Kata Together 2025

Join Kata School Cascadia for Kata Together 2025, hosted by Kaas Tailored in Mukilteo WA USA.
Monday July 14 to Friday July 18, 2025

Kata Together 2025 will challenge your mindset, your Improvement Kata Skills, and your Coaching Kata skills, too. 

You select your own learning path with our Choose-Your-Own-Adventure learning tracks and elective choice sessions for 2025. 

Join our volunteer Kata School Cascadia Coaches Mark Rosenthal, Tilo Schwarz, Maria Grzanka Tracy Defoe, and Sylvain Landry along with your kata friends from our Friday community zooms for a learning week like no other! 

Click on SELECT TICKETS at the right to register!

This group photo below is from Kata Together 2024.  

Welcome back for more learning; or welcome for the first time! 

For 2025 we are offering you more options in your own learning path!  We know, FOMO!  
Our program design aims to keep you right at your learning sweet spot.  

Come to Kata Together, level up your learning. 

We are sharing practices and exercises you can try at home. 

What can you expect? It will depend on what tracks and elective sessions you choose.   We offer memorable, fun learning including:

• the basis of scientific thinking, and fast and slow thinking
• the learning foundation and principles of the Improvement and Coaching Kata
• the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata together - Oh, this how it works! 
• practice with frequent microlearnings and reflections
• ideas and activities you can try back home.

There are three learning tracks through the week.
You don't have to choose now, but here they are.

• The learning track to set or reset your understanding and practice with all the Starter Kata, hands-on.
• Your coach will take you through the steps of the Improvement Kata and the structures that make it easier. 
• Work in a group to set up and keep up a kata storyboard.
• Learn your way forward over obstacles as you improve a process and achieve your challenge.
• If you are new to the kata, we recommend this learning track for you!

• Pilots learn in flight simulators; kata coaches practice in the Kata Coaching Dojo!
• Get specific about your words and intentions, build their reference and practice coaching microskills with Tilo Schwarz.
• Put your coaching to the test in the dojo, and in just a few hours, develop your coaching skills.
• Practice using the Coaching Kata questions in meetings as a way to sharpen your skills and sow the seeds for kata in your organization.
• If you are a new coach, or a coach wanting to level up, join Tilo in the Dojo track.

Leadership is a process. The only difference is that the outcome we are trying to achieve is influence rather than a discrete product or task.
Whether you manage or lead in your organization or are a consultant, in these sessions we practice applying the Improvement Kata steps to:

• Understand a Leadership Challenge
• Grasp the Current Condition of the organization's culture and your part in it.
• Establish a Target Condition around shifting some aspect of the patterns of interaction between people.
• Develop experiments focused on having effective leadership conversations
• Discover how the kata patterns transfer to relationships and your life goals; you will leave ready for your first experiments.  

Be prepared for this track to be challenging and introspective as we reflect on our own leadership styles.

More choices! 

There are two spots in our plan where our facilitators bring you something special.

We asked our facilitators to stretch and offer sessions outside your track.  Here is a quick summary of what you could choose:

• Kata and Lean: how to reveal lean principles with kata coaching with Maria Grzanka 
  Explore how Kata routines develop problem-solving skills and uncover the deeper principles of Lean thinking. Through interactive coaching exercises, participants will learn where to reinforce Lean principles that drive continuous improvement and create a culture of learning.
  

• Coaching in Meetings: Explore meeting scenarios and practice applying kata coaching questions beyond the storyboard. Tilo Schwarz and Sylvain Landry will lead through the thinking and the coaching practices to coach people around you informally.  Apply the coaching pattern to conversations. Recognize what phase your coworkers are responding from. Be a more confident coach!
  

• Coach an AI learner with Tilo Schwarz and Sylvain Landry. What if you could request a learner who was confused about target conditions, jumps easily to solution or is really great at reflection? Sylvain, Tilo and some other kata coaches have trained an AI to simulate those learners. Join this session to try your group's kata coaching skills with a learner we call up.  Practice right where your threshold of learning stretches.
  

• From Current Condition to Target Condition with Mark Rosenthal and Tracy Defoe  If you see a complete Current Condition of a process on a storyboard, how could you coach a learner to their next target condition? In this workshop we will set up all the information you need to practice setting a target condition and coaching to one. This workshop responds to frequently asked questions on our Friday zooms. 

This year there are two opportunities to learn in an active
kata practicing workplace. 

Choose one at checkout when you buy your ticket! 

