Immersion Labs Described
An Immersion Lab involves
- a group of high impact leaders
- tackling a complex, strategic business project
- in an unfamiliar setting (international recommended)
- involved in highly experiential personal and group workouts
- and engaged in "leader to leader" dialogues to promote outside-in thinking
- constantly and systematically reflecting and capturing knowledge
- in order to develop leadership competencies, lifelong learning and develop innovative thinking on key business issues
The goal:
To accelerate learning through diversity - to expose our delegates to a rich variety of voices, perspectives, persuasions, ideas, understanding, culture, religion, lifestyles, politics, and more, in addition to traditional issues, and to share their understanding with others -- in pairs, in groups, in organizations. (paraphrased - Aly Colón, The Poynter Institute)
This is where insight happens.
Each Lab is custom built and generally falls into three broad categories:
Leadership Development
A three to six module leadership development intervention with multi-dimensional learning objectives. A strategic business research project is embedded into the learning process and all elements of an Immersion Lab are fully leveraged. Leadership communities are typically high potential young executives on accelerated development paths, senior executives whose developmental needs are tightly coupled to business strategy and objectives, and mid-career executives.
Think Tanks
Co-branded immersion experiences where multiple organizations participate in a seven to ten day international program on a topic of mutual interest. Benefits include both the opportunity to directly experience the world's leading initiatives on this topic as well enjoy an intensive period of time interacting with a senior group of peers who travel together. A very powerful experience which accelerates strategy formulation, leadership, facilitates implementation and develops communities of practice on mutual areas of interest.
"Best Practice Benchmarking"
Typically one week international programs with a highly focused business topic which takes small groups of executives from a single organization to selected centres of excellence for intensive "outside in" dialogues and knowledge capture. An excellent developmental intervention for senior executives who benefit from interacting with successful industry practitioners and peers in world leading organizations. Results include strategy and business plan development, implementation plans progressed, innovation, and personal and professional development. Topics have included Global Brand Management, Strategic Alliances and Partnering, Small Business Banking as examples.
