Seminars:

Introductory Seminar Outline

Peter Goldsbury, Project Management Facilitator at Strategic Expertise had been researching a small very rural NZ organisation that achieved amazing successes against all the odds. Their uniquely Kiwi leadership, teamwork and project processes demonstrate a fast track forward to others also wanting to grow themselves a place in the knowledge economy. 

The Tipu Lifecycle has been inspired by their transformation and wisdom. Tipu (growing from within) Ake (ever upwards) ki te Ora (towards Wellness) is not a linear process but a cyclic one, so expect some challenges to conventional project think. The seven level model includes the strong process management focus that characterizes today's businesses mainly in its level 3, with the other levels incorporating radical thinking on chaos, innovation, leadership, courage, vision, stakeholders, team commitment, change information sharing, learning, responsiveness, agility, values and sustainability. It encourages us to think well beyond project risk management, capitalising on opportunities that move us towards the future we seek to grow. It is a framework that gives a wider perspective on leadership principles and knowledge and demonstrates those project manager / team / organisational behaviours that drive real project success.

The Tipu Ake Lifecycle is based on a simple, but very powerful, natural analogy, which can be applied at any level in any organisation to help make a well future happen. Its holistic approach is far from being soft and cuddly; it is a pragmatic roadmap for survival that suits organisations competing in a global marketplace. It capitalises on the same "WE can do" Kiwi team culture that Peter Blake / Team NZ and the Tall Blacks did, (something that is too often left buried deep under management practices imported from beyond our shores)!!

This will be a workshop session where participants who share their knowledge will all become wiser - a fundamental premise of Tipu Ake. We will use the Tipu Ake organisational assessment tool to question assumptions about our organisational cultures and how they can more succesfully implement complex programs involving many projects.

We will also cover the use of the Maori concept of ORA as a basis for setting and agrreing on a bold organisational vision that can drive all our decisionmaking.

The Powerpoint presentation used on these seminars can be downloaded. See also the paper 
Vision Verbs and Tipu Ake - Potent tools for program leadership in a world of complexity

Some Past Presentations:

  • The Institute for Democratic Education Christchurch, March 06 

  • The Canterbury Primary Principals Association Conference, Christchurch, Mar 06 

  • Excelerator - Institute of Leadership, University of Auckland Mar 06 

  • Project Management Institute, Auckland Chapter meeting, Feb 06 

  • International workshops. "Tipu Ake - New tools for growing Living Organisations" (see report) that we are shared in New York, London, Paris, West Country UK, Helsinki Finland and San Francisco in July / August 2005 report

  • Ag Research - New Zealand 05 /06 

  • Indigenous Knowledges Conference - Reconciling Academic Priorities with Indigenous Realities.
    Victoria University, Wellington 24 June 05

  • NZ Association of Training and Development

  • Project Management Institute NZ Conferences 

  • Human Resource Institute of NZ Conference

  • Royal NZ Navy Officer Training Course

  • National Tipu Ake Launch Seminars Auck, Well, NP Rot, Ch Dun 

  • Auckland University of Technology - various presentations

  • University of Auckland - Management Faculty staff and Masters students

  • Telecom New Zealand - Project Management team

  • Whaingaroa Environment Group, - Volunteer Group, Raglan, NZ

  • NZ Department of Internal Affairs - Community Development Group 

  • PMI Global Forum May 2003 The Hague. Details www.pmi.org

  • Authentic Leadership Summer School, June 2003, Halifax, Canada. Details www.shambhalainstitute.org

  • CEG Connecting Communities Conference, Wellington, Nov 2003

  • PMI Conference, Christchurch, NZ. Nov 2003 - 1/2 day Preconference workshop,

  • International Symposium on Performance Management, Canberra Australia. 20 Feb 2004 - Presentation on Tipu Ake as closing keynote paper.

  • Management Accountant Conference, Auckland, Mar 2004 - Project Management Paper 

  • Sharing Indigenous Wisdom Conference Wisconsin USA June 2004 - Tipu Ake by people of Te Whaiti

  • AnewNZ - SME wellness group, Auckland July 2004 Tipu Ake - Wellness in small to med enterprises

  • Sustainable Resources Conference, Boulder Colorado. Oct 2004 -  Tipu Ake and Kaitiakitanga presention by a group from New Zealand. See report
    at     http://www.kaitiakitanga.net/projects/3-2-3a%20Sustainable%20Resources%20Conference.htm

  • The Centre for Integral Economics, Victoria, Canada - a tax shifting and sustainability group - presentation to a group of interested people.

