Becoming Adaptable: Creative facilitation to develop yourself and transform cultures

Becoming Adaptable provides insights on why adaptability enables better performance in personal and professional life. It details many insightful and practical facilitation activities to develop deeper understanding of people, relationships and culture. It explains how behavioural impacts what people perceive in context and what this means for how they interact with each other in learning and social interactions. The book explores how facilitation works best in practice, and what this means for the performance of individuals, teams and organisations. The new concept of MindFLEX is introduced to describe the parallel states of mind that enable a facilitator to more richly engages participants in facilitated activities. Becoming Adaptable is an essential resource for anyone wishing to make a difference for themselves and their peers, in both personal and professional situations. It is a compelling resource for experienced professionals who want to lead, coach, mentor or positively influence others around them.

Becoming Adaptable further develops the creative metaphor described in The Organizational Zoo (OrgZoo) into a series of advanced behavioural activities that can be facilitated to build trust and strengthen relationships. The advanced techniques have been developed for a range of personal and professional development and are clearly described by walking facilitators through why, who, what, when, where and how to deliver through the process. Useful facilitator tips and hints are provided to optimise success. Seventy relevant topics are listed to highlight the complexities of facilitation, with a brief connection to where the reader can find out more about them. Understanding what these are and knowing when to apply them will assist the performance of practitioners using the activities to achieve desired learning and development outcomes.

Dr Arthur Shelley is collaborative community builder and learning facilitator and creative education designer with over 30 years of professional experience across the international corporate, government and tertiary education sectors. He is an international author, has worked in 12 countries, is a mentor in several international communities, and has supervised PhD candidates in 5 countries. He has collaborated with organisations as diverse as NASA, Cirque Du Soleil, Local and National Governments, Universities, start-ups, SME's and multinational corporations. Arthur is Internationally acknowledged as a knowledge and capability development thought leader, project manager and community builder. He has written three books prior to Becoming Adaptable, as well as chapters of collaborative book projects, a range of peer reviewed research papers and is a reviewer for academic journals. Arthur is the producer of international events such as Creative Melbourne and AuSKM, a regular international conference speaker, multi-award-winning tertiary teacher and a mentor/career advisor for students and PhD candidates. He is the lead assessor of the Knowledge Ready Organisation Awards, a program initiated by the Knowledge Management Society of Singapore to take organisations on a journey of sustained performance improvement, based on knowledge informed strategic projects. Arthur created and facilitated the Executive MBA capstone course at RMIT University in Melbourne at the Graduate School of Business and Law, a project-based learning experience delivered for real business clients. This applied learning experience is based developing options for genuine client projects in industry and government to improve their productivity. He engages in collaborative research through his role as a Senior Industry Fellow at RMIT and was the former Global Knowledge Director of Cadbury Schweppes.

Dr Mark Boyes is the Head of Healthcare Innovation at Australian Pharmaceuticals Industries based in Melbourne, Australia. Mark holds an Executive MBA (Distinction) and a PhD in Innovation and Creativity, he has over 15 years of leadership experience in leading diverse teams in healthcare, information technology and business transformation. During his research Mark was a Lecturer in Technology and Innovation Strategy and Design Thinking at RMIT's Graduate School of Business and Law. Mark's experience is broad having worked across numerous sectors including Gaming, Finance, Retail, FMCG, Security, Pharmaceuticals and Human Resources. Mark has co-developed world's first technologies in the Surveillance arena and more recently has been leading multi-million-dollar Business Intelligence and healthcare start up projects. Mark has facilitated innovation and visualisation sessions in organisations such as NASA, RMIT University, Bangkok University, Hemisphere Design School in France, Creative Melbourne and Creative Bangkok. Mark is a published author and illustrator with contributions to the Palgrave Handbook of Workplace Innovation, The Organizational Zoo, Knowledge Succession and Becoming Adaptable.