Building Essential Capacities
Free events on Feb 19 & 21
Join us for a free online event, available on Thursday, Feb 19 (register here) and Saturday, Feb 21 (register here), both at 10am PT. Come to whichever day works best for you. The event will introduce you to what the capacities are and why they are essential for navigating complexity and co-evolving the future.
You’ll also learn how our two 4-week capacity-building programs can equip you to stay ahead of the curve and be proactively adaptive in this time of profound change.
Why we need to expand our capacities
Today’s rapidly changing world keeps asking more of us than we’re prepared for.
We feel it in the big, obvious ways – climate crisis, political turbulence, institutional breakdown – yet also in immediate, daily ways:
The conversation that, in hindsight, you sense could have been handled better if both of you weren’t so stressed.
The relationship pattern that isn’t working but can’t seem to change.
The complexity you’re trying to navigate with tools that were never designed for it.
The group dynamics where the actuality is well below the aspiration.
You increasingly feel the mismatch between the territory you’re in and the capacities you have. And you see that mismatch in people all around you.
It’s not an individual failing. It’s a cultural gap.
The education we received, the workplace cultures we inhabit, the broader society we’re part of – they taught us a lot, but they left out important capacities. What we need to know now is how to:
partner skillfully with our nervous systems for emotional resilience
develop our capacity to think systemically, to hold complexity without collapsing it into separate categories
build our skills for genuine collaboration, for navigating challenges toward outcomes that serve everyone involved as well as the larger whole
develop our uniquely human capacities for creativity, intuition, discernment, somatic awareness, courage, and compassion – capacities that AI will never replace
In today’s world, these capacities aren’t optional. They’re foundational. And they’re learnable.
That’s what our free events on Feb 19 & 21 and our Essential Capacities Programs are about.
We’ve combined the growing knowledge from neuroscience, complexity science, and related disciplines with our four decades of experience in group process, cultural change, and personal development. And we’ve distilled it all into practical capacity-building programs for the essential capacities you need for navigating complexity and co-evolving the future.
We’re offering 2 ways for you to start building your personal capacities and influencing the future:
1) A free online event to explore what the capacities are and why they are essential on Thursday, Feb 19 (register here) and Saturday, Feb 21 (register here), both at 10am PT. Everyone is welcome. Come to whichever day works best for you. Recordings will be available if you can’t make it in person.
2) Two 4-week capacity-building programs for practitioners, organizational leaders, educators, and changemakers who want to integrate these capacities into their life and work. These programs are a core part of our system for accelerating cultural transformation, described in Co-Evolving the CulturalOS.
Program 1: Expanding Personal and Collaborative Capabilities
March 2-28
Focuses on upgrading your personal “operating system.” You will develop greater self-awareness, emotional agility, cognitive flexibility, and advanced collaborative skills. It helps you stay grounded in the face of complexity and uncertainty, relate across differences, and work in new ways that integrate value for yourself, others, and the whole. This program is open to everyone and is a prerequisite for the second program.
Program 2: Co-Evolving Whole-System Organizations and Cultures
April 13-May 9
Builds on the Program 1 prerequisite and applies it to groups, organizations, and culture at any scale. You learn how to work with living systems, design healthier organizations, and support cultural evolution in real-world contexts.
Together, the programs help you:
Bring your initiatives into the world with more clarity and momentum
Build adaptive capacity in a rapidly changing world
Understand your inner dynamics and stay resilient under pressure
Work with others more effectively and with greater productivity
Apply practical methodologies from within our Foundational Keys framework to support personal growth, enhance project and organizational development, and design better systems for responding to a world that’s grown beyond its capacity to cope
Develop and adopt new “cultural DNA” patterns that make the old ways of business-as-usual obsolete
Partner with AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT as thoughtful allies in your work
The programs are structured to be deep yet time-efficient:
Weekly content, under 45 minutes to read
Experiential activities that integrate into your daily life
Two Zoom meetings per week: one small-group triad and one large-group session, available Thursdays and Saturdays at 10 am PT
A private online community for connection, reflection, and project support
Support from your AI assistant trained on the program material that you can use for your projects
Registration Rates: (Register by Feb 27)
For Program 1 only
Individual – $375
Supporting rate – $475
Group rate – $325 each
For both Programs 1 and 2
Individual– $700
Supporting rate– $850
Group rate – $600 each
Group rate is available when 2 or more people who work or live together register for the same program(s). Supporting rate registration contributes to the Scholarship Fund and helps us continue Context Institute’s commitment to geographic, age, and background diversity.
Scholarships are available. Contact me for more information.
You can spread the payments over as many as twelve months if that’s helpful.
There’s a full money-back guarantee for each program through the first week of that program. For example, if you’ve registered for both but then decide to drop Program 2, you’ll be refunded the difference between the combined rate and the Program 1 rate.
The sooner you register, the sooner you’ll be added to the program’s private online group. In the group, you’ll find pre-program resources and, if you choose, you can begin your orientation to the program.
FAQs
Will you be offering this series in the future? Yes, we plan on offering this multiple times throughout the year, although we don’t have dates yet. If you take only Program 1 now, you can take Program 2 in a later cycle.
Where can I find out more about the background for these programs? Please look at Foundational Keys and Co-Evolving the CulturalOS, both on this site. For more on my background, see My Story.
Questions?
Here are some of the influences into, and benefits from, the Essential Capacity Programs:
