The Tällberg Foundation

The Tällberg Foundation is a consulting firm working with business environment analysis and the strategic management of change, in Sweden and internationally. The company helps organizations and corporations understand political, economic and social trends, globally and locally. It assists clients in developing their thinking and framing their strategies in line with the most important defining challenges in the world. It also gives support, as advisors, in the day-to-day implementation of new strategies and organizational transformation. Pygmalion has partnered the Talberg Foundation in the design and planning of the New Leader Programme since 2006, collaborating with Tom Cummings and Marcello Palazzio in the delivery thereof.

The Tällberg Foundation is “…a non-profit international organization that was established in 1981 to become a platform for a free and open exchange of ideas and experiences.”

Sean Germond was invited in 2005 to attend their signature event, “The Tällberg Forum” as a participant. The multi-day Forum is an extraordinary experience, set in the little village of Tällberg in Sweden’s lake district during the long mid-summer days in June/July.

The conversation is based on notions of ‘principled pragmatism’, ‘systems thinking and systems doing’, and attracts a diverse group of individuals from all walks of life, and from across all sectors. All interested in what it takes to affect large systems change for the benefit of all.

Pygmalion subsequently partnered the Tällberg Foundation in the design and planning of the New Leader Programme since 2006, collaborating with Tom Cummings, Charles Handy and others in the delivery thereof. One of the contributions that Sean made to this programme was his adaptation of a still life exercise that Charles and his wife Elizabeth used in their fascinating book called “The New Philanthropists“, as a personal development exercise for participants attending the programme.

Over the years, the ‘new leader programme’ evolved to meet the requirements of the participants as well as focus of the Forum conversation, whilst remaining true to the enduring theme of the Forum from 2005 through to 2013: “How on Earth can we live together?”.

This programme was initially set up as a per-forum intensive for younger, emerging leaders, whom, as ‘change-makers’, would benefit from the opportunity to reflect on their own questions relating to their work as well as their own leadership practices.

Sean remains an active member of the Tällberg Foundation community and is pleased that South Africa’s own erstwhile “Public Protector”, Thuli Madonsela is one of the Tällberg Foundations’ Global Leaders for 2016. She has demonstrated a quality of leadership to ‘speak truth to power’, and leveraged the power of her office to promote good governance, executive ethics and the rule of law in South Africa, despite a well orchestrated opposition from those whom were found wanting…