Building on the success of two pilot SDG Leadership Labs in Uganda and Cambodia in 2018–2019, in 2021 the Presencing Institute (PI) has been working with UN senior leadership teams in fourteen countries around the world in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Leadership Labs.  These Labs support the UN to build capacity in systems leadership, collaboration and innovation in order to advance the UN’s Decade of Action agenda.

The SDG Leadership Labs are structured around the methods of Theory U and have been contextualised to address the specific priorities of each Country Team.  The UN Country Teams that took part in the 2021 Labs were: Bolivia, Cabo Verde, El Salvador, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Jamaica, Mauritius-Seychelles, Moldova, Mongolia, Serbia, Syria, Tanzania, Uzbekistan.  Each Country Lab was facilitated by a PI Faculty team, working closely with a core team from the UN in each case, over a period of four to six months.

As well as building capabilities in systems leadership and cross-agency collaborative working, the Labs promote action learning and have resulted in a range of new initiatives and prototypes that advance the 2030 agenda.  At the time of writing, 42 prototypes have been generated from the 2021 Labs.

Discover more about:

• the lessons learned;
• what the UN Country Team members have to say about their experience (short videos);
• what lies ahead in the partnership between the UN and PI.

Continue reading the article here.