OrgDev Live Conference 2026
7–8 July • Free • Online
This conference is free to attend. If you’d like to support the work behind it and help us cover the costs, you’re very welcome to contribute.
Agenda - Day 2 - Wednesday 8 July 09.30 to 16.30 (British Summer Time)
Organisation Effectiveness
A focus on how organisations actually work – and where they don’t – Systems thinking and complexity, Organisation design and strategy and How teams work together in practice
Looking for the Day 1 schedule? Click here
09:30 to 09:45: Welcome OrgDev Live 2026 - Day 2
10.00 to 11.00: Complexity: Leading Change in an Uncertain World
Dr Jean Boulton
Visiting Research Fellow
University of Bath
How do we lead change when the future is uncertain and cause-and-effect is difficult to predict?
Join Dr Jean Boulton as she explores the implications of complexity science for organisations, leadership and change. Drawing on decades of work in complexity and strategy, Jean will examine how emergence, adaptation and interconnectedness shape organisational life, and what this means for those seeking to influence change.
A practical and thought-provoking exploration of how to navigate uncertainty with greater wisdom, judgment and confidence.
Jean Boulton PhD FInstP MBA MPhil (www.embracingcomplexity.com) studied physics before turning to management and the social sciences. She has an international reputation for her contribution to the science of complexity and its application to the social and natural world – ways of knowing, leadership, strategy, change and sustainability.
She is keenly interested in global futures and transformational change, engages in local politics and place-based initiatives and continues her teaching and consultancy practice. Her recent book is The Dao of Complexity (2024:De Gruyter) explores the processual nature of the complexity world, building on the work of Ilya Prigogine.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-boulton-6856471/
You can find Jean’s books here:
11.00 to 11.15: Coffee Break
11:15 to 12:30: How to Make Change Happen in a fast moving world
Dr. Aidan Harney
Strategy Manager, Culture & OD, ESB
Jules Siegel-Hawley
Founder & Principal, Andes
Valerie Yeo
Principal Consultant, Institute of Leadership and Organisation Development, Civil Service College
Change is rarely as straightforward as the models suggest. Even well-intentioned initiatives can create uncertainty, resistance, loss and unintended consequences.
In this practical and honest discussion, Aidan Harney, Jules Siegel-Hawley and Valerie Yeo will explore the realities of leading and supporting change in complex organisations. Drawing on their experiences from the front line, they will share lessons learned, common pitfalls, and the practical actions that can make a meaningful difference. Expect real stories, thoughtful discussion and useful insights for anyone helping people navigate change.
Aidan Harney
Dr. Aidan Harney, PhD, has spent 25 years poking around the messy, fascinating business of how learning organisations operate. These days, he’s doing just that at ESB – Ireland’s national electricity utility – helping shape the group strategy around Culture and Capabilities, with the aim of empowering the sustainable energy transition, by undertaking transformational changes across the business to achieve net zero emissions by 2040.
Previously, he spent more than a decade at Intel Corporation, in a variety of roles across Leadership Development, Organisation Development, Culture Change and Strategic Workforce Planning in Ireland, Europe and at Global level. Before that, Aidan served as Engineers Ireland’s Director of Continuing Professional Development, consulting on Learning & Development and OD, across a wide range of engineering-led organisations.
Aidan holds a PhD on the topic of Leadership Psychology in Complexity from Munster Technological University in Ireland, where he explored what sets exceptional leaders apart in uncertain, fast-moving contexts. His Master’s degree in Business Studies is from Dublin City University and his Higher Diploma in Organisation Design & Development (OD&D) is from the CIPD, where he is a Chartered Fellow.
Aidan has been mentoring and coaching for more than 20 years. He is an accredited Individual Coach & Mentor as well as a Team Coach Practitioner with the EMCC.
About Valerie
Passionate about making workplaces where people can thrive, develop and bring their best selves to work and enable others to flourish. Designer of conversations to promote transformation, growth, collaboration and change.
Valerie has over 15 years of experience of providing consulting & advisory services in the areas of leadership team coaching, employee engagement, organisation & leadership development, managing enterprise change and transformation, and OD capability development (OD practice), particularly in the Singapore Public Service. In recent years, she has focused more in the area of Leadership Team Coaching in the context of organisation transformation and building OD capability across the Singapore Public Service.
A graduate of the inaugural Singapore cohort of CRR Global’s Organisation Relationship Systems Coaching intermediate coaching module series and the WBECS Global Team Coaching Institute’s gateway coaching certification programme, Valerie weaves systems relationship coaching into her organisation development and leadership development consulting practice where possible.
She is an EMCC accredited Individual Team Coach at the Foundation level and holds a Certificate in Organisation Development (Civil Service College & NTL).
About Jules
Jules Siegel-Hawley is the Founder of Andes, a consultancy specialising in scalable, agile people infrastructure for high-growth startups and enterprises undergoing transformation.
