working in complexity inside & out
with Chris corrigan & Caitlin Frost
Interactive Online Program 2025
February 20th - May 1st
Registration now open!
8 engaging online learning and practice sessions
3 small group discussion sessions and 1 partner exercise practice session
Participatory Narrative Inquiry
Online classroom with recordings, resources, discussion space and more.
For more information please contact Caitlin Frost [email protected]
Check out your time zone compatibility here: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/
February 20th - May 1st
Registration now open!
8 engaging online learning and practice sessions
3 small group discussion sessions and 1 partner exercise practice session
Participatory Narrative Inquiry
Online classroom with recordings, resources, discussion space and more.
For more information please contact Caitlin Frost [email protected]
Check out your time zone compatibility here: https://www.worldtimebuddy.com/
*See information below about other timezones in the registration section
Over the past 26 years, our work has become more and more focused on understanding and working with complexity, and supporting our clients to engage with the complex challenges and opportunities they face in meaningful and effective ways.
Leaders in organizations of all kinds tell us repeatedly that they are working with high levels of uncertainty and change and are often overwhelmed with information and options while being increasingly constrained by limited time and resources. This is more and more apparent in recent years.
We have learned that it is possible to both understand complexity and function within it, leading teams and organizations in a direction, doing good work, and navigating uncertain and dynamic contexts. This is done through the use of participatory approaches to change, collective sensemaking and pattern finding, together with rigorous attention to our own "inner complexity" that includes patterns of mind, beliefs, emotions and reactions that can either increase or greatly limit our ability to engage complex challenges effectively and sustainably over time.
Working in complexity requires us to work at all levels, inside and out. The more we can increase our personal capacity for diversity, emergence, creative thinking and navigating uncertainty, the more capable we are of leading and hosting groups of people in the same contexts. Shifting patterns inside our own system as well as in the systems we are working with both require rigorous, complexity informed approaches and practice.
Working and learning globally for the last 3 decades we have assembled a body of work that has proved to be profoundly helpful in helping people make sense of this complexity and act in intelligent, sustainable ways together. We have drawn on:
We believe these tools are not simply exceptional ways of navigating complexity, but that they help us do so in a way that builds relationships across and among differences and helps people and organizations strengthen their resilience in the face of sometimes crushing social dynamics. These are tools of sustainability: sustainability of effort, of wellness, and life.
Leaders in organizations of all kinds tell us repeatedly that they are working with high levels of uncertainty and change and are often overwhelmed with information and options while being increasingly constrained by limited time and resources. This is more and more apparent in recent years.
We have learned that it is possible to both understand complexity and function within it, leading teams and organizations in a direction, doing good work, and navigating uncertain and dynamic contexts. This is done through the use of participatory approaches to change, collective sensemaking and pattern finding, together with rigorous attention to our own "inner complexity" that includes patterns of mind, beliefs, emotions and reactions that can either increase or greatly limit our ability to engage complex challenges effectively and sustainably over time.
Working in complexity requires us to work at all levels, inside and out. The more we can increase our personal capacity for diversity, emergence, creative thinking and navigating uncertainty, the more capable we are of leading and hosting groups of people in the same contexts. Shifting patterns inside our own system as well as in the systems we are working with both require rigorous, complexity informed approaches and practice.
Working and learning globally for the last 3 decades we have assembled a body of work that has proved to be profoundly helpful in helping people make sense of this complexity and act in intelligent, sustainable ways together. We have drawn on:
- Complexity theory and practice from the work of David Snowden, Dee Hock, Cynthia Kurtz and Glenda Eoyang.
- Dialogic and participatory leadership practice from the Art of Hosting community and the dialogic organizational development world.
- Personal leadership and "inner-complexity" work based on the inquiry practices of The Work (of Byron Katie) and informed by neuroscience, complexity theory and mindfulness practice.
