Seminars:
Organizational Performance Conversations
Aculasek Consulting (AC) partners with you and your organization to create high performance teams and cultures that ably respond to external change, facilitate effective decisions, generate new thinking, and provide exceptional service with minimum time, resources, and stress.
As part of this service, AC offers seminars as discrete offers or part of a comprehensive consulting program. All seminars are tailored to the particular needs of a group or organization.
Gabriel Acosta, Principal at AC, leads and facilitates these seminars. Recognized as a dynamic and engaging speaker, Gabriel connects with audiences by uniquely combining a deep understanding of complex subject matters, accessible explanations, and the authenticity of a curious life-long learner.
Seminars may be taken in any order, and include the following offers:
Seminar I: How We Learn
Daily our access to information grows; tweets, feeds, email, articles, talks, books, seminars, trainings, etc. literately inundate us. We seem to have very little time to absorb this information and rarely can digest and make effective use of it. In this seminar, Gabriel discusses how humans learn – and it’s not what most literature tells you. The process begins with the centuries old tradition of slowing down, becoming present, and writing with pen on paper. Topics discussed in this seminar include:
- The Culture of Busy
- Breaks and Pauses
- Reflection
- Journaling
- Learning Paths
- Learning Model: from knowing to understanding
- The Practice of Practice
Seminar II: Being Human at Work
If we pause and reflect on the language used to describe ourselves at work, we start to recognize dehumanizing terms: "head count," "cogs," "work force," "capital," or "resource.” We describe behaviors as “that’s how she’s wired” or “that guy is missing a screw.” We emphasize technical skills as “hard skills” and minimize or even dismiss relational skills as “soft skills.” In this fascinating seminar, Gabriel offers a series of reflections about our everyday living and how these observations affect us. He brings to light our nature as cultural-biological beings, and our innate desire and emotion to live in social settings that seek the well-being of each member of the group. Topics discussed in this seminar include:
- The Structure of Being Human
- The Essence of Being Human
- Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast
- The 5 Engagement Conversations
Seminar III: From Leadership Driven to Team Driven
We currently live in a culture enamored with leadership. We have created organizational structures, processes, and cultures that overemphasize leadership and under emphasize teams and communities. An effect of this leadership focus is assigning full responsibility of an organization’s success or failure to only the leaders.
In this seminar Gabriel invites participants to reflect and discuss the evolution of leaders. We begin by observing leaders as commanders charged with having answers, making decisions, creating a blue print, and motivating the troops. Later, we look at leaders understood as enablers; their role is to ask the right questions, empower people to make decisions, and build a culture of ownership and engagement. Topics in this seminar include:
- The History of Leadership
- Entitled Individuals Vs. Engaged Teams
- Social Architects: Community Building
- The 5 Engagement Conversations
Seminar IV: Building a Culture of Innovation
Given the accelerating changes, shifts, and disruptions in the business world, innovation has become a critical component for the success of organizations. However, in the hurry to “innovate,” we have not paused to study the process of innovation and the organizational culture needed to effectively facilitate the emergence of innovation. In this reflective and practical seminar, Gabriel discusses how to generate an effective, innovative organizational culture, including the core distinctions necessary to build a foundation for innovation. Topics include:
- Types of problems
- Types of Innovations
- Types of Mistakes and Failures
- The Practice of Innovation
Seminar V: Transitioning from Scientist/Engineer to Manager
In the majority of companies, the person promoted to manager is likely the employee with the best technical skills – perhaps the top sales person, best engineer, best accountant, best designer, and so forth. What happens next? If a company has the time and resources, this newly minted manager may attend a one-week management/leadership course, receive a pat in the back, told “good luck,” and if a problem comes up, call HR. Then we wonder why we have such low-performing managers.
In this seminar, Gabriel proposes we start treating “management” as a professional practice just as doctors and lawyers practice their professions. A professional practice means integrating learning into a consistent and accepted structure within the workplace, and providing managers the education they required and deserve. Topics in this seminar include:
- Being Setup for Failure
- From Being Rational to Being Relational
- From Problem Solving to Dilemma Handling
- From Micro-Managing to Enabling