With deep expertise in organisation design, people strategy, and change leadership, she helps companies navigate complex transitions and rapid scaling while maintaining operational efficiency and a strong company culture. At Andes, Jules partners with companies at critical inflection points—whether they are scaling rapidly, integrating post-acquisition, or restructuring teams. Taking an embedded approach, she and her team go beyond advising, offering fractional leadership and hands-on support to ensure people operations align with business strategy.
Jules’ work focuses on:
- Designing people systems that scale with business growth.
- Providing fractional leadership to guide organisations through change.
- Optimising people operations during periods of transition.
- Supporting post-acquisition integration to align people strategy with new business goals.
Her mission is to ensure that people systems drive sustainable growth, foster innovation, and build long-term resilience.
12:30 to 13:15: Lunch and informal networking
During the lunch break, we’ll open a number of optional breakout rooms for anyone who would like to connect with fellow attendees, continue conversations from the morning or meet other OD practitioners from around the world.
Equally, if you’d prefer to take a proper break, grab some lunch or step away from the screen for a while, please do. Use the time in whatever way works best for you.
13.15 to 14.15: Stream 1 - The Reality of Self Managing Teams
Paul Jansen
Founder / CEO, Trust Works
Self-managing teams continue to capture the imagination of leaders and OD practitioners alike, but moving from hierarchy to shared ownership is rarely straightforward.
Paul will share practical insights into what enables self-management to succeed and the organisational conditions needed to support it.
Paul is the founder of Trust Works. Trust Works provides tailormade support to organisations through consultancy and (team) coaching, helping them to adopt innovative, trust-based ways of working that are suited to the complex environments they operate in.
This includes equipping leaders, middle management and frontline staff with the confidence, tools and mechanisms to work as high-performing teams across the organisations’ systems and silos. Trust, transparency and curiosity are key elements in this approach.
Paul is a Buurtzorg expert. His prior work includes introducing the world-famous Buurtzorg model of self-managing teams to many organisations in the UK, both in and outside the health & care sector.
He also led and created several employee-owned social enterprises and other not-for-profit organisations in health, mental health and social care, mostly former public sector services. In a previous life, he was Head of Strategy at an investment bank in the London City.
He is a board member of the Institute for the Future of Work and of CHUMS Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing Support for children and young people.
Paul is an INSEAD Executive MBA graduate and holds an MSc in Industrial Engineering & Management Science from Eindhoven University of Technology.
https://trust-works.co.uk/blog
https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-jansen-656638/
email: paul@trust-works.co.uk
13.15 to 14.15: Stream 2 - Creating the Conditions for Better Thinking
Creating the Conditions for Better Thinking
What competencies do organisations — the people in them — need to truly become cultures of independent thinking?
We’ll begin exploring this question together, drawing on the principles of the Thinking Environment.
Join me for an informal dialogue on the power of generative attention, and how the quality of our thinking shapes the quality of our action.
Through input, reflection, and dialogue we will focus primarily on the component of Attention and how it animates the way we are ‘being’ while we do the work we love.
Maryse Barak is an Executive Coach who coaches men and women locally and internationally – she also teaches, accredits and supervises coaches in the Time To Think methodology. She is a sought-after mentor.
Maryse is a master facilitator whose work is creating and delivering specific programmes designed to develop, engage and enrich Leaders. These programmes are highly interactive and emphasize the use of tools, skills and practices that ensure understanding and capacity to work with the rich and complex issues of Quality Thinking, Leadership, and Collaboration. The programmes are structured to demonstrate how to leverage the powerful advantages of diversity, enabling people to optimise thinking, enhance self-confidence and their work environments.
Personal View
“Being, in what is sometimes referred to as, the ‘last third of life’, I relish work that has deep meaning and purpose. To this end, I coach leaders, and teams of leaders, to create contexts of rich collaboration and excellent thinking to sustain meaningful change. Building relationships that are grounded in deep respect and genuine interest is the starting point for good thinking. My coaching, mentoring, and work practices are based on this.”
Professional Experience
Maryse has developed expertise from over 30 years facilitating, coaching, mentoring and developing leaders. She works with Executive Teams in large multi-nationals and organisations including NGOs. Maryse is regularly invited to be on Faculty for Executive Leadership programmes by a number of South African business schools.
Academic Background
Maryse has an undergraduate degree from the University of Cape Town, Certificate from Tavistock Clinic in London; Professional Certificate in Coaching from Middlesex University UK and a variety of other non-academic qualifications. Founding Time To Think™ Global Faculty member.
Maryse is certified to deliver all Time To Think™ programmes and to teach and accredit others to deliver them. She teaches and supervises Time To Think coaches and facilitators. She is a co-author of the book Team Coaching – Artists At Work – published by Penguin – edited by Helena Dolny.
