Workshops & Training
Training that changes what a school repeats.
Culture is what a school repeatedly practises. Our workshops are where that practice begins: a team learns to see its own operating system, diagnose the patterns it produces, and build the routines that change them. Everything else in the Synnovate system compounds from here.
See the workshopsHow it fits together
Training is the way in.
Synnovate is the training layer - where schools first meet the discipline, experientially, before it is ever named. Two things make it hold: the Learning Deck decks turn the discipline into daily routines, and Loom preserves the thinking over time. Workshops open the door; the decks and the platform keep it open.
Synnovate · The way in
Workshops
Experiential training that builds Collective Thinking Design: seeing the system, diagnosing the pattern, and practising something different - until a team can carry it without a facilitator in the room.
Start here ↓Learning Deck · Daily practice
The decks
Card-based routines that keep the discipline in daily use - shared ways of noticing, questioning, collaborating, and deciding that a team reaches for between the big moments.
Explore the decks →Loom · Organisational memory
The platform
The governance platform that preserves decisions, documents, and the thinking behind them over time - so a culture can remember what it repeatedly practises.
Explore Loom →Two tracks, one discipline
Which room are you starting with?
The same lens - seeing the system beneath behaviour - runs at two altitudes. Boards use it to build strategy that survives the organisation. Leadership teams and staff use it to make the system they operate visible and change what it produces. Different door, same intellectual DNA.
For boards & trustees
Strategy by Design
A board strategy retreat that survives contact with the organisation.
Most board strategy days produce a plan. Few examine why the last plan never quite happened. Strategy by Design diagnoses the operating system beneath the strategy, then builds one connected to the signals, behaviours and conditions required to deliver it.
- Reveal, diagnose, design, align - four movements, below the waterline and back
- Three formats: one-day intensive, 1.5-day retreat, or two-day full build
- Leaves the board with a Strategic Coherence Map, not a list of initiatives
For leadership & staff
The Waterline series
See the system, diagnose the pattern, practise the change.
For senior leadership teams, middle leaders and whole-school staff. Three workshops build Collective Thinking Design: learning to see the hidden operating system, diagnosing the patterns it produces, and installing the routines that change them - so the conditions a board designs actually take hold on the ground.
- Beneath the Waterline - see the system through six lived encounters
- Waterline Lab - diagnose your own recurring patterns
- Designing the Waterline - install one real, practised routine
Collective Thinking Design · Leadership & staff track
The core arc: see, diagnose, practise.
Three workshops, one discipline, for leadership teams and staff. Each does one job well; together they move a team from noticing a problem to running an experiment that changes what the environment produces. (Boards follow a different route - Strategy by Design.)
See the system
Beneath the Waterline
Six structured encounters teach a leadership team to see the hidden conditions shaping behaviour - before a single framework is named. Friction, permission, signals, meaning, visibility, constraints: the six lenses that make an invisible operating system visible. Experiential, not lectured.
You leave with: a diagnostic lens the team can use on Monday, underneath whatever plan you are already running.
View the full workshop →Diagnose the pattern
Waterline Lab
The same six lenses, turned on your organisation's own recurring patterns. Participants bring real friction, not designed puzzles, and work it until they can name what the system is actually producing. The output is a System Visibility Map - a sharper question, not an action plan.
You leave with: a Visibility Map of one real pattern, and the sharper question underneath it.
View the full workshop →Practise the change
Designing the Waterline
Seeing is not enough; culture changes when practice changes. Three principles - Attention, Accountability, Alignment - become practised routines, not slogans. The team runs one real four-meeting experiment, with a named guardian who checks: "Is the protocol holding?"
You leave with: one installed routine, running in a real meeting, and a way to know whether it held.
View the full workshop →Across every layer
The same discipline, applied where you need it.
The two tracks above are the core. Around them, the same diagnostic lens is built for the specific rooms a school works in - the board's strategy, the leadership team, the classroom, and the space between them.
Governance & Strategy
Boards have their own route. Strategy by Design takes the same below-the-waterline lens and points it at the strategic plan - so a board builds strategy in full cognizance of the system it governs.
- Why the last strategy never quite happened - diagnosed, not guessed
- Strategy rebuilt as a coherence chain from intent to evidence
- Governance 101 - foundational governance for new and developing boards, in person or virtual
Leadership Suite
Leaders misread the situation before they mismanage it. A one-day suite across the moments where that happens most.
- FRAME: the conversation that fails before it begins - preparation as discipline
- PLANS: strategy that cannot be held across a team is not strategy
- TEAM: culture is built through recurring micro-decisions, not away-days
- DYNAMICS: behavioural problems feel personal - they are almost always patterns
Cross-Layer Coherence
Board members, leaders, and teachers in one room, on one case study - because the failure at each layer is the same failure at a different altitude.
- One case study, three diagnostic frameworks, one connecting question
- Governance misread cascades to leadership misread cascades to classroom failure
- The whole leadership system addressed at once
Pedagogy
Classrooms can look active while thinking stays narrow. This makes the architecture of learning visible - where thinking is, and where it needs to go.
- Making the architecture of learning visible
- 4D facilitation: Disrupt, Diverge, Develop, Decide
- SPARK: designing for impact, not just activity
Common questions
Choosing a workshop, answered.
What workshops does Synnovate run for schools and boards?
Synnovate runs two core tracks. For boards and trustees, Strategy by Design is a board strategy retreat and strategic planning process. For leadership teams and staff, the Waterline series - Beneath the Waterline, Waterline Lab, and Designing the Waterline - builds the discipline of seeing the system, diagnosing the pattern, and practising the change. Domain workshops in leadership, pedagogy and cross-layer coherence sit around the core.
Do you offer board strategy retreats and strategic planning?
Yes. Strategy by Design is a board strategy retreat for school and trust boards, available as a one-day diagnostic intensive, a 1.5-day retreat, or a two-day full build. It diagnoses why the previous strategic plan or school development plan stalled, then rebuilds it as a coherent chain from intent to evidence rather than a flat list of initiatives.
Which workshop should a school start with?
Boards usually start with Strategy by Design. Leadership teams and staff usually start with the Waterline arc - Beneath the Waterline to see the system, then Waterline Lab and Designing the Waterline - and add a domain workshop where the pressure is highest. A short conversation is the best way to find the right entry point for your school.
Are the workshops in person or virtual?
The core experiential workshops are designed to run in person, because they depend on lived encounters rather than lectured frameworks. Some foundational sessions, such as Governance 101 for new and developing boards, are available in person or as a virtual workshop. Format is agreed with each school based on the group and the goal.
Which room do you want to change first?
Most schools start with the Waterline arc and add a domain workshop where the pressure is highest. A short conversation is the best way to find the right entry point.
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