| Building Capacities for Learning Organizations FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR OF THE REPUBLIC OF BOTSWANA |
| About the Facilitator Ms Sheila Damodaran brings with her a wealth of experience from her 16 years in the international field. She has (July 2008) been awarded the status of Consultant Member in the world renowned Society for Organization Learning (SoL) headed by Dr Peter Senge. For those who have been to her workshops, find the insights she offers simple yet have profound ways to shift the ways we think and interact with each other and in the process regain a new found direction in channelling our efforts within our organizations. The work that she has been developing with the public sector organizations includes a piece of core theory of work that she has been developing for the past eleven years or so. This theory is otherwise intimately known as ‘the onion’ and it suggests that systemic archetypes (i.e. a set of tools offered by the discipline of Systems Thinking used to appreciate complexity) unfold and reinforce in a particular sequence / pattern. This theory underscores the work she undertakes in doing the key success loops in all her works including the Ministries in Botswana. This framework has enabled us to unravel and appreciate the viciousness of some our most resistant problems. This is her personal theory borne out of years of presenting, using and researching this work. She is planning to publish this theory in the coming years. |
(FAQs / Site Map) Programme on Understanding the concept of Learning Organizations Facilitated by Ms Sheila Damodaran
was designed to assist leadership and management staff of the public sector in the country in the understanding and use of the disciplines and tools of Learning Organization to create systemic transformations within organizations. The intended results of the project are:
These skills are initially developed with the guide of the facilitator. b. Staff become skilled to apply the learning to sharpen and ensure a more integrated approach to leading national and organizational planning processes and therefore a higher likelihood that efforts undertaken during the course of NDPs are implemented not only to their completion but also produce or exceed the desired results. Most importantly, all of the above are achieved at much lower costs to the country.
Anticipated Learning This program is a national leadership and (national) strategy development programme. It is NOT a performance management or monitoring tool or even strategy management process (so it is not the likes of Balanced Scorecard or project management or work improvement teams or goal or outcome or results-based management). It is certainly not for re-engineering work processes (so it is not business process reengineering) or perspectives (so it is not a tool for coaching or mentoring) and certainly not for use within specific organizations at the exclusion of others. Using this work to shift / change a person's thinking (mindset change) is perhaps one of the biggest abuses of this work. It is intended to see, understand and deal with stubborn or resistant issues and by appreciating what is casusing thesee realities (notice I did not say perspectives) learn to turn situations around as a whole or as we say systemically. To do so, requires one to see "the forest and the trees". It is an area few management concepts have dared to venture into. Its best use is for handling issues that have resisted change at national levels. To do so it dwelves deeply into the domains of clarifying personal and shared perspectives as well as aspirations, generating collaborative inquiry both as a team and as a country, and through all of the above appreciating systemic perspectives of issues at all levels of the nation. These are key as competencies required for sustained profound change as a nation. Not the individual. This program is based on Dr Peter Senge's book called the The Fifth Discipline.
Through the interplay of both personal and interpersonal works, participants will recognize and learn that leadership concerns the capacity of a human community to shape its destiny and to bring forth realities aligned with people's deepest aspirations. From senior executives to those with no formal authority, leaders at every organizational and societal levels will gain deeper insights into leadership as a collective phenomenon. Teams are encouraged to participate and explore together what it takes to create an environment in which leadership is a shared responsibility, naturally embedded in the fabric of an organization or community. When these skills are absent, issues and our plans tend to stay resistant to change and beome increasingly vicious and eventually resists or fights back any attempts by "our best" of strategies to influence them. This is despite turntable management - managing the table in turns (elections and postings or transfers)! These issues now become a very costly affair for a country returning as recurrent issues and with increasingly systemic consequences. These happen to the best of us, despite the best use of our intelligence or our "best brains and hands" to implement the strategies. So what makes an issue resistant to change defying all of best intentions to correct it? In this work we acknowledge there is yet another kind of intelligence required for leading: seeing and understanding systemic interrelatedness that influences the ways we interact with each other and therefore create the thoughts that we carry within ourselves. These in turn trigger our behaviours and actions which entrench our deepest:
These take years to fully play out their effects and it is easy that such interrelations escape our attention. The more we are detracted from seeing these effects, the more they take on a cause-effect relationship that becomes cyclical in nature or what are called "circles of causality". Once these are entrenched, the knock-on effects are:
awareness or intelligence" and continues to fail in our best efforts. After attending the course, you will have an understanding of the core competencies required to build organizations that learn to see and act for sustaining profound change and you will have the experience of participating in a learning community that uncovers these "systemic intelligences". You will have an enhanced ability to think systemically, communicate effectively and lead honorably. As such this course is designed as an intensive and comprehensive hands-on introduction to the concepts, methods and tools for building learning organizations. Intended Audience It is designed for leaders and their team members interested in working together to apply organizational learning tools and methods to practical issues in the context of their organization. It assumes members have a good depth of tacit insights of organizatonal issues (participants should have at least ten years managerial experience). We do encourage participants attend in intact teams. Participants do find themselves becoming genuinely interested in attending, open to a different experience, and be in positions to support further works as a result of the project in their organizations. A fair amount of interest has been generated to bring this work to the following:
[The ones in bold letters have begun undertaking this effort to-date. The rest have not.]
This is not a typical management training course. This program emphasizes that knowledge is really the capacity for action and that learning to see what is not obvious is the development of that capacity. Although it will introduce you to new tools and methods, it is not primarily focused on the tools and methods. It is based on a simple premise: that there is no better way to learn about learning organizations and how they can be brought about than to learn to create such an organization. We endeavor to do so, in so far as that is possible over 4 modules spanning up to twelve days (3 days per module) and the sunsequent follow-up discussion sessions (see Part B below). The programme could take a Ministry up to two years to complete the sessions. The course invites you to think of your own aspirations, both in and out of the workplace. It focuses on the principles, concepts, methods and tools of organizational learning, and how to apply them in both organizational and personal contexts. This requires individuals with some first-hand knowledge in the "learning disciplines" of a learning organization. There are four modules of this programme (see Annex B). One generally realizes the significance of the commitment of the remaining nine days on attending the first module. A short write-up of the four modules is included here. In brief the four modules are:
Part B: Strategy Development Project Work - Developing Key Success Loops Facilitated by Ms Sheila Damodaran These sessions are special in-house settings for nurturing thinking and relationships among executive leaders for today’s changing economic and social landscapes and learning to understand what are causing those changes. Through a series of strategic dialogues on issues of most concern to participants, our intent is to tap the wisdom that resides, often below the surface, in our collective experience. The format is designed to build capacity for conducting conversations that matter with potentially large numbers of people while applying organizational learning tools that foster reflection, systems thinking and strategic conversation. These sessions can number up to 20 half-day sittings starting from in-house discussions and extending the sessions to include inter-Ministerial and inter- organizational discusssion sessions. Offered for leaders / executives who have completed the “Leaders for Learning“ workshops, this is a unique opportunity to reflect, refocus, and recharge, preciously rare activities in today's frenetIc organizational world. The results of this work would be used towards the strategic planning and implementation of national development plans and works within the public sector. Click here for details on planning to attend these workshop sessions. For more information on this programme, contact Office of the President, +267-7138-3023, Botswana |
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