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Dear all,
Hope you are well. Did want to let everyone know (some of you are aware), I am presenting at the
Systems Thinking in Action (STIA) Conference in Boston this year (see below). This is happening in
the middle of next month. For a gist of my papers, please see below.
I know the many experiences we have had together, learning and understanding this work is making
such a presentation possible. So thank you to all. I also do feel happy making a full circle with the
very conference that started the journey in this field for me.
We are indeed fortunate that a group of Systems Dynamics practitioners from India has agreed to
share on the LOPN Forum their experiences in schools. Sushil Bajpai will be in town to share the
group's learnings. I felt this may be something schools trying to bring this work to students, and
equally organizations trying to understand how to apply this discipline may find useful. This would
be on October 23 (Mon). Do book early. The scope of their forum is shown below.
We wish all a pleasant month ahead. Do feel free to pass this on to anyone you think would like to
hear about these.
Warm regards
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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2006 LOPN NEWS!
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LEARNING ORGANIZATION CORE COMPETENCY WORKSHOP DATES IN COMING MONTHS:
Level 1: "Creating Results that Matter - Understanding the Framework of Learning Organization"
(click on the above link for more details)
Target Audience: For novices and/or have not attended any LOPN workshops and wishes to pursue
the four modules eventually.
Duration: 2 days
Time: 9 am - 6 pm
October 19-20, 2006 (Thu-Fri) - Venue: HDB Hub Fiilled.
November 23-24, 2006 (Thu-Fri) - Venue: MOE HQ Filled.
Level 2: "Learning to see the World Systemically - Deepening Systems Thinking"
(click on the above link for more details)
Target Audience: Must have attended Level 1.
Duration: 2 days
Time: 9 am - 6 pm
October 12-13, 2006 (Thu-Fri) - Venue: Teletech Customer Management [NEW DATE!]
December 14-15, 2006 (Thu-Fri) - Venue: HDB Hub
Register online here and secure a workshop date that works for you.
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COMING UP NEXT LOPN PRACTITIONERS' FORUM: Working Systems Dynamics in Schools, A Sharing
of India's Experiences with their Students by Sushil Bajpai.
Date: Oct 23, 2006 (Mon)
Time: 2.30 pm - 6 pm.
Venue: Singapore Polytechnic, entrance by Commonwealth Avenue West, Gallery, Level 1, T11A
(School of Chemical & Life Sciences)
I had a great time listening and understanding what Sushil and Rajinder and the team of teachers at
RB Academy build from scratch a whole school that has turned around its curriculum on its head,
centred almost entirely around Systems Thinking, even including planning the building of their brand
new school building on these principles. Isn't that astounding?
It is amazing to see students and teachers alike share a love for the language, using it freely e.g. "if
we don't pay attention, the long-term consequence that we pay ...", jointly discovering leverages,
building simulations and developing policies unique for each stakeholder depending on their specific
needs - talk about true democracy yet work, yet totally systemic! Now how do you do that? Come
and find out!
Forum scope:
- Listen to stories of lessons that teachers and school use to help children, teachers and
parents appreciate the dynamic complexity that surround us and series of lessons that they
have used in schools, integrating them seamlessly in everyday lessons and helping students
learn the experience of interconnections and the behaviour of the dynamic nature of the
interconnections. What if our future employees can do this by themselves?
- Experiences from a field trip to a village where the students of a Business School in Pune,
India Sadhana Centre for Management and Leadership Development (http://scmld.org ) saw
first hand how hard they were struck by “The Tragedy of Commons” archetype and how they
used the Systems Thinking and the other disciplines, to reverse the situation sustainably.
And this without any knowledge of the work or the jargon. Just plain emergence and
convergence with help of an NGO (Water Organisation Trust – http://www.wotr.org) that
helped build their capacity.
- How the school-system has used it to make sense of complexities they experience, e.g. to
reduce noise reduction. Watch a video capturing all of these learnings, and more!
We invite you to an exciting afternoon of learning and discoveries! Register here today!
