A Master Class is taught by the master, to students who have done their homework and are ready to go deep on the subject matter. It is therefore advised that you arrive prepared to do a deep dive with all of the others in attendance. Each of these classes is designed to advance your knowledge and expertise in selected Open methods:
Quick Links to the MasterClasses available the week of May 13 2019: Monday May 13:
VENUE FOR ALL MASTER CLASSES BEFORE AND AFTER THE SYMPOSIUM: The Microsoft Facility at 5 WAYSIDE DRIVE BURLINGTON MA 02478

The venue for all Master Classes is the MICROSOFT facility at 5 Wayside Drive:
MICROSOFT:
Address: 5 Wayside Drive, Burlington, MA 02478
NOTE: We have arranged attractive rates for lodging, at the HYATT HOUSE hotel. The hotel is walking distance to the Microsoft facility. Learn more about lodging
Monday May 13: The 1-Day INVITING LEADERSHIP Master Class with certification from co-authors Mark Sheffield and Daniel Mezick

(Click here for the bios of Mark Sheffield and Daniel Mezick)
“Transformations can’t be accomplished without others helping voluntarily, & people don’t help unless you engage them first.” -GEOFFREY A. MOORE
“Transformation occurs through choice, not mandate. Invitation is the call to create an alternative future. -PETER BLOCK
NOTE: This is includes a Level 1 (Associate Level) certification in Inviting Leadership from The Open Leadership Network. Learn more here.
Engaging employees is essential to achieving rapid and lasting change, and invitations from leaders are a primary way to engage the workforce. The challenge is in how to safely and pragmatically balance the use of delegation and invitation to achieve the desired outcomes. Exactly how to do that is the focus of this class. If you are responsible for delivering on business agility through an agile or digital transformation, or if you provide consulting to those who do, this is your class.
Click here to learn more about the Inviting Leadership book.
Click here for Mark Sheffield’s Bio; Click here for Daniel Mezick’s Bio
Course Description:
Business agility is no longer optional. Rapidly accelerating change, driven by technology, is disrupting the world of work and redefining the game of leadership. Slow-moving, top-down leadership styles are less and less effective with each passing day. The successful leaders of today are finding ways to engage the entire workforce and focus the attention of the whole enterprise on higher performance. These leaders are pivoting their style from delegation to invitation.
INVITING LEADERSHIP is your roadmap for implementing Invitation-Based Change™ in the new world of work. This class shows you how to leverage genuine invitation to engage the workforce, and generate the positive business outcomes that come from self-managed teams. INVITING LEADERSHIP shows you how to do more with less.
With this 1-day class, you will learn how to safely and pragmatically transform your leadership style, and your results:
- Greatly increase employee engagement
- Improve overall business efficiency with self-managed teams
- Attract and retain top talent
- Achieve higher scores in every business outcome you are measuring
- Help your entire organization become more competitive and adaptive
- Build a genuine and lasting environment of continuous improvement
- Scale these business outcomes across the entire enterprise
INVITING LEADERSHIP is your leadership road map for achieving genuine and lasting business agility by applying Open methods to engage, motivate and inspire your people.
What You Will Learn:
- Fundamental concepts and facilities of leadership invitation
- Understand the link between delegation, invitation, employee decision-making, and genuine business agility. Learn when to use delegation, invitation or a mix of the two approaches
- How to use invitations to amplify your leadership and results by generating high-volume feedback
- How to safely and pragmatically use leadership invitations to get exponential growth in employee engagement and results
The INVITING LEADERSHIP Master Class with certificationis your learning event and your road map for achieving genuine and lasting business agility.
This learning event includes the following student takeaways:
- The 1-day learning event and all printed materials;
- A Level 1 certificatein the INVITING LEADERSHIP method based on the book of the same name. Your Level 1 certification includes your placement in the public listing of certificants
- The Kindle Editionof the INVITING LEADERSHIP book (the book is almost 400 pages);
- Thirty days of support by emailwith answers to all your questions, after the event.
Who benefits most from participation:
- Company leaders and decision-makers;
- Professional coaches & consultants who help facilitate Agile and digital transformation;
- PeopleOps and Human Resource professionals.
Click here for details on arranging lodging at the HYATT HOUSE hotel.
Creating and Sustaining High Performance in the Age of Complexity, Monday May 13
Monday May 13: 1-Day BETACODEX & OPENSPACE BETA Master Class: OPEN SOCIAL TECHNOLOGY AT WORK with Niels Pflaeging
An Open Leadership Symposium Thought Clinic with Niels Pflaeging (of Germany)

