[...Note: Bob's report divided into sections by your host...]
Hi,
This is a "trip report" for the recent Systems Thinking In Action (STIA)
forum in Boston that my colleague Jeanne Hazell and I just attended.
I realize that others have shared their insightful summaries of speaker's
messages with this mailing list before. We circulated this trip report
internally in IBM, and I thought it might also be of interest to some of
you, as additional "learning".
The best of the best (IMHO) are signified with an * bullet.
Bob
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TRIP REPORT
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WHAT: "SYSTEMS THINKING IN ACTION CONFERENCE: BUILDING
ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING INFRASTRUCTURES"
SPONSOR: Pegasus Communications
WHEN: Sept.18-20, 1995
WHERE: Boston, Marriott Copley Place Hotel
WHO: About 1200 attendees from business, government, education,
consulting, etc.... 7 IBMers - from Canada, U.S, Europe
5. Peter Senge (author of "The Fifth Discipline" and one of the authors
of "The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook"): "INFRASTRUCTURES FOR
SUSTAINING TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE"
* Use the existing infrastructures, such as the planning function
e.g. Royal Dutch Shell's SCENARIO PLANNING - showed that the
value was in the process of planning/learning, not in the
end result/plan.
. 3 KEY INFRASTRUCTURE ELEMENTS for learning:
1. A Network of Coaches/Facilitators e.g. Ford, Chrysler
2. "Learning Labs" where learning and work can be safely
integrated, experiments can be tried, and learning happens
3. Deployment/Transfer through "Learning Histories" ... very
little work is done on this by most organizations
. STORIES are a vital learning tool ... we are between stories,
but something is happening in the world today - we are just not
sure what to call this awakening; what story would our
grandchildren want to hear us creating?
The above is distilled from a 700 page handout and many pages of
additional notes. Some of these ideas are great, some are strange,
but all are stimulating. Hopefully it has been worth your while to
scan them.
Bob Willard & Jeanne Hazell
IBM Canada, Leadership Development
-- Regards, R. G. (Bob) Willard IBM Canada, Leadership Development rgwilla@ibm.net