Forums
F01: Multi-Generational
Collaboration: Shaping Tomorrow, Together
Juanita Brown, The World Café; Samantha Tan, Meristem Group
In these uncertain times, traditional models of mentoring, training, and talent development are no longer adequate for engaging collective intelligence and taking wise action. Today, fostering authentic conversation and courageous collaboration across traditional boundaries is a key leadership skill. How can organizations actively engage all generations, including younger leaders and long-time employees, in order to weather the storm rather than be blown apart by the winds? Join this highly interactive forum to help shape the strategic questions, spirited conversations, and innovative thinking required to tap the energy, creativity, and new opportunities available when all generations exercise collaborative leadership in shaping the future—together. All generations welcome!
In this session, you will:
- Apply the power and potential of intergenerational dialogue and collaboration to real-life issues in your own organization or community
- Generate strategic questions that you can use to foster constructive dialogue and committed action across generations
- evelop specific action steps you can take to leverage multi-generational collaboration in your home setting
Juanita
Brown, with David Isaacs is the co-founder of the World Café,
an innovative approach to large-group dialogue. Their award-winning book, The
World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations that Matter, is
a key resource for fostering conversational leadership across traditional
boundaries. Juanita has served as a senior affiliate with the MIT Center
for Organizational Learning, as a research affiliate with the Institute
for the Future, and as a fellow of the World Business Academy.
Samantha
Tan is a dynamic young leader from Singapore
who is committed to facilitating courageous conversations in the
service of our shared humanity. She is a founding partner of the Meristem
Group, which provides leadership skills for change agents who are creating
inspired futures in multi-stakeholder environments. Most recently, Samantha
served as a research fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of
Government, focusing on leadership challenges in urban school systems. | Back to top...
F02: Managing for Life: Lessons
from Toyota for Creating Sustainable
Businesses
H. Thomas Johnson, Portland State University
Lean management writers refer to “waste” as resources a business consumes in excess of those required to satisfy customers’ wants. But how often do they extend the term to include the impact of excessive economic growth on the Earth? This broader form of waste has turned the human economy from a life-sustaining into a life-destroying system. This session explores the concept of “managing for life,” a mode of thinking and practice capable of reversing the destruction caused by our current economic model. By showing how to manage business activities more in alignment with living systems, this approach offers a pathway through which the economy might achieve true sustainability.
In this session, you will hear how:
- Financial targets compel businesses to pursue endless growth
- Endless growth is incompatible with true sustainability
- The concept of “managing for life” draws on Toyota’s problem-solving and leadership routines
H.
Thomas Johnson is professor of Business at Portland
State University and Distinguished Consulting Professor of Sustainable
Business at Bainbridge Graduate Institute. In 1997, Harvard Business
Review named his book Relevance Lost one of the most influential
management books of the 20th century, and in 2003, Harvard Business
School Press listed Tom among today’s 200 leading management thinkers.
In 2001, Tom’s book Profit Beyond Measure received the Shingo
Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research, and in 2007, the American
Society for Quality awarded him its prestigious Deming Medal. | Back to top...
F03: See the
System, Experience the System
Gerald C. Swanson, Boeing Corporation
Systems are at work all around us, but they can be difficult to perceive. One powerful way to begin to “get” systems is to physically experience concepts such as homeostasis, sub-optimization, system constraints, and synergistic emergence. Gerald will lead you through a series of activities designed to rapidly teach fundamental systems concepts. Through this group process, you will learn to recognize the interconnectedness of the systems in which you operate and to avoid the issues that arise when organizations fail to take that interconnectedness into account. New practitioners will gain understanding of systems properties in behavioral terms; experienced practitioners will learn a tool they can use with any group working on issues that are inherently systemic.
In this session, you will:
- Learn a simple, easily replicated method of demonstrating systems principles
- Experience the concepts of homeostasis, sub-optimization, system constraints, and synergistic emergence in a manner that makes the behavioral consequences of these principles clear
- Take away ideas for immediately applying these concepts in your work environment
- Contribute to the conversation about introducing systems principles
in this way
Gerald
C. Swanson, BS, MS, PhD, MA-ABS, has worked in
Boeing for 24 years applying process and organization development
methodologies to support organizations in improving their business
performance. He has particular passion about two challenges such organizations
face: (1) ensuring that the planned change does not sub-optimize the
larger system and (2) helping the people in the organization to transition
through the change effectively. | Back to top...
F04: Conversational
Leadership: Strategies for Large-Scale Systems Change
Frances Baldwin, Designed Wisdom; Thomas
J. Hurley, World Café Community Foundation; Amy Lenzo
Successful large-scale change initiatives invite the creative engagement of all key stakeholders in interconnected conversations that address critical strategic questions. In helping design and host such initiatives both within and across sectors, Frances Baldwin and Tom Hurley have begun to identify a set of principles and practices that enable leaders in today’s highly networked organizations and communities to inspire engagement, encourage collaboration across boundaries, and foster greater collective capacity for knowledge creation and innovative action. Join in a highly interactive exploration of lessons learned, questions at the edge of our knowing, and powerful strategies for taking next steps.
