THE ADVENTURE
Welcome to new possibilities through disruptiveness.
TRANSFORMATION
If you’re looking to transform yourself or your team into your best possible selves, this process offers you the opportunity to achieve this.
At Pause-i we facilitate an open-ended process through exploration and adventure. This adventure is aimed at enhancing your self-perception. We find that a fast-paced curriculum does not deliver sustainable change and therefore we create pauses in this disruptive encounter.
We don’t present a set agenda or formula. We set out rather to explore and understand your or your team’s needs, allowing us to collaboratively develop a process. In short, we start with an initial meeting to determine whether our approach is what you or your team need.
ALTERNATIVE
We are motivated by surprising and fascinating outcomes which come from developing processes that bring our participants in touch with their own inner magic.
Our shared interest in the fresh manifestations of alternative culture makes us formula averse. Rather than pushing for a predictable outcome we seek a balance between the control of tradition and unfettered breakthroughs.
Both of us work in contexts where we cut through the trends that seem to mark the fields of self-development and psychology currently. We’re not under the illusion that we deliver something new. We simply apply the principles of process, which is the ability to allow people to grow at their own pace. This differs from manicured goal-oriented models of self-development.
Authenticity is our touchstone.
THE PROCESS
1. EXPECTATION
Group in carefully selected environments
1-day and residential adventures for groups of up to 10 members. Time is spent in solitude, on adventures and in facilitated group discussions. These full immersives are preceded and followed by group or individual interactions:
Pre-group meeting
We do an exploratory meeting, creating a baseline of participants’ expectations and internal drivers.
Post-group meeting
These follow-up meetings aim to facilitate the integration and internalisation of the full immersive in everyday life (internalisation).
2. THE PRECIPICE
The process manifests itself through adventuring, group interactions and individual conversations.
Although our approach is flexible our focus is to take a participant to a psychological precipice. The ‘precipice’ is an awareness of the present moment as it presents itself to each individual internally and externally. This functions as an opportunity for a participant to engage directly with his or her reality – with a sense of immediacy.
Each individual determines the verge of the precipice for him or herself as one creates a reflective distance between oneself and one’s internal motivations. This appreciative and reflective process encourages engagement with one’s self-imposed limitations. The internal precipice could be a full adjustment or to ‘be’.
3. GROUNDING
Finally grounding and normalisation of the experience is important as it helps to integrate and incorporate new understandings into everyday life. We support individuals to internalise the experience, concentrating on merging it with their belief systems. Securing this internalisation sets the experience up as a reference to reset the future.
CASE STUDY
The owner of a Creative and Digital Company approached us wanting more personal freedom from his role within the business. In order to accomplish this his management team has to work autonomously and collaboratively. The preferred outcome would be that management not only copies previous patterns and adopt new directives. Their autonomy has to be intelligent and intuitive, working as an organism sensitive to changing conditions with the ability to learn, change and re-orientate.
PHASE 1
The process started spending a morning with our client management team where we assessed
their shared and individual needs for growth Our particular interest lay in how change
was perceived, desired and managed.
Pitch
From these meetings we developed a proposal we thought might specifically suit their process. An analogy we employed is that of swarming. Drone swarming in particular has made advances in this field. Until recently drones could only fly as programmed. The new generation drones will be more effective aided by machine learning. Like bees, birds and ants directed by a common purpose they would be able to respond intelligently to eventualities unforeseen by the programmer. We suggest that a management team will meet the client’s expectations if they learn to swarm.
We set the following question to ourselves. How will our process assist in this
learning? We intend involving the participants in an excursion, which will enable their
ability to communicate more effectively within their roles. As the process evolves the
team will become more sensitised to each other. This and their common purpose leads to
greater inter-connectivity and are the main ingredients to learning how to
swarm.
Motivation for an immersive process
The immersive process was set up allowing participants to challenge their own perceptions and beliefs. The use of an unstructured process that rely on uncertainty of what will flow from the interactions are the precursor to the changes the client want to engage with going forward. It allows the team to understand who they are individually and as a team, their strengths, weakness and underlying tensions. From the uncertainty and uncomfortable emotions and thoughts realise we can build a future. The Immersive process represents an analogy of the company’s future process.
PHASE 2
For the immersive process we arranged for a weekend away on the North Norfolk coast. Our expedition leader plotted a good day’s walk to the coast with a lunch break and an escape route should the weather turn.
On Friday evening we started on the beach and had a silent dinner the purpose was to reset and help create a pause to bring the group into the immersive process. Post the silent dinner the group became fully engaged in the process talking freely of their perceptions, frustrations and thoughts – positive and negative regarding what they have been through as a collective.
Saturday morning we embarked on our walk along the coast. True to our organic style, we would suggest a theme or pose a question for discussion and then walk with it, discussing as we go along. Fresh ideas and old strains were foregrounded during the day. Not too long after lunch we walked straight into a menacing storm. This adversity steered us off course to our escape route to a steaming pub. That evening we solidified the day’s realisations.
Everyone agreed to experience the sunrise on Sunday morning. Organically allowing the group to set past traumas alight letting go of aspects that was destructive in the past.
PHASE 3
Seven weeks later we re-joined our client at their offices on what was a pressurised
Monday morning for them. Each member related how he or she had returned to the specific
beach in Norfolk where we walked afterwards with a desire to re-capture and share the
emotions around the event. Integrating the good intentions of the weekend into everyday
office life developed different form what was expected. Rather than swarming as whole
they swarmed in overlapping pairs. This is a model that seems to fit the management team
best with them identifying gaps that need to be addressed.
Final
The team agreed to facilitate this process it may be necessary for them to arrange change meetings on a weekend to give it the importance it needs. They also agreed for a follow-up 3month review meeting with Pause-i.
The process is fluid organic and allows the management team to internalise the process
so it becomes part of their thinking ensuring the change needed.
CLIENT’S REVIEW
For some time, I’ve been feeling stuck, specifically regarding the role I have in the agency and the feeling of not playing to my strengths. I haven’t known how to make changes to free me up to get back to being more creative whilst also empowering my management team to build the agency.
Crucially, I hadn’t even understood why I was feeling so stuck. Pause-I were able to both define the challenge faced and create a pathway to achieve it: we had to learn to swarm! Pause-I put together a unique package that has set about enabling the management team to work autonomously and collaboratively. It hasn’t been an easy process. It’s challenged all of us.
Jo’s comment "A uniquely challenging experience – beneficial both professionally and personally… It continues to be a reference for strategic thinking." Since the immersive weekend Pause-I have followed up at appropriate management meetings and in less than 6 months since our immersive weekender we have introduced a clear agency structure. Understood our strengths and how to work together. Built real trust within the management team. And even refined our brand model to set us up for our next phase of growth.
We know we have more to do and we’re still at very early stages, but we are now working to clear timelines and making positive progression towards them which has been a very liberating experience
FACILITATORS
JOHAN TRUTER
I am a life long muted conceptual artist.
DR. HERMAN HOLTZHAUSEN
I am curious about the evolution of our minds.
CONTACT
Please contact us directly to note your interest or enquire about our tailor making an experiential group for you.
Once we have established your needs and group size, we’ll present a quote
with all costs
involved.
UK OFFICE
Johan TruterT: +44 1780 758556 E: johan@pause-i.com W: www.pause-i.com
Orion House, 14 Barn Hill, Stamford, Lincolnshire, PE9 2AE