We believe these tools are not simply exceptional ways of navigating complexity, but that they help us do so in a way that builds relationships across and among differences and helps people and organizations strengthen their resilience in the face of sometimes crushing social dynamics. These are tools of sustainability: sustainability of effort, of wellness, and life.
What you will learn
In this online program, you will be invited to bring your own work and life challenges for discussion and applied practice. You will learn and practice with theory, methods, tools and approaches Chris and Caitlin have been using with clients and our own practice over the past 26 years including material drawn from the following:
In this online program, you will be invited to bring your own work and life challenges for discussion and applied practice. You will learn and practice with theory, methods, tools and approaches Chris and Caitlin have been using with clients and our own practice over the past 26 years including material drawn from the following:
- Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework and tools informed by his approach to anthro-complexity.
- Glenda Eoyang’s Human Systems Dynamics.
- Dialogic tools useful for working with groups of all sizes.
- Story gathering and sensemaking tools for planning, evaluation and strategy, including Cynthia Kurtz’s approach to Participatory Narrative Inquiry.
- Personal leadership tools to work with the "inner complexity" of limiting beliefs, stories, and identities, adapted from the inquiry tools from The Work (Byron Katie), mindfulness and neuroscience informed practices.
- Design tools that help plan and manage in non-linear and uncertain contexts.
- You will also have the opportunity to meet and co-learn with an amazing and interesting group of colleagues.
Program Structure:
Core Program Learning Sessions
Applied practice
We will provide you with exercises, reflection and discussion topics designed to help you to apply the learning to your own context.
Learning Pods:
Individual Application Exercises and Materials:
Open Space Session
This course is attracting a wide range of very interesting people with all kinds of great questions and experience to share. As practitioners who are passionate about convening and ongoing learning as well as sharing through teaching, we are now adding an 8th final session to Complexity IO going forward, which will be hosted using one of our favorite complexity informed convening methods. This Open Space session will enable cohort participants to post, host and participate in an engaging agenda of peer discussion groups to more deeply explore complexity related concepts, questions and topics of interest.
Added ongoing engagement
All Complexity IO alumni will be invited to participate in an ongoing Annual Complexity IO Open Space where you can bring your current questions, topics and ideas, and meet and engage with CIO participants and complexity workers from all past cohorts.
Online Classroom
Discussion Space:
Participatory Narrative Inquiry
- 8 engaging learning and practice sessions with Chris Corrigan and Caitlin Frost including one participant co-designed Open Space session.
- Meeting on Zoom, using Google Documents and Miro for co-working.
Applied practice
We will provide you with exercises, reflection and discussion topics designed to help you to apply the learning to your own context.
Learning Pods:
- 3 small group discussion sessions and 2 partner exercise practice sessions (additional to class sessions during non-class session weeks). Guiding questions and materials provided.
Individual Application Exercises and Materials:
- Class and additional optional exercises to help you apply program learning to your own work, initiatives, projects, challenges.
Open Space Session
This course is attracting a wide range of very interesting people with all kinds of great questions and experience to share. As practitioners who are passionate about convening and ongoing learning as well as sharing through teaching, we are now adding an 8th final session to Complexity IO going forward, which will be hosted using one of our favorite complexity informed convening methods. This Open Space session will enable cohort participants to post, host and participate in an engaging agenda of peer discussion groups to more deeply explore complexity related concepts, questions and topics of interest.
Added ongoing engagement
All Complexity IO alumni will be invited to participate in an ongoing Annual Complexity IO Open Space where you can bring your current questions, topics and ideas, and meet and engage with CIO participants and complexity workers from all past cohorts.
Online Classroom
Discussion Space:
- Post questions and engage in discussion with classmates and program facilitators.
- Program slides, handouts, exercises and other resources for download.
- Class recordings provided for participants.
Participatory Narrative Inquiry
- PNI designed for this program.
- Learning about applying PNI to complexity work.
- Participants will log stories/anecdotes from April to June.