In this session, you will:
- Learn specific capacities associated with mastery of conversational leadership
- Discover the ways in which leaders and managers in diverse companies have strategically applied the principles and practices of conversational leadership for business success
- Identify common challenges and how to work with them
Frances
Baldwin, president of Designed Wisdom, Inc., has been an international
educator, coach, and consultant to public and private-sector organizations
for 35 years. As an internal corporate consultant, the focus of her work
was executive leadership development. She has been the senior resource
on numerous large-systems change projects in military, petrochemical,
utilities, city governance, and faith organizations. Organizational affiliations
include the World Café Foundation, the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland,
the Shambhala Institute, and the Chaos Game, a UK-based consulting network.
Thomas
J. Hurley is a consultant, senior advisor, and
executive coach for leaders seeking innovative approaches to key
strategic issues and large-scale systems change. He was co-founder
of the Chaordic Commons, a nonprofit consulting organization in which
he partnered with VISA founder Dee Hock, and presently serves on the
board of directors for both the World Café Community Foundation and the
Berkana Institute. Tom served for 17 years with the Institute of Noetic
Sciences, where he was a member of the senior management team.
Amy
Lenzo is an artist, writer, photographer, and web 2.0 professional who
uses social media and other online tools to foster networks of conversation
around the world. She is Community Technology Steward at the World
Café, where she designed the World Cafe Online Community and hosts virtual
World Cafés. Amy combines her experience as an online communications professional
with an MA in Literature, and blogs about what she finds beautiful
at www.beautydialogues.com. | Back to top...
F05: Conflict as
Catalyst: A Storytelling Approach to Contentious Situations
Robert Dickman, FirstVoice; Ken McLeod, McLeod and Associates
Most organizations operate on the myth that conflict is bad and should be avoided. But at its core, conflict is a dynamic interaction between different systems, an interaction that is pregnant with creative and constructive possibilities. By courageously engaging this tension, we can let go of the past and discover new possibilities. In this experiential workshop, you will learn how to use the five elements of storytelling to broaden people’s perceptions and bring clarity to contentious situations. You will also apply narrative techniques to identify what needs to be done in a given context to mobilize others to take effective action.
In this session, you will:
- Learn how to shift conflict from opposition to problem solving
- Transform how you see a challenge in your work or personal life with the five elements of storytelling
- Use the four stages of conflict to analyze and develop strategies for this challenge
- Develop your capacity for courage by seeing contentious situations more clearly
Robert
Dickman is an executive coach and co-author of The Elements
of Persuasion (HarperCollins, 2007). Bob has been involved with
SoL since 1998 and has written articles for Reflections and The
Systems Thinker. He is a graduate of the Hudson Institute’s program
in organizational coaching and is certified as a coach by ICF. Bob has
coached a variety of organizations, including Aramark, Ford, Warner Bros.,
and the Naval Post-Graduate School.
Ken
McLeod is the founder and executive director of Unfettered
Mind, and is an innovative teacher of Buddhism. In the early 1990s,
he pioneered a private-practice model for spiritual guidance, a move
that led him into executive coaching and management consulting. Ken is
the author of Wake Up to Your Life (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001).
Clients include HBO, TimeWarner, and Volvo. | Back to top...
F06: Adapt and Perform: What
Boeing Test & Evaluation is Learning from Living Systems
Dennis O’Donoghue, The Boeing Company;
Large organizations often demonstrate characteristics consistent with complex adaptive systems. Like living organisms, these networked systems have identity, intelligence, cognition, and unpredictable responses to changing conditions. Critically important to any leader seeking meaningful results is the principle that complex adaptive systems cannot be directed; they can only be influenced. To be successful, leaders must first understand how the underlying structure of their work system compels the system to act in certain ways—intended and unintended. In this session, Dennis O’Donoghue and Anne Murray Allen will illustrate how Boeing’s Flight Validation and Test Organization has employed the principles of living systems to effect profound, rapid change.
In this session you will:
- Hear how to make visible and make sense of the structure of the work system using system dynamics modeling and value network analysis
- Learn about leveraging complexity and expanding a system’s self-awareness and adaptive capacity to evolve to a desirable future state
- Understand how ambiguity is crucial to realizing profound change
Dennis O’Donoghue is vice president of Boeing Test & Evaluation. In
this role, he is responsible for all aspects of laboratory and flight test
operations in support of the development and certification of commercial
airplanes, space and defense products. Today, Dennis leads an organization
of approximately 7,300 engineers, pilots, mechanics, machinists and technicians. Prior
to his Boeing career, Dennis was a NASA research test pilot. | Back to top...