Open Tech Calendar

The Future of Work Scotland team are delighted to be hosting Stephen Dowling, CEO of ETM based in Australia.

Today we are facing unprecedented levels of disruption with constant challenges to adapt & evolve. Do we think what has got us here will get us to where we need to go in the future?

The COVID-19 pandemic has shaken us all to our foundations. It has poured accelerant on the adoption of digital technologies, and our ways of interacting & working together.

Whether we like it or not our reality has fundamentally changed, and it will continue to change. To survive & thrive we must be open & willing to continually evolve & adapt. To unlearn and relearn whenever it’s needed. Knowledge & skills can become obsolete if our reality changes.

If we continue to rely on prior experience and achievements, old behaviours and thinking that worked well in the past, but now due to changing circumstances, it no longer applies, then we are in grave danger of becoming outdated, and this could happen faster than we think!!

We all get that we need to continually learn, but our bigger challenge is UNLEARNING, letting go of the past!

“The only thing more difficult than starting something new in an organisation, is stopping something old”. Russ Ackoff

To do this what we need is a simple repeatable and actionable system, which can help us to UNLEARN and RELEARN systematically & repeatedly when it’s needed.

Is ‘LEARNING to UNLEARN’ now a foundational skill for the future?

In this session we will explore this topic. Why we strongly believe this is the case? And if so, how do go about doing it on a more continual and regular basis?

Learning Objectives:

What can our attendees expect to take away from the session?

● To understand what unlearning is and why it’s now SO important.
● To get introduced to a new way of seeing.
● To understand our simple but very powerful 3 step ‘Cycle of Unlearning’ system.
● To be inspired & be ready to have a go at applying our ‘Cycle of Unlearning’ to a particular challenge they currently have

Here's some background on our amazing guest speaker for this session:

Stephen is a passionate educator, sense maker, problem solver and simplifier.

In Australia (& worldwide) Stephen is considered to be a thought leader in the business transformation space, along with being a leading educator in the areas of unlearning, agile, lean and ‘fit for purpose’ delivery approaches.

Stephen has more than 20+ years of experience within the delivery space. As a Project Leader he has successfully delivered many different types of projects, the largest being a complex upgrade of a US$2bn ERP system for a large US Pharmaceuticals company, across 17 countries in Europe, which at the time was considered to be the most complex project ever undertaken.

Stephen is a regular international speaker at conferences and industry events and his guiding motto is: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” Albert Einstein.

Atlassian – Dom Price (Work Futurist) Talking about Stephen Dowling ETM:

vimeo.com