13.15 to 14.15: Stream 3 - Reading the Room: How to Work With Absurdity When You’re Inside It
Charleen Johnson
Founder & Lead Researcher, Organizational Absurdity Research Program, InSpark Group
As an OD practitioner, you already live inside contradiction, paradox, and the special brand of organizational cynicism that shows up in your one-on-ones, your team sessions, and that meeting where a leader says two opposite things in the same breath and somehow nobody blinked. You’ve been quietly cataloguing all of it, and the catalogue’s filling up faster than your inbox after a week of PTO, leaving you wondering how you’re actually supposed to work with any of it.
Absurdity is a signal that people and systems are losing their bearings, and it seems to be accelerating more than ever. Using a complex adaptive systems lens, we’ll introduce functional absurdity, the patterns it shows up as, and the types worth distinguishing.
Come ready with your own examples. You’ll leave with a working lens, some reflection on your own practice, and one good question to take home: what would it mean for OD practitioners to step into an evolving role as stewards of orientation capacity?
People and organizations are losing their bearings as they navigate growing complexity. Charleen Johnson treats the absurdity that shows up there, the gap between what we say and what we do, as a signal worth reading rather than a glitch to fix. She calls the pattern functional absurdity: the meeting where everyone nods, nothing changes, and somehow that counts as progress.
Charleen is the founder of InSpark Group and lead researcher of the Organizational Absurdity Research Program. Through her Field Paper series, she explores orientation capacity, the ability of a system to stay in contact with what is actually happening, and what it takes for organizations to find their bearings again.
She writes about this work for a broader audience through The Age of Absurdity, which she is building in public on Substack and GitHub. She brings more than twenty years of practitioner experience across Canada, the United States, and New Zealand, with work spanning public, private, and global organizations.
That practitioner background grounds her research. It also means her conversations with OD practitioners tend to land somewhere uncomfortable: not just what our frameworks help us see, but what they let us avoid.
14.15 to 14.30: Coffee Break
14.30 to 15.30: The Confluence of Organization Design and Development
Julian Chender
Founder + Managing Consultant
11A Collaborative
How do we create organisations that are both well-designed and capable of continuous adaptation?
Joining us from New York, Julian will examine the confluence of Organization Design and Organization Development, exploring how the two disciplines can work together to create more effective, resilient and human-centred organisations.
Julian is the Founder of 11A Collaborative, a boutique consulting firm that partners with Social Impact organizations to reimagine how they operate so they can do more of what matters. He became a consultant and coach in order to help create healthy society through healthy organizations.
Julian’s expertise lies in organization strategy, design, and development. His extensive experience spans organizations across sectors, ranging from the smallest nonprofit to the Fortune 10. Most recently, Julian has worked with Social Impact organizations in arts and culture, direct service, social justice, economic mobility, and healthcare.
A distinguished alum of Accenture’s Operating Model & Organization Design practice, Julian was the first external hire into the Kates Kesler acquisition. Prior to that, he worked under Tony Fauci to support the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease’s response to the Ebola and Zika crises through enterprise strategy and organization and leadership development.
Julian is a Certified Organization Design Practitioner and an ICF-Certified Coach. He holds a master’s degree in Organization Development from American University and a B.A. in History from Swarthmore College. Earlier in his career, he was recognized with the Organization Development Network’s Emerging Practitioner Award. He currently serves on the Organization Design Forum’s Board of Advisors and has previously served on the Board of Trustees of the Organization Development Network.
15.30 to 16.15: Day 2 Reflection – Questions, Patterns and Possibilities
David Hayden
Consultant
Talent Delivers
To close the day, David Hayden will host an end-of-day reflection session, joined by a selection of speakers, guests and contributors from across the conference.
Together, they’ll reflect on the key themes, insights and questions that emerged during the day, helping participants make sense of what they’ve heard, identify what resonates most, and consider what they might take forward into their own practice.
With over 30 years experience across a range of people practice disciplines including, organisation design, organisation development, L&D, recruitment and strategic workforce planning as well as designing and delivering leadership and management development programmes, David is a Chartered Fellow of the CIPD and is the co-author of L&D Practice in the Workplace 5th Ed with Kathy Beevers and Adjacent Learning with Steve George.
He chaired the CIPDs OD conference and has delivered a number of keynote speaches. He has also appeared on a range of podcasts including Org Dev, CIPD and MindTools and occasionally blogged for People Management.
He has a wealth of experience working in the public sector, distribution, finance and retail and this is completed with his role of Lean Engineer working in a number of manufacturing sites across the Midlands and North of England.
He has worked freelance since Jan 2024 and is working with a number of clients in the L&D arena who are looking to get a deeper understanding of the world of OD&D and is mentoring a number of people.
A keen runner, he can be found most Saturdays either running or volunteering at his local parkrun, and in November 2025 got a pb for the marathon in 3:39:21!
David can be contacted via email david@talentdelivers.co.uk , his website, TalentDelivers.co.uk , or via his linked in profile