Take action and learn to thrive in the midst of uncertainty and exponential change
Human Systems Dynamics (HSD) Essentials is a highly interactive learning process designed to shift the way you solve problems for your team, your organization, and yourself.
Expand your potential to respond wisely to the unexpected
Develop a new set of skills, abilities, and insights that enable you to respond flexibly and effectively no matter what is happening around you or your organization.
Do you recognize yourself or your team in any of these situations?

The Problem Solver
You want to trust your proven track record of experience, but suddenly you keep running into situations you’ve never faced before.
When you think you’ve resolved an issue, you turn around and it’s back again.
Where do you turn next?
The Decision-Maker
Everyone is looking to you as the decision-maker, but internally you know you’re overwhelmed.
Issues that used to seem manageable are now more like a collection of ever-tightening knots made up of massively entangled threads.
What do you do now?
The New Leader in Town
You know in your bones that effective leadership isn’t going to come through indulging illusions of control.
You seek direction from your mentors only to discover that they are as confounded as you feel.
How do you move forward?
HSD Essentials is for changemakers. If you are looking for ways to transform the system you work in so it works better for everyone, then you are a changemaker.
HSD Essentials helps you thrive in uncertainty — even when you can't know everything
Here are six ways participants have described our highly interactive, live-online learning experience.
Learn by doing. Bring your own "sticky issue" and gain hands-on experience.
Learn how to ask different questions that open up new possibilities for action.
Acquire the tools to map unknowable and seemingly unrelated situations.
Identify and shift the patterns that impact your work and life at different levels.
Discover how to influence unpredictable and rapidly shifting conditions.
Create conditions for deep learning to develop adaptive capacities.
Who are the changemakers that have experienced deep change with HSD Essentials?
Busy professionals who are…
- Looking to drive meaningful change in their organizations.
- Seeking more creativity and less stress.
- Open to exploring new ways of thinking, perceiving and acting.


“
What a fun and challenging way to deepen and expand your thinking!
Imagine if you could continuously answer ‘what? so what? now what?’ for yourself and all groups you’re a part of! Come ready to practice and apply in real-time!
John Hovell
Managing Director, STRATactical International
“
You will learn ways of looking at your “big projects” differently…
Small experiments will give you courage, help you gain traction, and result in more impact and better engagement. You will be less likely to feel “stuck”, or wait for the most brilliant solution, but will be able to get started.
Emma Pearson
OD consultant, Executive & Team Coach
Investment
$2650 USD
- 12 intensive sessions | Oct 17 – Nov 28 2022
- 2 integration sessions | Dec, 22 and Jan, 23
- Certificate of attendance
3:00 pm to 5:00 pm Central Time | US and Canada | UTC-5
OUR METHOD
Just enough theory and just enough practice to generate wise action
An intensive six week program with follow-up integration sessions.
To ensure you understand how to apply these new perspectives to your daily challenges and opportunities we meet twice a week for a 6-week intensive learning period followed by 2 once-a-month integration sessions.
These meetings include a brief yet deep introduction to Human Systems Dynamics concepts, models, and methods all mixed with real-time activities.
THE PROGRAM
- Discover the two paradigms of thought that limit and/or expand your capacity to cope with uncertainty and respond effectively.
- An introduction to foundational HSD principles and practices to generate understanding and action in human systems that you can’t predict or control.
- Patterns that characterize complex adaptive systems.
- Patterns that allow you to work more effectively within complex adaptive systems.
- Conditions for deep learning to develop adaptive capacities through innovation and imagination.
- How to move beyond “stuckness” by recognizing and attending to multiple levels of scale.
- Characteristics of change in unpredictable settings and identifying opportunities to influence that change.
- Build your adaptive capacity to respond to unpredictable change by seeing patterns in the world around you.
- Understanding the implications and meanings of patterns in your systems.
- Responding to emergent patterns with wise, informed action.
- How to navigate multiple perspectives and discern which one to apply in your current situation.
- How to move forward amid the messiness and complexity of competing priorities.
- Distinguish between traditional, linear change, and emergent, complex, adaptive change processes.
- Explore an approach to influence change in complex adaptive systems that:
- Generates coherence with minimum constraint.
- Supports adaptation over time.
- Builds connections across and within all levels of the system.
- There are two follow-ups sessions 90-minute each to ensure that the learning is being actively applied.
- Sessions will be held one month and two months after the final session.
- Address your challenges and celebrate your wins / successes.
“
If you are open to a complete game-changer in terms of how to approach work, this course is for you.
I considered myself the “Queen of Tools,” thinking that I had knowledge of a fair number of them coming into this course. HSD Essentials opened my eyes to an entirely new framework that includes tools, of course, but is much more than that. This course was so enjoyable in so many ways…almost like a spa experience for my brain. It was rejuvenating and energizing.
Jane Martel
Sr. Project Manager, Arapahoe Libraries
“
Enlightenment, growth, bonding, contemplation, processing, learning.
The HSD Essentials course helped me analyze my sticky issue in a way I never would have before. It allowed me to dive deep, ask questions, discover what exactly was at play within the system to be able to better understand the issue, what the impact is and what I can do moving forward to make ripples of change. This course has helped me serve a greater purpose in my work.
Stacie Schuh
Learning Specialist
Ask for backup
Some organizations have an employee “continuous learning” budget. To support a request for reimbursement we have prepared an email template that describes the value of HSD Essentials for your organization.

Investment
$2650 USD
- 12 intensive sessions | Oct 17 – Nov 28 2022
- 2 integration sessions | Dec, 22 and Jan, 23
- Certificate of attendance
3:00 pm to 5:00 pm Central Time | US and Canada | UTC-5
Meet the Designers & Facilitators

Monica Leon
Monica is an experienced OD practitioner, strategic/breakthrough, facilitator, and executive coach who believes in tapping into the collective wisdom to co-create.
A strategic thinker by nature, she specializes in sticky issues, complex systems, and innovative work practices that intertwine vertical development and achieve sustainable outcomes. These are a set of practices that expand the mindset capacity of individuals and organizations in having greater choice and outcome-focused flexibility.Monica holds a BS with honors in Economics and International Studies from Wilson College, an MBA with distinction from UFSIA, Belgium, and a Master of Science in Organization Development from Pepperdine University, USA. She is an ACC ICF Coach and has been a certified Senior and Global Professional in Human Resources (SPHR & GPHR) since 2008. She has worked, lived, and studied on four continents.

Wendy C. Morris
Wendy is an internationally recognized facilitator of learning and leadership development, especially for leading in complexity.
She has designed more than 500 leadership development and engagement programs, while teaching at premier leadership centers in North America, Europe, and Asia. As a strategic thinking partner, she asks generative questions that enable her clients to find the clarity that leads to wise action. She views training and leadership development as vehicles for leaders to become more agile, adaptive, effective, and whole.Wendy works with 3 global networks for change: the Human Systems Dynamics Institute, the Presencing Institute, and the Art of Hosting community. She has a Master’s Degree in Human Development and is affiliated with two research and training centers at the University of Minnesota. Her work has received 25 awards for excellence and is informed by 19,000 hours of mindfulness and embodiment practice.
What used to be problems to solve become patterns that you can influence.
Develop new perspectives and gain new tools to see and act for yourself, your organization, and beyond.
HSD Essentials is an introductory program to Human Systems Dynamics (HSD).
HSD is applied complexity. A field of theory and practice that builds adaptive capacity to help individuals and groups find options for action when prediction and control are impossible.
HSD has been used across sectors and around the world, wherever complex situations create seemingly intractable issues.
