Organisational Transformation requires the presence of leaders who are Strategists and Alchemists

We will first describe and demonstrate three distinctive features of Developmental Action Inquiry: 1) its basis in an ontology and epistemology that distinguish among four possible territories of experience; 2) its injunction to interweave 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-person research in the midst of one’s practice with others; and 3) its recognition of three different types of research findings (single-, double-, and triple-loop feedback) and their impact on subsequent practices. We will follow this introductory section by describing the 3rd-person, psychometric instrument called the Harthill Leadership Development Profile and the ongoing validity-testing research we are performing on it in the fields of our practices. Then we will share some of the more provocative findings from recent research. In this section we focus on the potentials and limitations we observe in the Expert and Strategist action logics. We also introduce a few of the findings from two doctoral dissertations just completed this spring. (In the context of our “in action” presentation at the conference itself, we will be interrupting the presentation at several points in order to invite the audience into some 1stand 2nd-person research exercises together.)