultant and researcher, and a principal of Nautilus Consulting Group in New York City. Previously he was on the faculties of Yale University and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is President of the International Society of the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations and a Fellow of the Rice Institute. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Organisational and Social Dynamics, and Socio-Analysis. Dr Krantz has a Ph.D. from the Wharton School in applied systems sciences. His research focus has been on the “seam” between psychodynamics and systems theory, with particular reference to the impact of emerging social trends on work organizations.

Sandra Schruijer, Ph.D., is professor of Organisational Psychology at TiasNimbas Business School, University of Tilburg, the Netherlands and professor of Organisation Sciences at the Utrecht School of Governance, University of Utrecht, also in the Netherlands. She received her Ph.D. in psychology from Tilburg University. Her research interests include multiparty collaboration, group diversity and intergroup relations. Sandra Schruijer is director of Professional Development International that organizes the international professional development programme Leading Meaningful Change.