Open World Executive
Experiential work for founders, leaders and teams whose situation has outgrown its playbook. We work on the human side of change: how people perceive, decide, relate and act.
Find the right engagement
Answer three questions and we will suggest a package. Or read on for the detail.
Suggested package
Your suggestion appears here once you have answered the three questions.
These are the standard packages. If you submit an enquiry, a bespoke package that addresses your exact needs will be assembled for you.
The problem
Technology can expand what an organisation can do faster than its people can update how they perceive, decide, relate and act.
Adaptive intelligence is the ability to perceive clearly, respond creatively and act coherently when familiar approaches no longer fit.
It rests on capacities that are hard to outsource: presence, imagination, communication, embodiment, relational awareness and the courage to stay engaged with uncertainty. These can be trained, and they are best trained by doing.
What needs to change?
Start from the problem. Each package draws on a set of Open World modules, shaped to your situation.
For leaders who need to stay clear, credible and effective when things get difficult.
Adaptive leadership development, done through experience. Builds presence, communication, judgment and behavioural range under pressure.
Clearer communication · Better difficult conversations · Stronger presence · Greater adaptability · More confident decisions
Senior leaders · emerging leaders · managers · client-facing roles
For teams that need to work better together when the work gets complicated.
Builds trust, participation, responsiveness and cross-functional coordination through live experience rather than abstract theory.
Better collaboration · Stronger trust · More candid communication · Greater initiative · Faster coordination
Existing teams · cross-functional groups · leadership teams
For organisations preparing people for work that is becoming faster, stranger and increasingly AI-mediated.
Develops the human capabilities that grow in value as routine cognitive work is automated: judgment, initiative, adaptability, curiosity and relational intelligence.
Greater adaptability · Better judgment · Stronger initiative · Comfort with ambiguity · Better human-to-human interaction
Leadership cohorts · transformation teams · whole organisations
Modules are not locked to one package. An engagement is assembled from whichever ones answer your situation.
Choose the depth
More time changes what the work can do, and how long it lasts afterwards.
01 · Half day
See it.
Enough time to experience your own patterns in action, reflect on them and try an alternative.
02 · Two days
Experiment with it.
Repeated experiential cycles, deeper feedback and your real scenarios, worked on as a group.
03 · Four-to-six-week programme
Practise it.
Facilitated Labs, field assignments and application in the workplace, with reflection between sessions.
04 · Offsite, residency or bespoke engagement
Live it.
Extended work away from the conditions that reinforce the usual patterns. The environment becomes part of the work.
What it asks of you
What you need
What to tell your team
This is an experiential development session. You won’t be sitting through presentations. Expect guided exercises, conversations and practical challenges designed to help us notice how we work together and experiment with different ways of responding. No performance experience is required, and you can always sit an exercise out.
Organisational and bespoke
An examination of an organisation’s vital signs.
Culture is read through workplace layout, communication systems, meetings, body language, staff interaction, team dynamics and everyday behaviour. The work identifies how the organisation actually functions, and where a change in conditions could release more participation, coherence and capability.
An examination of the gap between an organisation’s intentions and its lived reality.
Do people occupy roles that suit their abilities? Are they performing the functions those roles require? Do the organisation’s actions reflect its ideals, and do those actions produce the outcomes it exists for? The work connects manifesto, structure, behaviour and consequence.
“Who do you need to become for the next chapter you are attempting?”
A focused personal journey for a senior leader at a threshold, bringing together identity, embodiment, threshold experience and legacy.
How an engagement runs
Step 01
A conversation about your situation, the people involved and what has already been tried.
Step 02
A written proposal for an engagement that fits: format, scope, timing and cost.
Step 03
The work itself. Experiential, embodied and practical, adapted to your real challenges.
Step 04
Review of experience with guidance on integrating it into the workplace.
You do not need to know anything else about Open World to work with Executive. Programme scope and fees are set out in each proposal.
Who leads the work
Executive work is led by Atlas Talisman, who brings the same attention to a corporate room that he brings to a stage or quest trail: how people enter, what they notice, which roles they assume, how they relate, and what becomes possible when the conditions change.
His earlier creative work includes experiential marketing campaigns, team culture development, creative innovation sprints and offsite experiences.
Atlas’s backgroundA few lines is enough to start: the change under way, who is involved, and roughly when. Speaking and keynote requests use the same route.