  • The Communty Support Group, Lopez Island, Seattle Area, USA

  • Project Management Global Congress, Anaheim, California 26 Oct 2004 - Tipu Ake - Potent tools for leading programs in a world of complexity

  • Conference of NZ Organisational Development Network Barrycourt, Auckland, 26 Nov 2004 -- Tipu Ake - Potency tools for Innovative Organisations

  • Indigenous Knowledges Conference - Reconciling Academic Priorities with Indigenous Realities. Victoria University, Wellington 24 June 05

  • New York in July 2005 with Phil Veal phil.veal@pipc.com Leading Projects and Programs in a Seemingly Chaotic World

  • London in Aug 2005 with Madeleine Mauwer madeleinemauwer@hotmail.com Leading Corporate Programmes for a Sustainable Future

  • Helsinki in August 2005 with Christopher Evatt www.chrisevatt.comGrowing New Life in a World of Opportunity

  • Wales in Aug 2005 with Dee Ramsayer 0 (44) 1691 780452 Dee@Deeram.demon.co.uk Nurturing Communities that Sustain Themselves

  • San Francisco in Aug 2005 at the Saybrook Graduate School and Research Centre
    747 Front St. 3rd Floor, San Francisco - John Adams - Saybrook Graduate School     http://www.saybrook.edu/ and Richard Payne -Bauhaus Consulting Group http://bcgrp.com Leadership, Organisational Development and Sustainability

  • Also covered as part of Project Management workshops delivered in-house for many organisations including: Auckland City, Hamilton City, ASB Bank, BOP DHB, Advantage, Carter Holt Harvey, Porirua City, Izard-Irwin, The Open Polytechnic, Nelson City, Change Training Consultants, Navman, Otago DHB, Zespri, Software of Excellence International, Ballance Agrinutrients, NZ Police, Te Puni Kokiri

Workshops:

The Tipu Ake Lifecycle is in the public domain and may be freely used by any individual or organisation, academic institution or training provider as a tool to help enhance organisational performance, subject to the published conditions of use within it.

The following is the list of organisations currently able to deliver Tipu Ake based programmes:

1. FINLAND and Europe:

Expatriate New Zealander Christopher Evatt lives in Poovoo, Finland and provides introductory presentations at seminars and conferences. For details see http://www.chrisevatt.com
Contact Chris via his website

2. CANADA and North America:

French physicist, writer, storyteller, environmentalist and presenter Andrée Mathieu has carefully researched Tipu Ake and translated it into French. She was based in Quebec, Canada and visted New Zealand every year from 2004 to 2017.

Courseware Developer Richard Payne of Bauhaus Consulting Group in San Francisco has included Tipu Ake in leadership development programs created for delivery by partners in University and Corporate situations. Contact Richard via the website above. 

What is this about? 

Our well-practiced industrial age organizational structures and processes often no longer seem to be serving us so well. Maybe today’s organisations need to be more like live ecosystems comprising many diverse living individuals and groups that must collaborate and share limited resources to simaltaneously manage threats and grow opportunities for a well future amidst a complex environment of apparent anarchy, chaos, uncertainty, ambiguity and interconnectedness. 

So what would happen then if organisations, projects teams and individuals were to look to nature (and in particular its rainforests) for some lessons. Perhaps we would discover other dimensions that would add balance and a new reverence for life in the knowledge economy where interdependence, competition, rapid change, information and environmental overload is a reality. Perhaps a different world view would drive some powerful new self directed and outcome seeking organisational behaviours.

This workshop will introduce you to a very different New Zealand leadership model called the Tipu Ake ki te Ora lifecycle (growing from within ever upward towards wellbeing). On it we will practice some of the behaviours and tools it offers to help grow living organisations. For an overview of Tipu Ake see http://www.tipuake.org.nz/stories/program_management.pdf

Objectives of Workshop: 

In keeping with our organic theme, the program will be fluid and like nature grow its own shape in each location depending on the mix of people involved and the opportunities for learning they contribute, but here is the outline: 

We want to attract a very diverse group of 20-40 people of all ages from Education, Government, Community, Business, Education, Health, Sustainability, Academic, Indigenous groups etc, who are willing to courageously explore together outside their comfort zones. In the morning we will use the behavioural side of the Tipu Ake ..... leadership model to try to quickly help them meld themselves into powerful teams that can exploit their diversity to grow and deploy their collective wisdom. We will also introduce a few simple team tools that can help groups gather in and share information, then converge on collaborative solutions. Later in the afternoon we will work on the "... ki te Ora" part of Tipu Ake, splitting into groups and working on real examples that people suggest; forming a collective vision for the future, identifying the outcomes needed, how we would know when we were getting near them, then working back from this to create a roadmap of the multitude of project actions and coalitions needed to help us all grow towards it. From time to time we will stop to allow all to reflect on and share our experience and learnings.

The facilitator:

Peter Goldsbury BE(Elec), DMS, Dip in Teaching, PMP, was an experienced engineer, project and business manager who later worked as an organizational development facilitator. In 2000 he returned with a group from the Auckland University of Technology to his primary school deep in the Whirinaki Rainforest in New Zealand to discover that they had made a revolutionary self-transformation. That started an active research program involving a range of volunteers that resulted in the documentation of the Tipu Ake Lifecycle. The School and it’s Maori community (underemployed since rainforest milling was stopped) shares this in the public domain on the web at www.tipuake.org for the benefit of all the world’s future grandchildrens. Acknowledgement is by koha – a Maori form of reciprocal gifting in trust based on the value received.

© 2001 onwards Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi. All intellectual property protected under the provisions of the Treaty of Waitangi 1840 and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Adopted by General Assembly 13 Sept 2007).