Barbara Heinzen, PhD
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What I Do
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What I do

Before a project begins, I work with one or two individuals to define the goals of a project.  Together, we consider who should benefit, who should participate and what process is desirable and possible within a given time frame and budget.  By drawing on a wide variety of methods and tools in facilitation, organisational learning, research and scenario building, each assignment is tailored to what a group requires and can afford.

Sample projects

Workforce adaptability: An East Asian company wanted to make its workforce more flexible and able to consider unpredictable conditions.  This scenario project was therefore designed to include maximum training of selected personnel in interviewing, analysis, scenario thinking and debate.  The process was especially challenging in a culture that is not comfortable with questioning authority.

Experimental business: A western company realised that conditions demanded new types of businesses and even new industries.  A small division began experimenting with the development of new business ideas.  This assignment worked with a small team to design an inventive process based on the socio-economic ambitions and environmental conditions of a developing country.

Social dialogue: 
  During a period of acute political and economic uncertainty, several people in Kenya decided to organise a scenario building process to ‘discuss the undiscussable’ and show citizens they could act to avoid disaster.  The resulting process created scenarios that were debated widely across and country and are credited with helping to avert a major breakdown of society in 2008.  This process was then used in Tanzania, Uganda and Somalia as well as for East Africa as a whole.

Systemic invention:  The Barbets Duet is an on-going experiment organised around learning sites for ecologically sustainable economies.  There are sites in East Africa, the UK and USA.  The founding partners are learning from all over the world and experimenting in their separate sites with a view to influencing people around them.   This innovative process is attracting international attention.


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? Barbara Heinzen, 2012. All rights reserved.