canberra 112101 640Author and culture change expert Andy Fleming wants the Australian Public Sector to wind back its “twentieth-century” focus on high-profile senior leaders, and to start linking culture change with learning at all levels, in every agency.

Fleming, Principal at Way to Grow Inc, a US-based professional services firm and a contributing author to the recent book, “An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organisation”, will visit Canberra next week for a series of speaking engagements.

Fleming’s events include two ticketed events - a full day workshop on Tuesday 22 November, and an evening talk hosted by the Australian Institute of Management (AIM) also on Tuesday November 22. Then there is a free breakfast presentation being held by Canberra Innovation on Wednesday November 23.

At these events Fleming will discuss a new way of thinking about development at work: the Deliberately Developmental Organisation, or “DDO”. DDO’s see increased engagement, lower turnover, and an uptick in profitability. These improvements are a result of sustained focus on how everyone is learning, every day, at all levels in an organisation.

“One person’s mess-up is now a problem for the whole enterprise in a way that just wasn’t the case even a decade ago.” Fleming says. “Yet the coaching spend continues to be focussed on senior leaders in the hope that their learning will trickle down.”

Also in the way of culture change, Fleming believes, is an over-focus on the idea of specialised “off-site” learning.

“If your leadership program is a highlight for your people,” Fleming says, “you have a problem, because it means that adaptive learning is not integrated into the routines of work. I’m all for the idea of developing people, but most organisations don't know what actually happens once people try to take their learnings back to the team. This is a missed opportunity and a blind spot which the DDO approach addresses.”

Fleming will also deliver workshops in Brisbane in partnership with the University of Queensland School of Business. He is supported on this tour by Fairfax columnist and Executive Coach Jacqueline Jago.

Tickets to the Canberra events are limited and now selling on Eventbrite.