NextGen For You · Learning Expeditions

Learning Expeditions

Go and see how the most adaptive organizations really work, and bring back what fits yours.

Accelerate your managerial transformation: inspire your teams, generate ideas, identify partners to co-innovate and prioritize key trends.

Why go and see

See for yourself what works, and what doesn't

Purpose-driven companies, holacracy, flat or agile organizations: the labels inspire, but what is the reality behind them, and would it work for you?

Take a pause from your day-to-day, on-site or virtually, and take a step back. Check out the reality of the most adaptive organizations.

Convincing managers and teams to change without feedback from successful professionals from your industry is a real challenge!

That is why every expedition meets the people who actually made the change.

Inspire your teams
Show what is possible and lift doubts by example, with people who have already made the move.
Generate ideas
Challenge your ideas with those who have done it: what worked, what was hard, what failed.
Identify partners to co-innovate
Meet leaders, managers and teams from other organizations, and keep the conversation going after the visit.
Prioritize key trends
Turn what you saw into a shared view of what matters for you, and the basis of a realistic action plan.

Who it is for

An expedition works best at a key moment: before or while you build a strategic plan, a new vision or a transformation programme.

Align your leadership team
Executive committees
Align on a shared vision, the target and the obstacles on the way, starting with the preparation work, and grow closer as a team.
Give your transformation a push
Transformation leaders
Open leaders and business lines to other operating models, and remove barriers by showing what others already do.
Join an inter-company expedition
Individual leaders
Travel with leaders from other companies: get inspired, test your ideas and build your network.

How an expedition runs

We don't organize expeditions as sightseeing. Each one starts from the questions you need answered, and ends with what you will do next.

BeforeFrame the questions We define with you the issues to explore, the outcome you expect and the organizations to visit. Participants receive a brief and a short reading list before they leave.
On siteMeet those who do Leaders, managers and team members explain how they work, what went well and what did not. Where possible, you sit in on a real meeting or ritual.
Every dayStep back together Debriefs in small groups turn what surprised you into questions for your own context. You share your observations with your hosts, so the visit gives back to them too.
AfterDecide what to try You receive a written summary of the main learnings, and we work with you on the first actions to launch in your teams.

What groups come to see

Some of the themes recent expeditions have explored:

We select the host organizations with you, from NextGen's international network of practitioners.

They went to see

An expedition is rarely an end in itself. For these clients, it opened a longer journey.

Smart4Engineering
Technology
A learning expedition for the leaders to the largest European tech company that has deployed agility and sociocratic governance at scale, where the CEO exchanged with the leader of that transformation. Then purpose and values work with the executive committee, a first “data” league and a community of champions.
Read the Smart4Engineering story Smart4Engineering
Audemars Piguet
Luxury watchmaking
Three steps with the executive committee on sustainable leadership: theory and current practices, a learning phase notably through a learning expedition, then a seminar to summarise the learnings and draw up an ESG action plan.
Read the Audemars Piguet story Audemars Piguet