Leading the Impossible
A powerful, experiential programme for those who want to bring possibility to impossible times.
Are you a leader feeling trapped in the day-to-day grind, struggling to move beyond incremental improvements and yearning to make a real difference? Do you feel the weight of complex challenges—like climate change, social inequality, or public service transformation—and a sense that “business as usual” just isn’t enough?
The world needs leaders who can navigate uncertainty, inspire collective action, and drive systemic change. That’s why we’ve created the Leading the Impossible programme. This isn’t your typical leadership training. We go beyond standard competencies and delve into the heart of what it means to lead in a complex world.
Key Information
Duration: Over 4 months. Our spring programme runs from April to July 2025.
Key dates:
Application deadline: 28 February 2025
Onboarding calls: w/c 17 & 24 March 2025
Opening Residential: 1 & 2 April 2025
In person sessions: 1 May, 4 June and 8 July 2025
Virtual Peer Group Sessions: w/c 8 April, 12 May, 16 June 2025
Fee: The cost of the programme is £4995+VAT inclusive of residential stay.
Key Features
- 5 days of in person experiential learning: We use creative and hands-on approaches to facilitate deep reflection and transformative insights. You’ll develop the confidence and capability to tackle problems others avoid—whether in crisis, transformation, or radical change.
- Real-world application: You’ll work on live challenges you bring to the program, transforming visionary missions into practical solutions—navigating complexity, political pressures, and limited resources.
- A fusions of disciplines: From service design to immunity to change, and from systemic leadership to value capture, we’ll utilise a broad range of thinking and practice and help you curate your own change tool kit.
- Diverse cohort: You’ll learn alongside a cross-disciplinary, cross-sector group of peers, expanding your perspectives and building valuable connections.
- Peer-to-peer online sessions: Gain insight from your own and others work to harness the opportunities for innovation, influence, and transformation.
- Personal coaching: open up new perspectives and work through issues that are preventing progress.
Benefits
- Reconnect with your purpose: Rediscover your “why” and align your leadership with your deepest values.
- Develop a vision for change: Learn to harness your imagination and create a compelling vision for a better future.
- Build resilience and navigate uncertainty: Develop the skills, strategies and mindset to thrive in complex and ever-changing environments.
- Drive systemic impact: Learn how to inspire others, build movements, and shift stuck systems – building confidence to move from strategy to purposeful action.
- Embrace wise experimentation: Move beyond incremental improvements and explore bold new approaches.
- Lead across Boundaries: Develop deep collaborative skills to work across departments, sectors, and communities to break silos and drive systemic change.
“The creative and experiential methods of the course were a great way to approach the challenges of leadership in complex systems. The course created and enabled space for me to think deeply about how I lead and how I can test new ideas and methods. The programme made me reflect upon what is important, both personally and at work. How to think about the future positively and how to achieve the change you aspire to.” – Programme participant
Focus & Structure
Leading the Impossible’ unfolds in three phases, designed to support self-reflection, discovery of new possibilities and applying learning to the real world. The programme runs from April to July 2025 through a mix of residential, in-person workshops and some virtual sessions.
1. Beyond the status quo: foundations for systemic change
- Reconnecting with Your Leadership Purpose – Rediscover your personal “why” and explore frameworks for 21st Century Leadership.
- Addressing Burnout and Overwhelm – Work with processes & tools that build renewal, resilience and clarity.
- Developing Imagination – Explore ways to harness creative vision to move beyond current system thinking.
- Escaping traps & patterns – Identify and move on from limiting narratives or behaviours that keep things stuck.
2. Wise action for change experimentation in practice
- Redefining Risk in Leadership – Build awareness of and refine your mindset around risk-taking including your own immunity to change.
- Courageous Leadership – Strengthen your capacity to lead through complex, uncertain environments.
- Approaches to Experimentation – Understand pragmatic, hands-on ways to innovate within your context.
- Applied Learning – Tailored support to lead your own project or experiment to advance a current challenge you are facing.
3. Leading with Possibility moving from self to system
- Movement building & shifting social norms – Learn from successful social movements and apply these lessons to your own work.
- Navigating Resistance to Change – Build resilience for yourself and your teams in the face of opposition.
- Theory of Change to Theory of Possibility – Shift from fixed goals to adaptive pathways for sustainable impact.
- Longtime Thinking – Chart paths that extend beyond immediate program goals and cultivate vision for the future.