Dates: 17–18 September 2025
Location: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA
Audience: Leaders and practitioners in large organisations focused on improving ways of working
Cost: $1150 USD
 

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Limited Spaces: Secure Your Place

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Why Attend?

 

Step back in time to move work forward. Join Jon Smart on the Sooner Safer Happier Industrial Revolution Tour — a rare opportunity to explore the roots of today’s ways of working

Explore how the 3rd Industrial Revolution Tour— marked by the rise of steel, electricity, railroads, and mass production—transformed how work was organised and managed at scale. Many of the structures, incentives, and behaviours born during that time still influence how large organisations operate today.

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Join this two-day immersive tour and learning experience where we’ll examine the lasting legacy of these historical ways of working and distill actionable insights for today’s business challenges.

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Whether you're a transformation leader, senior manager, product person, or change advocate, this event offers a rare opportunity to understand your organisation's DNA—so you can evolve it for better outcomes.

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What You’ll Gain

 

• A stronger business case for change by connecting today’s pain points to outdated practices

• Fresh perspectives on how leadership, management, and incentives evolved—and what must evolve again

• Tools and language to influence change internally with historical grounding

• A chance to step out of the day-to-day and reconnect with purpose alongside like-minded peers

• A collaborative space to explore modern alternatives grounded in humane, outcome-oriented principles

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Itinerary

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Day 1 – The Rise of Industrial Giants (Pennsylvania)

 

Morning – Steamtown National Historic Site (Scranton)
Explore how the rise of railroads and steam power required unprecedented coordination. Discover how innovations like the world’s first organisation chart emerged to manage growing complexity and scale.

 

Afternoon – Bethlehem Steel Tour (Bethlehem)
Walk through the remains of one of the most influential steelmakers in US history. Learn how Frederick Winslow Taylor’s scientific management practices, designed to maximise efficiency, still echo in today’s output-driven, hierarchical models of work.

 

Day 2 – Distill, Reflect, Reimagine (Illinois)

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A full-day interactive session to translate history into insight—and insight into practice.

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Key Learning Themes & Objectives:

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- Context & Incentives: What were organisations optimising for in the 3rd Industrial Revolution? How did those incentives shape structures we still see today?

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- Legacy Patterns: What past practices—like detailed upfront planning, cost accounting, siloed workflows—still constrain outcome delivery today?

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- Reclaiming Useful Lessons: What can we re-learn? From systems thinking to cross-functional collaboration, many past lessons remain vital when applied differently.

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- Leadership: How can today’s leaders evolve from control to enablement? What did leadership look like when industrial scale first emerged, and what must change now?​​​​​

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Who Should Attend?

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• Transformation, Agile, Product and Delivery Leaders

• Organisational Designers and OD professionals

• HR, Finance, and PMO leaders rethinking how they enable value

• SSH Advocates and anyone seeking more humane, outcome-oriented ways of working

 

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