(Click here for Instructor Bio)
If you and your organization are new to Agile or to Beta, attend this Workshop to get it right the very first time. If you consider yourself a self-organization veteran, you will benefit from Niels’ sharp, no-nonsense, systems-theory-based approach to contemporary organization & leadership. Everyone exits this workshop with a toolkit and fresh insight, and advanced know-how on how to develop rapid & lasting Agile, or Beta change in your organization: Because it is team-based, radically decentralized self-organization that actually scales!
NOTE: This is includes a certification in OpenSpace from Niels Pflaeging and Red42.
The character of this Master Class:
In this highly interactive 1-day workshop, Niels Pflaeging will invite you to discuss the tenets of coherent, organization-wide self-organization, and full-fledge, very fast organizational transformation. Niels will offer insights into his cutting-edge, yet always practical work in the Open arena, which was spawned during his tenure as Beyond Budgeting Round Table director between 2003 and 2007. Recently, Niels co-developed the paradigm-breaking OpenSpace Betaapproach – which is open source, of course. In this workshop, Niels will share insight into concepts from his books Organize for Complexityand Complexitools, and into key Betaapproaches he developed, such as Cell Structure Design,Org Physics, and Change-as-Flipping.
There will be no use of PowerPoint in this workshop, and just a minimum of “lecturing”. Instead, there will be plenty of exercises, and lots of opportunity for connection, exchange, debate & discourse.
Be prepared to be surprised!
What you will learn
- Why management the social technology, or “Alpha”, is obsolete and dispensable – and howthe complexity-robust alternative, “Beta”, looks like.
- How to create and sustain the consistently self-organized, orBeta organization, through decentralization, team-based cell structure design, by changing performance systems, and through adoption of the 12 laws of the BetaCodex
- How to increase performance by raising social density, and by liberating leadership as a social phenomenon that happens in the space between people
- How to eliminate command-and-control practices and methods, such as planning, budgeting, fixed targets, appraisal, bonuses and cost management, and how to adopt appropriately complex relative method& patterns instead
- Why Betaand OpenSpace Betawill reduce your consulting spend by 70 percent or more
- How creating a Beta organization will help you attract and retain the best talent
- How to get there: Applying Very Fast Organizational Transformationapproaches for rapid and lasting agile change
- How to change the thinking and the mental models, so that working the system becomes fast, straight-forward and energizing. Without need for experimentation or dabbling!
- Sources of additional method for self-study and for working organizational systems, effectively.
Takeaway Resources
Everyone who attends this Workshop receives:
- 1 copy of the OpenSpace Beta handbook,
- 1 copy of the OpenSpace Beta timeline poster, and
- 30 days of email support by Nielsafter the Workshop.
About The Instructor: (Click here for Instructor Bio)
Click here for details on arranging lodging at the HYATT HOUSE hotel.
Thursday & Friday, May 16 & 17: The 2-Day Agendashift Master Class with the creator of Agendashift, Mike Burrows

(Click here for Instructor Bio.)
The Agendashift engagement model was created by Mike Burrows. Mike is a featured plenary speaker at the Symposium, and you will meet him here. The Agendashift engagement model is built upon Open principles, and it promises to improve and accelerate your transformation.
Mike Burrows, your expert host and Masterclass guide, will take you through a deep-dive on the entire Agendashift model, focusing on leadership group process, the clear definition of desired outcomes, and execution. Agendashift helps your leadership team align on outcomes and aligns that leadership on achieving them. This is an outstanding Masterclass you do simply not want to miss.
Click here to Learn More About the Agendashift Engagement Model
Seating is limited to strictly 20 participants maximum. Those who purchase a ticket here receive a 20 percent discount. You are not required to purchase a Symposium ticket to participate in the Agendashift Master Class May 16-17 in Burlington MA.
The Agendashift Master Class is $1200US for two full days and includes lunch, the materials, the instruction and everything else you need. If you are quick enough to buy one of the first four (4) tickets, you pay just $1000 and enjoy a $200-off discount on the full tuition.
Click here for details on arranging lodging at the HYATT HOUSE hotel.
Thursday, May 16: The 1-Day OPEN SPACE in ORGANIZATIONS Course with Daniel Mezick

NOTE: This is includes a Level 1 (Associate Level) certification in Open Space from The Open Leadership Network. Learn more here.
(Click here for the Instructor Bio)
Businesses of all kinds are coming to realize that self-management is what actually scales, and Open Space Technology is what actually delivers. Self-managed teams are essential in any organization that wants to become an Agile enterprise. Self-management across the enterprise leads to higher performance, much higher levels of employee engagement, and much more innovation.
Self-managed teams are essential in any organization that wants to become an Agile enterprise. And so the the key question becomes:How can you as a leader quickly encourage and manifest more of the following?
- improved results and revenues
- lower expenses and costs
- more employee engagement,
- more innovation and
- much more business Agility?