Learning Visit Tours at Kaas Tailored and GLDN on Wednesday July 16th

On Wednesday July 16th 14 people will head an hour up the road to GLDN in La Conner WA to see how they make their custom jewelry by hand.  
In 2024, four women from GLDN came to Kata Together. This year they invited us back to see and study their processes and learn about their kata practice. To see photos and learn more about GLDN visit their website https://gldn.com/pages/about 

Space is limited to the first 14 people who register for the GLDN visit with their ticket purchase.  Select General Admission with GLDN learning visit option to be included on this unique opportunity.  Contact info@kata-school-cascadia.org with questions.

Our hosts at Kaas Tailored in Mukilteo WA invite us to join their people in the morning routines - a different tour than 2024.  Kaas Tailored makes high quality upholstered good and offers design services too.  The products are amazing! Kaas Tailored has been called "The Disneyland of Lean" by past Kata Together participant Pam White. You will want to see the work flow, culture and kata practices.  

Learn more about Kaas Tailored, their culture and products at https://kaastailored.com/about-us/

Select General Admission with Kaas Tailored learning visit option when you purchase your ticket. 

We will work together to make sure we visit with a purpose. The learning opportunities are endless!

Even More

• A kata geek meet up!  Share your insights and questions with the group in a sharing session
• a renewed enthusiasm for learning
• the warm feeling from learning in community
• the Kata School Cascadia I-Don't-Know Yeti attitude!

Need a certificate?  We expect to send you home with a Kata School Cascadia certificate, too. 

2025 Registration is limited.          

Program at a glance.

Our program is over 32 hours of kata learning, and evening opportunities for connection, reflection and fun.

We will all be together part of every day, and you will also choose your track for about 9 hours of focussed learning with Tilo Schwarz, Mark Rosenthal, Maria Grzanka and Tracy Defoe.

Need a pdf of this information? Request one from info@kata-school-cascadia.org

Questions? Contact info@kata-school-cascadia.org

Why join us at Kata School Cascadia's Kata Together 2025?

We are a community! Some of us have been on the kata learning path a little longer, sure. Everyone has something to offer and contribute, and we have planned workshops and activities with challenges to strive for, for all of us.

Is it different from last year's Kata Together? Yes and no!

We are back in the Treehouse at Kaas Tailored. You will spend a week with Kata School Cascadia's Mark Rosenthal, and Tracy Defoe, Tilo Schwarz, Sylvain Landry and Maria Grzanka. That's a starting line up you won't find anywhere else in 2025. The participants will be people you want to learn with and get to know in person!

This year we are breaking down the Improvement Kata and Coaching Kata, and beyond so we can refresh our practice, and push beyond our comfort zones. We are going to slow down and emphasize reflection. What did you learn? Reflecting on learning is something we all practice and strive to improve. We aim to make it a winning part of Kata Together. There is something for everyone!

About Tickets

At $1395 for the week, Kata Together is still the lowest cost, highest value option for the kata community to learn together in one place.

Note that this year you can select a learning visit option (we are doing more than touring!) with your ticket. 

We aim to be inclusive. We want to be accessible. A limited number of discounted tickets are available for those with financial hardship, individuals paying their own way and for our volunteers. Email Tracy at info@kata-school-cascadia.org to ask about discounted tickets or special circumstances.

Refunds?  We know it can be hard to plan ahead, and circumstances change.  

We offer refunds until Friday June 27 2025 so you can buy a ticket now with confidence. 

What's included?

In addition to hours of kata practice and experiences, we will have five lunches together Monday to Friday, and four breakfasts, Tuesday to Friday.  Dinners are on your own or with your kata friends. 

You are also invited to join a social Happy Hour on Monday.  

We expect great weather, and plan to have a beach evening in Mukilteo, too. 

Where to stay?

Once you register, you will receive a participant information package with maps, and details.  
There are several good options to stay nearby in Mukilteo and in Everett. 

We are all learners!

At Kata School Cascadia, we are ALL learners! Our Kata Together week isn't a conference. It's a comprehensive immersive workshop experience, 32+ hours, where we expect you to be actively learning and building your kata references and skills. Learn by doing, alongside some great coaches.

Our mission is to rock people's worlds by supporting their learning and sharing in the Starter Kata and beyond. If you have joined our community zooms or any of our online training, or if you were at Kata Together 2022, 2023, or 2024 you know we are all about

• supporting learning that sticks

• deliberately practicing the Improvement and Coaching Kata

• finding obstacles and narrowing gaps in our practice and understanding

• building scientific thinking

• having fun in community.

If you like us on Zoom, you will love us in person!