AM23-PDW7: Beyond the Matrix: Cutting Edge Insights to design and develop organisations

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Professional Development Workshop: PDW7 (online)
Tuesday 27 June, 2023
10.00am to 5.00pm SAST
CE CREDITS AVAILABLE

Beyond the Matrix: Cutting Edge Insights to design and develop organisations

Facilitators: *Dr Sari Mattila and Dr Ajeet Mathur

*Contact person for the workshop

Purpose of this PDW

We are in the midst of systemic change in the era of the Anthropocene with increasing calls for adjusting growth/degrowth to counter regressive spirals. These pose new challenges that require transformations in strategy and leadership of groups and organisations. Keeping these in mind, the purpose of this PDW offered by two academic practitioners is to share the cutting edge of knowledge and insights as applied in using psychoanalytic concepts and theories tested in practice with top management groups for the design and development of organisations. Participants will have opportunity to learn how groups and teams can inquire into the unknown and bring to awareness insights about unconscious processes by re-covering and dis-covering the latent “magic” of process work from the mundane. This PDW will introduce participants to how Freud, unable to trace the source of neurotic conflicts reconsidered the centrality of the Oedipus after his dialogue with Bose who proposed the theory of opposite wishes as an alternative explanation and treatment for symptoms induced by repressions; how Bion’s ‘O’ evokes the tension between wonder and anxiety, how Romain Rolland challenged Freud by drawing attention to ‘oceanic feelings’ and mysticism, what Gordon Lawrence called ‘won from the void’, and how organizational spaces can be used for stirring and stimulating creative group processes to experience serendipity and synchronicity. We link these into the need to consider circularity and re-generation of concepts and learning that enable us to create connections and being with, as opposed to doing for. We draw from our respective backgrounds to blend approaches to touch the unseen and see the untouched.

This PDW offers a trine bringing to participants for the first time, an opportunity to understand and apply in their work:

• Significance of Cleaning Lenses: Differences in concepts and techniques of psychodynamic approaches in various traditions of India and Europe for learning to diagnose and work in communities of practice and communities of habitat
• Applying Holistic Interventions: How to discover the meta-essence in body-mind-spirit unities and design healing interventions with regard to the seven universal phenomenal dualities in one’s own culture
• Trusting the Process: Harmony sensing and disharmony dissolving by invoking the magic of process work and connecting aesthetics of human experience with Bionian basic assumptions for attention to serendipity and synchronicity

For Whom

This PDW is designed as an in-person event. We welcome everyone interested in learning and understanding psychodynamics of organisations and interested in directly advancing to applying concepts and methods as practitioners. Places are limited to 12 by design on first-come. first served basis. There will be no cameras and no recording of this PDW as we wish participants to participate and learn experientially from short exercises during the PDW. Although this PDW is open to and designed for persons without previous qualifications and experience in psycho-dynamic/psychoanalytical understanding, advanced practitioners with an open mind and willing to learn and unlearn are also welcome.

Learning Objectives

Participants will be able to:

1. Apply Holistic Interventions
2. Identify Holistic Interventions
3. Apply techniques to diagnose and work on communities of practice and habitat
4. Recognise the magic of process work and connecting aesthetics of human experience with Bionian basic assumptions
5. Apply body-mind-spirit unities and design healing interventions

Biographical Summaries

Dr Sari Mattila
Sari Mattila works with different kinds of groups and individuals in their growth processes. She received her Ph.D. degree in Management and OB/HR from Tampere University of Technology after an integrated Master's Degree in Philosophy from the University of Joensuu (now part of the University of Eastern Finland). She has been faculty member at IIM Bangalore (2014-2019), the Doctoral Programme Coordinator of the OB/HRM Area (2015-2018) and taught in IIM-B long duration and short duration programmes. She has taught in Master’s and Doctoral Level courses and in Executive Education Programmes at different institutions such as IIM‐A, IIM-T, IIM-V, Institute of Management, Nirma University, Flame School of Business, and CEPT in India besides Tampere University of Technology and University of Turku in Finland. Her courses in Long Duration Programmes and Executive Education Programmes have included Organisational Behaviour, Experiential Learning, Leadership, Cross‐Cultural Management, Creativity, Innovation, Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility, Mentoring and Coaching, and Socratic Dialogues. She has published in peer reviewed journals, chapters in edited books and co-authored a case registered in the IIMA casebank besides other publications. Her MOOCs on Managerial Ethics: Reflective practices for action designed and developed at IIMB was launched and delivered in 2019 on the edX Platform. She herself draws individual insights and growth from mindfulness practices as part of her interest in experiential learning, dreams and social dreaming matrices, group based psychodrama practices (classical and TSM), yoga, vipassana and philosophical praxis. She uses insights from these in leadership retreats and one-to-one sessions. She can be reached at ssama@tutanota.com

Dr Ajeet Mathur
Ajeet Mathur consults to leaders and their teams on strategy, transformative leadership, and creative collaboration for change management. He is a member of the Board of Directors of ISPSO, Professor Emeritus, NDIM and has been Professor at IIMs Ahmedabad and Calcutta, and the EU-Tempus Professor of European Integration and Internationalisation. He received his Ph.D. Degree from Indian Institute of Science Bangalore and has held visiting academic appointments at K.U.Leuven, University of California at Berkeley, Aalto University and Tampere University, among others. He chaired the Centre for Gender Equity, Diversity and Inclusivity for five years. His publications include more than thirty books and over one hundred and sixty papers in scientific journals and anthologies. He is one of the authors of the International Encyclopaedia of Laws. He is on the Staff of Group Relations Conferences since 1983 and has directed Group Relations Conferences in Europe and India. He served as Director and CEO of the Institute of Applied Manpower Research with the rank of Secretary to the Government of India. He has served on the Board of Directors with Corporates in India and Europe and with the School of Inter-Disciplinary Studies, IGNOU. He is an Affiliate Life Member of the Indian Psycho-analytic Society and an accredited Yoga Shikshak and Karma Sannyasin of the Bihar School of Yoga. He is recipient of several national and international honours and awards. He can be reached at anmathur@iima.ac.in