The RedQuadrant Tool Shed
£495 per month plus VAT per person. Accredited by the Public Service Transformation Academy.
A small practitioner cohort for making better use of methods, experience, and each other’s judgement in live work.
Who joins
Change-makers, consultants, facilitators, and systems practitioners working in different sectors and countries. Bring a real situation: a difficult intervention, an organisational pattern, a client relationship, or a change you are trying to support.
What the cohort provides
- Typically four to six people, with Benjamin P Taylor, meeting online twice a month for 90 minutes.
- Co-coaching, action learning, constructive challenge, and discussion of live practice.
- Access to the Leading Transformation core programme and supporting practice resources.
- Mentoring and ‘shadow consulting’ to think through engagements, approaches, and interventions, within the agreed support arrangement.
- A continuing community of practice, with communication arrangements agreed by the group.
Cohorts typically work together for twelve months. Additional one-to-one support and organisational groups can be discussed separately. Dates, fees, and access arrangements are agreed before joining.
The intellectual range
The repertoire connects organisation and viability; human relationships, power, and systems leadership; and intervention theory and practice. It draws on the Viable System Model, Barry Oshry’s work, systems leadership theory, organisational development, adult development, outside-in demand analysis, lean, iterative service design, and Peter Block’s consulting and community work.
The point is to understand what different approaches let you see, where their assumptions and limits lie, and how to combine them without pretending one model explains everything.
How the group works
Small groups, adult and peer learning, generosity, confidentiality, multiple perspectives, and inquiry through action. Participants can question both a method and its application, including the facilitator’s interpretation.
Leading Transformation: the 2026 curriculum
The revised learning route brings 24 modules into a delivery sequence across five perspectives: leadership and political life, citizens, services, management, and learning and change. Participants use live work, rehearsal, reflection, and optional depth to build a repertoire they can use with judgement.
The Five Core Practices recur throughout. The Four Dynamics are introduced early and applied fully to organisation design. Live practice starts in module 3, service prototyping in module 12, and the final simulation leads into a hundred-day plan.
Ask about the current teaching materials, supported study, and cohort arrangements before joining. The 2026 curriculum is a development of the established programme; access and delivery are agreed with each cohort.
The 24-module learning route
Transformation and the five worlds
Leadership and political
Read a live transformation challenge through leadership, citizens, services, management, and learning.
Purpose, outcomes, and useful measures
Leadership and political
Agree purpose, distinguish outputs from outcomes, and choose measures that help people act.
Your practice as a transformation agent
Learning and change
Contract for useful work, examine your own contribution, and start a live practice challenge.
Power, responsibility, and distributed leadership
Leadership and political
Work with power, accountability, and distributed leadership; introduce the Four Dynamics.
Honest, productive conversations
Learning and change
Practise listening, productive challenge, difficult conversations, and clear agreements.
Systems inquiry, mapping, and method choice
Learning and change
Frame a useful inquiry, map different perspectives, and choose methods for the situation.
Citizen insight and behaviour in context
Citizen
Gather citizen insight and examine behaviour in its social and practical context.
Strengths, community, and co-production
Citizen
Work with strengths, community assets, co-production, and Positive Deviance.
Demand, access, and prevention
Service
Understand demand, access, avoidable work, and opportunities for prevention.
Relational public services
Citizen
Organise around people’s lives, relationships, and needs that cross service boundaries.
Designing services and the work behind them
Service
Connect the citizen’s experience with service design, processes, and the work behind them.
Prototyping and learning through action
Learning and change
Test service ideas through prototypes and small experiments, then use what happens to improve them.
Lean, flow, and operational learning
Service
Apply lean, flow, A3 inquiry, and operational tools with respect for the people doing the work.
Resource Optimisation and choices about work
Management
Make effort and capacity visible, and use Resource Optimisation and Seven Ways to examine choices.
Costs, benefits, and business cases
Management
Connect activity, costs, benefits, and options in a defensible business case.
Digital, data, and AI judgement
Service
Judge digital, data, and AI proposals against service purpose, evidence, and human responsibility.
Understanding and designing viable organisations
Management
Use the Viable System Model to examine autonomy, coordination, and organisational viability.
The Four Dynamics, roles, and organisation design
Management
Apply the Four Dynamics to roles, relationships, authority, and organisation design.
Culture, change, and meeting the other
Management
Work with culture, assumptions, identity, and encounters with people who see things differently.
Convening across communities and organisations
Citizen
Build the relationships and conditions for action across communities and organisations.
Strategy, commissioning, and choices about provision
Leadership and political
Use Patterns of Strategy, commissioning, and provision choices to connect intent with action.
Facilitating groups and designing interventions
Learning and change
Choose and facilitate group processes, and design interventions that fit their setting.
Delivering, embedding, and evaluating change
Learning and change
Plan delivery, use Appreciative Inquiry and Breaking the Shell, and evaluate and embed change.
Integration, simulation, and the next hundred days
Learning and change
Bring the repertoire together through simulation and a substantial hundred-day follow-through.
Go further where your work requires it
Optional depth connects the core route with Seven Ways, Resource Optimisation, Patterns of Strategy, behavioural insight, Positive Deviance, Appreciative Inquiry, lean and operational tools, commissioning, and Breaking the Shell. Methods are used with attention to their assumptions, sources, and limits.
The Public Service Transformation Academy offers Leading Transformation for public-service leaders and practitioners, including bespoke organisational programmes. The RedQuadrant Tool Shed provides a small practitioner cohort and continuing support for applying the repertoire.
Leading Transformation through the PSTA · Benjamin’s approach to the Tool Shed
Find a way into your situation
Understand what is happening
Begin with purpose, people’s experience, and the work as it is done.
Redesign a service
Understand demand and the whole journey before choosing a new arrangement.
Find savings without damaging services
Examine effort, capacity, and what the work achieves.
Work across organisational boundaries
Explore purpose, power, relationships, and the ability to act together.
Lead change and develop capability
Build your repertoire through real work, reflection, and practice.
Work with culture and relationships
Examine what people experience and what keeps the current pattern in place.
Choose a systems approach
Explore different traditions, assumptions, and methods.
Find systems events worldwide · Systems Community of Inquiry