drift. The worldly mindset situates organisational challenges within broader ecological, social and technological contexts. The collaborative mindset facilitates integration of diverse perspectives, creating spaces where tactical innovations become collective strategic insights. The action-oriented mindset ensures emergent insights translate into tangible interventions, transforming strategy from static plans into dynamic conversations between intention and implementation. The RoundTables methodology operationalises these mindsets through a structured seven-stage process. It begins with Un/Familiarity , where participants share challenges in small groups, creating psychological safety while introducing diverse perspectives. Individuation & the Crowd follows, helping participants recognise both their unique perceptions and their embeddedness in collective processes. Task & Role introduces structured observation of other organisations, developing perceptual acuity. Expression & Structure teaches disciplined articulation of insights, while Saving/Savouring shifts focus from problem-solving to appreciative understanding. Frankly Speaking introduces structured peer consultation processes where participants experience both giving and receiving insight. Finally, Communityship emphasises collective capacity rather than individual heroism. This methodology deliberately slows down the learning process, recognizing that the ‘fix’ is in the act of fixing. By creating containers that simultaneously acknowledge dependency needs while fostering independent judgment, it helps leaders navigate the paradoxical tension between agency and interdependence that is essential for dynamic capabilities. The RoundTables approach aligns with Mintzberg’s “emergent strategy” and the model proposed by Robert Chia and Robin Holt in Strategy without Design : the capacity to respond intelligently to emerging situations through immersed practical engagement rather than detached analysis. It cultivates sensibilities rather than formalised procedures, enabling ‘wayfinding’, or adapting intelligently as predetermined destinations become too elusive. Applied to current business priorities, this approach helps leaders recognise how seemingly discrete challenges – digital transformation, sustainability pressures, talent management, supply chain disruption – interconnect as manifestations of deeper systemic shifts. By viewing these priorities through the five mindsets, leaders develop integrated responses rather than fragmented initiatives. For example, a supply chain disruption becomes not merely a logistics problem but an opportunity to redesign systems for both resilience and reduced environmental impact, involving collaborative innovation with suppliers and customers. The RoundTables methodology thus serves as both a model for and a means of developing the capacity for working with emergent strategy, enabling leaders to transform tactical responses to immediate challenges into pathways for strategic evolution. By deliberately engaging all five mindsets, it develops
This integration of content, process and context creates what we term a ‘mindset immersion space’, an environment deliberately designed to facilitate perceptual shifts in how leaders perceive themselves and their relationship to complex systems. This approach develops capacities essential for dynamic capabilities: systems perception (seeing interconnections across boundaries); ethical discernment (recognising value dimensions in technical decisions); and aesthetic sensitivity (perceiving qualitative patterns within quantitative data). Participants emerge not just with new knowledge but transformed ways of perceiving and engaging with complex systems; these act as the foundation for leadership that can foster genuine dynamic capabilities. Turning tactics into strategy While the IEDC approach creates immersive environments for foundational mindset shifts, the RoundTables methodology provides a structured process for embedding these mindsets into day-to-day leadership practice and applying them to current business priorities. Developed over many years, this methodology helps leaders transform tactical responses to immediate challenges into pathways for strategic evolution. The RoundTables approach recognises that strategy emerges not only from formal planning processes, but from how organisations address everyday problems. When approached with reflective intelligence rather than mere expediency, these tactical challenges become sensors detecting shifts in the environment before they become fully articulated in market analyses. By working through present difficulties with both rigour and openness, leaders cultivate sensitivity to emerging patterns that are often invisible in traditional strategic exercises. Five managerial mindsets, articulated in The Five Minds of a Manager by Jonathan Gosling and Henry Mintzberg, provide the framework for this approach. The reflective mindset enables leaders to step back from crises and discern patterns, transforming routine problem-solving into strategic learning. The analytical mindset provides rigour to test emergent hypotheses against empirical reality, preventing strategic
38 Ambition • ISSUE 1 • 2026
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