Look out for upcoming forums on Servant Leadership (Link 2) by Richard W. Smith on November 27,
2006 (Mon)! Pencil in this date for now.
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2006 COMMUNITY EVENTS AND CONFERENCES:
Nil.
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2006 GLOBAL SOCIETY FOR ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING (SoL) AND RELATED GROUPS' DATES:
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 | | SOCIETY FOR ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING (SoL Global) DATES:
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Sol Core Competency Workshops:
Presencing: Collective Leadership for Profound Innovation and Change: December 4-8, 2006.
Locations to be determined, either Boston, MA area or New York.
"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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| | ACTION DESIGN INSTITUTE DATES:
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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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| | SoL CONFERENCE 2006 "FIRE, PASSSION, EXCELLENCE", November 13-14 SoL Finland
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If you wish to exchange thoughts, ideas and practises of SoL leadership that ourselves as
coordinators have found to be useful and successful in a way that also help our communities
to grow, then we would also like to invite you to join SoL Finland's main event of the year,
SoL Conference 2006 "Fire, Passion & Excellence" November 13-14. It features keynote from
Marcial Losada and many, many interesting workshops (there will always also be an option in
English so you don't need to start learning our lovely, vivid, but very difficult language:-). For
more info on the conference http://www.solconference.com/eng/index.php . There will be a
special fee for European Coordinators to be announced asap.
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| | PEGASUS COMMUNICATIONS DATES:
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Most of us know how to find our way home. When folk musician Anne Hill sings, "Follow the
road, back through time, back through distance, back to me," we easily conjure up images of
the people and places we have left behind. But when we are called on to traverse time and
distance in the other direction, using our imagination instead of our memories, the task is,
understandably much harder.
Yet, everyday, we make decisions that require us to make assumptions about the future,
often minimizing our risk by sticking to a horizon that's close enough to see - the next fiscal
quarter, the next standardized testing cycle, the next election. As leaders in a time of
unprecedented complexity, we know we must expand our comfort zone. In matters as vast as
global climate change and as immediate as our organizational lives, our capacity for grasping
the landscape of the future is critical to the quality of the choices we make now.
At this conference we will celebrate systems thinking as a way of being and as a practical
toolset that helps us measure and understand the time and distance that separates us from
the consequences of our actions. With stories, ideas and practices, we will embolden each
other with the courage and humility to look further down that road ahead and to accept our
shared responsibility for shaping a tomorrow we will be proud to hand off to our children and
the children of our neighbours around the globe.
Featured speakers include Peter Senge, Roger Salliant, Eammon Kelly, Dawna Markova, among others. Join
an unparalleled cross-sectoral community of about 600 progressive practitioners who are working to
cultivate foresight and strengthen their ability to lead now by making the right choices for today and
tomorrow.
The gist of my papers presented at the above conference:
Paper 1: Many of you who have come through the LOPN workshops would have come across a
model of an extension of Systems Thinking (Level 2) I have been building the past few years.
The purpose of the model is to illustrate that archetypes build up over time like the way
nested circles (like the layers of the onion) behave. This immediately makes the use of
system archetypes a lot easier as we are not left with the painful experience of choosing just
the one right archetype as well as begin to unravel a whole host of archetypes that exist in
the issue in a more systematic manner. My hope is to share this with practitioners out there
and invite them to work using the model so that we may develop more case studies and check
the validity of the model. This is one paper.
Paper 2: The other paper is working with an Asian team (comprising myself and two others
both Asians based in US and maintain extensive linkages with China) in sharing Asian
experiences with a particular focus on East Asian philosophies capacity to gender inspired
futures for its people - a cross-comparison presentation with the discipline of personal
mastery. The latter has been particularly challenging as such frames have become deeply
ingrained within us that re-looking at the five disciplines through the lenses can feel painful
as we try to seek resonance even as there are fundamental differences. To me it was
interesting to see ways we sideline (and therefore not learn) the five disciplines when they
do not resonate with what we know or are familiar with. That was very interesting for me. I
have started a discussion thread on this on the e-Group. We hope you have a gainful
conversation on it.
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October 1, 2006 (Sun)
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