- Program will include sensemaking together to look at patterns of practice that are emerging in the complexity practice and work of this group.
your hosts: chris corrigan and caitlin frost
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Chris Corrigan and Caitlin Frost are co-founders of Harvest Moon Consultants and have been working in the field of engaging complex challenges through meaningful dialogue, participatory leadership, personal development, and coaching for more than 26 years.
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We are active practitioners of these methods ourselves as well as being consultants and teachers. We are deeply curious about the ways we can work with the complexity of ourselves as human beings - as leaders, participants and co-creators and how we can approach the many challenges and possibilities of working with complexity in our organizations, teams, communities and the world.
We work together and individually around the world and are excited to bring forward this shared offering of our work and practice.
We are both long-time global Stewards in the Art of Hosting community of Practice; Certified Human Systems Dynamics practitioners, process designers and dialogue hosts. Chris is recognized globally for his work with Complexity and accessible teaching of Cynefin Framework. Caitlin is a sought after coach and trainer grounding her impactful inner-system work in powerful inquiry practices adapted from The Work (of Byron Katie) and informed by neuroscience and mindfulness. Together we weave our learnings in our consulting and training offerings as well as our own practice.
We work together and individually around the world and are excited to bring forward this shared offering of our work and practice.
We are both long-time global Stewards in the Art of Hosting community of Practice; Certified Human Systems Dynamics practitioners, process designers and dialogue hosts. Chris is recognized globally for his work with Complexity and accessible teaching of Cynefin Framework. Caitlin is a sought after coach and trainer grounding her impactful inner-system work in powerful inquiry practices adapted from The Work (of Byron Katie) and informed by neuroscience and mindfulness. Together we weave our learnings in our consulting and training offerings as well as our own practice.
Tuition:
Regular Individual/Business: 1500.00 + GST = $1575.00CAD
Non-Profit/Reduced Individual: 1150.00 + GST = $1207.50CAD
Includes 8 half-day sessions + 3 small group & 1 partner pod sessions; online classroom with resources, class recordings and discussion space; + Annual Complexity IO Alumni Community of Practice Open Space ongoing.
**Discounts for groups of 4 or more. 10% (Regular/Individual rate) 5% (Reduced/Non-Profit rate). Please email us for a discount code before proceeding. Contact [email protected]
A small number of partial bursaries are available with specific intention to support accessibility for BIPOC and other equity-seeking participants needing financial support. Please fill out the form on the registration page to be considered.
Regular Individual/Business: 1500.00 + GST = $1575.00CAD
Non-Profit/Reduced Individual: 1150.00 + GST = $1207.50CAD
Includes 8 half-day sessions + 3 small group & 1 partner pod sessions; online classroom with resources, class recordings and discussion space; + Annual Complexity IO Alumni Community of Practice Open Space ongoing.
**Discounts for groups of 4 or more. 10% (Regular/Individual rate) 5% (Reduced/Non-Profit rate). Please email us for a discount code before proceeding. Contact [email protected]
A small number of partial bursaries are available with specific intention to support accessibility for BIPOC and other equity-seeking participants needing financial support. Please fill out the form on the registration page to be considered.
Australasia Timezones
Possible future Australasia offering online or in person: We hold this intention but do not have a specific date plan for the near future. Feel free to sign up for the list of interest and we will let you know when/if we offer the program in this timezone.
Joining from outside the program ‘awake-hours’ timezones: Classes are recorded and exercises provided as templates with instructions. The online interactive classroom space allows for questions and sharing throughout the program. If we have a group from a specific timezone joining by recording we will make a special time for a live question and discussion session with the program facilitators.
Join the Australasian Time Zone List HERE
Possible future Australasia offering online or in person: We hold this intention but do not have a specific date plan for the near future. Feel free to sign up for the list of interest and we will let you know when/if we offer the program in this timezone.