Open Space Technology is the answer to this question. Much more than a meeting format, Open Space Technology has the power to transform your entire organization.With Open Space, you will experience:
- A big increase in levels of employee engagement
- Real self-management that can actually scale across your entire enterprise
- Much more innovation — by creating the fertile conditions necessary for innovation to appear
Open Space Technology is an essential aspect of any “Agile at Scale” program because it engages everyone in the process of changing. The use of Open Space produces cost-efficient, rapid, and lasting Agile adoptions. This course in Open Space fundamentals teaches you how to arrange and execute Open Space events in organizations.It also prepares you to truly understanding how OpenSpace Agility works, and how to implement it.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: The OPEN SPACE IN ORGANIZATIONS certification Workshop
- Understand when and when not to use Open Space in your situation.
- Learn the ideal requirements of Open Space
- Understand how to use Open Space with in the context of a transition to “Agile.”
- Learn how to prepare leaders and executives for the Open Space experience
- Know the series of steps for arranging an Open Space event
- Learn how to prepare the physical room for Open Space event
- Understand the fundamentals of Open Space facilitation
- Gain familiarity with the concept of “holding space”
- Get a clear understanding of the flow of an Open Space event through time from beginning to ending of each day
- Understand how to facilitate multi-day Open Space event
- Learn how to guide executives and Sponsors through the processing of the Proceedings **after** the event
- Learn how to handle very large (300++) person Open Space events
- Understand how to deliver Open Space events **online** using ZOOM video
Everything you need is here. This course provides you with everything you need to get good results using Open Space in a variety of organizations settings
WHO SHOULD ATTEND
- Leaders seeking great instruction in all of the Open Space fundamentals
- Executives, directors, and managers who are seeking more employee engagement and innovation and are new to the Open Space process
- Coaches and consultants who serve organizations seeking genuine improvement and more innovation
- Company leaders who want to implement OpenSpace Agility (or any other change-innovation program) as rapidly & effectively as possible
Everyone who attends receives:
- Takeaway materials, including Open Space-execution checklists for Leadership prep, Facilitator prep and Physical Space prep;
- The full day Master Class;
- 30 days of Q&A support by email after the class;
- All students achieve the Level 1 (Associate level) certification in Open Space from The Open Leadership Network
Click here for details on arranging lodging at the HYATT HOUSE hotel.
Friday, May 17: The OPEN SPACE AGILITY Course with Daniel Mezick

(Click here for the Instructor Bio)
NOTE: This 1-day includes a Level 1 (Associate Level) certification in OpenSpace Agility from The Open Leadership Network.
OpenSpace Agility (OSA) is a safe, pragmatic and repeatable technique for getting a rapid and lasting Agile adoption. It works with the framework you are currently using, and OSA can be added at any time. OSA is used to actively engage as many employees as possible in your Agile program.
For executive leaders, OSA is an Employee Engagement Model and A-B-C template that operationalizes the core values of Lean, namely: respect for people, and continuous improvement.
For executives who are truly committed to these values, OSA represents a simple, effective and very efficient way forward.
With OpenSpace Agility, you can expect:
- A dramatic reduction in the coaching & training costs of implementing your Agile program
- A genuine, rapid and lasting Agile transformation
- A dramatic increase in employee engagement scores
- A dramatic increase in stakeholder satisfaction and potentially, genuine stakeholder delight
- Predictable, reliable, repeatable, EVIDENCE-BASED improvement in overall results

The OpenSpace Agility certification class contains everything you need to get going now with OpenSpace Agility. This is a fast-paced, one-day experiential workshop. Everyone who participates in the OSA Workshop achieves the OpenSpace Agility Level 1 (OSA1) Associate-level certificate of completion.
NOTE: Your in-depth knowledge of the Open Space Technology meeting format is assumed. It is strongly recommended that students first have experience arranging Open Space events in organizations, and/or have attended our OPEN SPACE In ORGANIZATIONS certification Workshop (scheduled for May 16) before attending this course on May 17.
Everyone who participates in this 1-Day course achieves the following learning objectives:
- Competency in explaining the key advantages and benefits of the OSA approach to executives, teams and stakeholders.
- Familiarity with the wide range of questions asked about OSA, and preparedness to explain the economics and cost-saving features of OSA
- Readiness to speak confidently about OpenSpace Agility roles, rules, events and artifacts
- Readiness to invite and guide executives into important and specific learning experiences before introducing the full range of OSA concepts and facilities to them
- Readiness to plan, arrange and execute a complete cycle of OSA that begins and ends in Open Space
- Readiness to coach teams, executives and stakeholders through a complete OSA cycle and important learning experiences
- Confidence in how to plan, arrange, deliver and follow up on the enterprise-wide cycles of Open Space generated by OSA
- Familiarity with OSA’s measurement tools and KPI improvement toolkits

Everyone who attends receives:
- The Kindle edition of THE OPENSPACE AGILITY HANDBOOK from instructor Daniel Mezick and co-authors;
- Takeaway materials, including OSA-execution checklists;
- The full day Master Class;
- 30 days of Q&A support by email after the class;
- All students achieve the Level 1 (Associate level) certification from The Open Leadership Network
Click here for the Instructor Bio
Click here to learn more about the OSA Engagement Model
Click here for details on arranging lodging at the HYATT HOUSE hotel.