The Odyssey
Nobody Trained Us for What Was to Come
A leadership programme for navigating a world that has changed
Odysseus won the war. Then came the difficult bit: getting home.
The world he returned to was not the world he had left.
Today, leaders are facing their own return journey. AI is changing the nature of work, old assumptions are being challenged, and difficult decisions rarely come with easy answers.
The Odyssey gives us a different way to explore these challenges — using one of the world’s great stories to think about leadership, change, uncertainty and the choices we make along the way.
The Return
Coming down can be harder than going up.
What happens when you’ve achieved what you set out to do, and now the world you face is unrecognisable?
This two-thousand-year-old story provides an opportunity to view your own current challenges from a mythic lens. It begins in Ithaca, Odysseus's home, revealing a world descending into chaos following his absence and the good leadership he cultivated.
The story takes us on a non-linear chronical of Odysseus’s travels, reflecting back the topsy-turvy nature of the world he is trying to navigate. Much like being tossed on the waves of an enormous sea, we follow his Odyssey through different worlds and times.
It is fitting metaphor for today’s leaders who can draw not only solace, but resource from this ancient story.
Questions explored throughout the story include:
How do I choose when all the options are "bad ones"?
How do I navigate when neither the map nor the territory is familiar?
How do I live with regrettable choices?
How do I stay humble and compassionate under stress?
In short: What can I do to keep myself and my team afloat in such times?
A story people can remember...
The aim isn’t to turn The Odyssey into another leadership model.
It’s to give people a story they can use.
A shared language for difficult things. A different way of looking at familiar challenges. And a set of memorable characters, places and choices that can continue to prompt conversations long after the session has finished – Has Calypso got you today?
It is easier to face a difficult situation when we have other ways of looking at it. Hearing about how Odysseus navigates the terrifying Scylla and the all-consuming Charybdis has mirrors for many of the difficult decisions leaders need to face in the coming months.
And as AI and other forces are quickly changing the landscape of work and life, leaders are unsurprisingly feeling overwhelmed and fatigued. The Odyssey provides not only a refreshing and insightful lens for its audience. It also taps into parts of our brain that are starved for co-creation and engagement – things many people at work today are missing.
The One-Day Workshop
From Story to Practice
The Odyssey is primarily a one-day workshop for leadership teams and organisations navigating significant change or uncertainty.
Using the story as a shared starting point, we’ll explore the themes that resonate most strongly with your organisation and apply them to the challenges you’re facing now.
The workshop is practical, experiential and shaped around your context. The aim is not simply to understand the story, but to use it to see your own situation differently — and identify what you might do next.
The Keynote
Nobody Trained Us for What Was to Come
I will also be bringing The Odyssey to life through a special keynote event, bringing together leaders and representatives from different organisations for a shared exploration of the story and its relevance to the world of work today.
This is designed as a one-off invitation event — an opportunity to experience the thinking behind the programme, meet others facing similar challenges and explore whether The Odyssey could be useful in your own organisation.
More than a story...
Stories stay with us.
The hope is that The Odyssey gives your people more than an enjoyable workshop. It gives them a language, a set of questions and a different perspective they can take back into their work.
The journey may be ancient. The challenges are very much our own.
Interested in exploring The Odyssey for your organisation?
If you’d like to discuss bringing the one-day workshop to your leadership team or organisation, let’s talk.
You can also explore case studies, resources, and my blog to see how these sessions have worked in real organisations.