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Dear all,
Firstly, happy new year greetings to our friends celebrating the Lunar New Year! We wish all a wonderful year
ahead!
I was in Vietnam over the new year for a week of workshops with a group of young university students and
members of the corporate folks of Vietnam. One of the topics that was top on every one's mind was using the
tools of this work to understand the choker-block phenomena of traffic congestions on their roads. Most of us
claim the traffic woes in our country (the result of expanding offices, lands (and roads) to the global work to beat
globalization and help our economies and then traffic woes grow ... eventually, "oops I said it again!"), is the worst,
until we go to Ho Chi Minh city. Even Indians (the proverbial risk drivers of the world) could not believe their eyes!
Their woes go back several years and the sights ahead are looking bleaker by the day.(well, mostly caused by
polluting air) While I was there, it was not unusual to see cars locked in a 3-way (head-on) collision at traffic
junctions at mid-day!! So what has caused (or is causing) this?
Remember Law #7? It was a few days on in my workshop when one of the participants remarked that a teacher
in Vietnam would not stop to help a student should he turn up at late for class. The teacher ignores him and
goes on with the lesson. She or he feels that the student should be made to feel he is ignored, as the student
had in the first place not respected the teacher by not turning up on time (hear a LITTLE ego here?). So ... if
one student grows up feeling "the lack of self-respect" and then learns to believe that one has to "please"
another in order not to be rejected or be considered a failure and he gets on the road with that "frame" (or
mental model), he does not cause traffic congestions. But if 30 students per class over 20 years and by 20,000
teachers (in Singapore we have 20K teachers some teaching for 40 years) help instill those frames in their
students, then you would have potentially 12 million people clogging the streets of HCM at 7 am every morning.
What about 5 pm every evening? That is not hard to figure out, is it? A recipe for disaster "cooked" in the
classroom is now living alive on the roads!
Now how much tax money would one need to expand and build roads to cope with that behaviour? Would we
ever beat (with tolls, fees, new innovation, rules, threats, etc) the catching-up game here? We now have the
formula for traffic congestions in any major city in Asia (and Africa) - caused by something we were not watching
were happening right under our noses! Where children are taught and bred that certain disciplines are virtues
that set apart the good (as distinct from a "bad") person.
So twenty years on, we get caught up in snarling jams and get stuck in them for hours, complain about
breathing in toxic fumes, falling ill, feeling frustrated and needing us to re-instill those values again! Because
the teacher (the boss, the wife, the parent, the family) would otherwise be upset with me for coming in late!
What everyone thinks of me overrides almost everything else - it is a silent ruler in-built within us from a tender
bamboo (I mean age! distant in space and time) and brings us right back into the mess. In common spaces
actions (by the values) are amplified. So we complain at things that are too obvious (Transport Ministry) but not
the highest leverage. Remember Law #8? Not seeing the whole story, stops us from noticing why our actions
are really not working.
Is it apparent now that these circles of causality have already been running for ages? Believe me they are not
new! We are just discovering them later ... usually because we had been busy fighting and fixing them rather
than understanding the complexity. Often fueled by our fears of failure and rejection (these create our frames)
So, now what happens? In whose hands is the power of changing this story? Think over the hols (a nice
conversation over CNY festivities, is it not?) and share your thoughts on our eGroup.
We wish you a great lunar year ahead. Do feel free to pass this on to anyone you think would like to hear
about these.
Warmly,
Sheila Damodaran
http://www.lopn.net
Look out for brand new links on the LOPN website here!
Sign-up here to be on the LOPN mailing list.
LOPN E-Discussion Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LOPN
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2008 LOPN NEWS!
Click here for details. They share tools that help you to make sense of realities as you see here in the NewsFlash.
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2008 COMMUNITY EVENTS AND CONFERENCES:
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2008 GLOBAL SOCIETY FOR ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING (SoL) AND RELATED GROUPS
 | | SOCIETY FOR ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING (SoL Global) DATES:
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"For a long time I had felt like a mouse on a corporate treadmill and I was curious to find out how the
programmes was going to provide me with some new insights and fresh perspectives. As the days
unfolded, I thought the program was pleasant, relaxing and a good opportunity to recharge the battery.
It wasn't until I came home, however, when it suddenly dawned on me that I had subtly changed. It was
as if in this moment of stillness in Vermont, I had changed a lens on my mental camera and was looking at
the world in a different way. As if in a moment of connection with life and the universe, I finally understood
that our greatest power to change the world lies in our power to see beyond the veil."
- Recent Participant
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"Enhancing our capacity for generative conversation, especially in dealing with highly contentious issues, is vital in
building learning organizations. The work of Action Design is an essential foundation in building this capacity."
- Peter Senge, Society for Organizational Learning.
"The Action Design Institute is among the most powerful developmental experiences I've had in my career. I now have
tools and approaches to help me understand dilemmas, appreciate the perspective of others and know how to help
when the conversation appears stuck. - Global Quality Manager, BP Solar. .... "I really enjoyed the Action Design
workshops when I took them but I also noticed that they had a 'time release' quality in my life. It's been a gradual
process but I have actually caught myself seeing things very differently." - An Organizational Development Director.
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Feb 4, 2008 (Mon)
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