Working with the Mandela Fellows
For the second year, we’ve been invited to introduce the disciplines of agile strategy to the Mandela Fellows visiting Purdue. Began in 2014, the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders and enables these leaders to come to Purdue for six weeks of professional development.
To introduce Strategic Doing, we have developed a simulation game that explores how young leaders could diversify the economy of a relatively small village in East Africa.
We were particularly engaged this year. Here’s an example. One of the first rules of complex collaboration involves establishing a safe space for deep, complex conversations. A young leader from coastal Nigeria explained that in his community, civic life has broken down almost completely. Corrupt gangs rule the communities. So, for just a moment, we were able to explore how he might take these ideas back and start to rebuild the civic economy in his community.
The Founder of the Lab at UNA and co-author of Strategic Doing: 10 Skills for Agile Leadership, Ed’s work has focused on developing new models of strategy specifically designed to accelerate complex collaboration in networks and open innovation. He is the original developer of Strategic Doing.