Joining from outside the program ‘awake-hours’ timezones: Classes are recorded and exercises provided as templates with instructions. The online interactive classroom space allows for questions and sharing throughout the program. If we have a group from a specific timezone joining by recording we will make a special time for a live question and discussion session with the program facilitators.
Join the Australasian Time Zone List HERE
The breadth of experience, expertise, candor, and compassion Caitlin and Chris bring to this course is a master class in adult learning, online facilitation, and hosting. One of the most valuable takeaways from this expertly led course is an activation of the meta reality that the professional is always personal. It’s a profound awareness that one cannot effectively work with complexity in other systems if we’re not addressing the ways complexity working in us.
Caroline G. Blackwell, Vice President, Equity and Justice, NAIS
What a thrill to have been part of the first cohort of Complexity Inside & Out with Chris and Caitlin! I’ve been drawn to complexity thinking for years and have worked with Chris often enough to have absorbed some of his thinking about it. But my understanding was fairly superficial, so when the opportunity arose to do a deep dive into the subject, I leaped at it. And am I glad I did! Chris and Caitlin are the ultimate teachers and guides, skilled at walking participants through complex concepts in a patient, friendly and accessible way, and generous in providing resources to augment the material covered in class. The classes themselves were well balanced between presentations by Chris and Caitlin, and small-group work to put ideas into practice with our peers. Chris and Caitlin also provided more opportunities for us to interact with each other by creating an online discussion room, setting up partner and pod groups, and building time into the program for partners and pods to meet, thereby weaving a learning community out of a group of disparate individuals.
Several weeks after the end of the course my mind is still on fire with all the new ideas I learned, and I’m continuing to deepen my learning through more reading and discussion, as well as looking for more and more ways to put what I learned into practice. I firmly believe that embracing a complexity mindset and learning to navigate complexity with curiosity, humility and grace is an essential skill for the world we live in, and Complexity I/O has given me the essential tools for beginning that journey. I can’t recommend this program highly enough! Sign up now and be prepared to have your mind blown in the best possible way.
Avril Orloff
Outside the Lines
Open Space is magical, but Open Space for Complexity IO is downright transformational! From the start of the session in breakouts through the longer conversations in small and large groups, the flow of ideas and practices, the connections with others across the network, the inspiration, the gentle facilitation, and this rich harvest, all just powerfully reawakened in me a needed sense of the power and beauty of passionate people thinking and talking and learning together. I'm really truly deeply grateful!
John M. Watkins, EdD, Inquiry & Learning for Change
If you are responsible for leading people or making decisions on behalf of teams or organization, you will benefit from learning more about complexity because you will better understand how problems and practices emerge, how individuals and teams self-organize, and how to make moves together in times of uncertainty and certainty.
Complexity IO Participant
I have had the privilege of working alongside Chris and Caitlin for a number of years. What strikes me most is the ability they both have, not only to remain current on emerging practices, but to integrate them with their existing toolkits. Both Caitlin and Chris have developed their skills and knowledge with a fundamental understanding that leadership requires attention to knowledge of leadership skills and approaches, as well as attention to what we bring as individuals; our more personal side or internal voice. Each of them brings different and complimentary strengths from their own individual practices. Through their attention to a more holistic approach to leadership practices, and transformative learning approaches, as well as practical tools, their teachings are immediately applicable. It has been an honour for me to observe how Chris and Caitlin have continued to develop their own knowledge bases and personal practices, while share their ongoing journey with others. The Complexity Inside and Out program appears to be a beautiful integration of their individual and collective knowledge, strengths, and insights. |
Learning to work with complexity from Caitlin and Chris has impacted my work in countless ways. Chris and Caitlin’s approach to teaching complexity work is accessible, meaningful and engaging. Light bulbs will go off and dots will be connected! One of the great gifts of their approach is that you will be grounded in the ideas and theory but then also be supported to actually apply the tools and approaches to your own context. |