Jan-Erik Tarpila

Jan-Erik Tarpila Work Facilitation Arena

I am active with following occupational challenges with my customers
  1. FACILITATION – Facilitating development and planning processes in mainly large industrial and public organizations and non-profit NGOs. I use different conversational spaces and collaborative ways of bringing people together in order to enhance understanding of the system, like
    • Dialogic and collaborative hosting practices, appreciative and constructive methodologies, circle work, Future Search, Open Space Technology, social simulations, World Café, dynamic facilitation, earth culture practices, action pedagogy, Pro Action, story circles and art of hosting and harvesting approaches.
  2. TRAINING (content) – management and personnel training connected with facilitative approaches to develop understanding on strategies, operations and organizations. I use collaborative structures and philosophies to facilitate spaces and opportunities for shared learning and action. Recent topics:
    • Facilitation and Participatory Leadership
      e.g. conversational processes, systemic facilitation, negotiations, decision making, innovation and creativity, meetings, interaction design, collaborative planning and art of hosting and harvesting.
    • Organizational Development and Change management
      e.g. relational organizations, human system dynamics, diversity management, conflict resolution, applied philosophy and psychology...
    • Strategy
      Strategical planning and implementation, strategies for complexity, agile strategy...
    • Process and Operations Management
      e.g process leadership, project management, logistics and supply chain management, production systems, product development, lean management, agile...
  3. GROUP COACHING AND RETREATS (groups) – Peer coaching, self-development and leadership training mainly based on dialog between participants, learning through experiment and being present. The goal is to increase participants’ emotional, social, situational and intellectual sensitivity.
    • Organizational retreats, dialogue workshops, precensing journeys and learning through experience activities. 
  4. COACHING (individuals) – Personal strategy and business coaching mainly for industrial managers, consultants, coaches, senior officials and entrepreneurs. Besides business coaching I support personal development and mental transformation.
  5. LEARNING HOSTING (process) –  I design and host personal and collective transformational learning processes. I craft learning spaces by using minimalist learning interventions and acting as a facilitator and host of learning events.
  6. RESEARCH – Action research on building simple and applicable models that help organizations to work with their future from a complexity viewpoint, meanwhile taking advantage of collaboration over functional and mental borders:
    • Participatory leadership and citizens dialogue ( The European Commission's Directorate-General for Communication)
    • Human centric participatory leadership (Lahti School of Innovation, Lappeenranta University of Technology)
    • Collaborative Remedies for Fragmented Societies (University of Eastern Finland, Hanken School of Economics, Tampere University, Jyväskylä University)
    • Testing various participative learning hosting approaches, spaces and processes (Art of Hosting action research)
    • How to bring values, viewpoints and ideas as a foundation for planning and decision making using dialogue and supportive technologies (Citizen Democracy pilots in City of Helsinki, International Circle Initiative, Wise Democracy programme)
    • Inquiry as a leadership practice (Idealogia, Monkey Business)
  7. PROJECTS – Designing and implementing contemporary models for:
    • Citizens Dialogue design and piloting -- The European Commission's Directorate-General for Communication
    • Resilient relational organizations design and experimenting using liberating structures to organize our work, communities and politics in new ways -- Learning Village pilots, Art of Hosting Stewarding, Organization Woodstock programme, Nordic and World Open Space Networks, Deliberative Democracy, corporate pilots
    • Systems thinking conferences - various perspectives to systemic leadership and autonomous organizations
    • School of Creative Learning - enabling fruitful interaction between students, researchers, and professional practitioners
    • Building a community to support large scale facilitation learning -- Facilitation Arena work group
    • Housing and building processes to support collaborative planning -- Cohousing Finland
    • Implementing small and large scale citizen democracy models and processes -- Wise Democracy Initiatives
This is what I love to do, and what works with my customers. I want to learn more about it and be able to do more and go further with my customers!

Suomeksi - In Finnish
Työssäni luon edellytyksiä yhdessä oppimiselle, yhteisön oppimiselle, rikastavalle yhteiselolle ja toiminnan kehittymiselle. Yleensä työskentelyäni kutsutaan fasilitoinniksi, valmentamiseksi tai ohjaamiseksi ja harvakseltaan koulutukseksi, konsultoinniksi tai johtamiseksi.
Jan-Erik Tarpila    jan-erik@tarpila.com    +358 40 514 2335