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SoL Academy 2008

SoL Academy 2008

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Monday, October 13
Introduction to Organizational Learning (MF1) 8:30 - 5:30)
Creating New Growth from Within:Enabling Disruptive Innovation to Succeed (MF2) 8:30 - 5:30

Tuesday, October 14
Coming Into Your Own: Women, Leadership Archetypes and Life Cycles (TF2) 8:30 - 5:30
Intentional Inquiry: Collaborative Learning to Enhance Organizational Performance (TP1) 1:30 - 5:30
Vital Differences – An Approach for Exploring and Using Individual Differences (TA2) 8:30 - 12:30
Using a Systems Approach to create an Agile Network while meeting the unprecedented business challenges of Boeing Commercial Airplane's Flight Operations, Test & Validation Organization (TP2) 1:30 - 5:30

Wednesday, October 15
Systemic Change during Times of Uncertainty (WF3) 8:30 - 5:30
Vital Differences – An Approach for Exploring and Using Individual Differences (WA1) 8:30 - 12:30
Vital Differences – Building Collaborative Partnerships (WP1) 1:30 - 5:30

Thursday, October 16
Leading Systemic Change (RF3) 8:30 - 5:30

Friday, October 17
Putting It All Together - Integrating Our Learning as Practice (FA1) 8:30 - 12:30

Download a registration form

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Monday, October 13, 2008

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Introduction to Organizational Learning (MF1)
Monday, October 13, 8:30 - 5:30
FRED SIMON, Fredrick Simon & Associates, Inc.
Frank Schnedier, SoL Staff

Based on The Fifth Discipline, the workshop offers you an experiential immersion into understanding and using the principles, concepts, methods and tools of Organizational Learning. You will become familiar with tools and methods for:.

  • • Ensuring open, honest and safe conversations about what really matters.
  • Creating shared aspirations regarding important goals, and achieving the inspired action necessary for uncommon results.
  • Developing more effective action plans by understanding and dealing with the complexity, structural conflicts and often counter intuitive interdependencies in our every-day environment.

Some areas of focus include:

  • Why Organizational Learning?
  • Key Learning Barriers
  • Levels of Perspective
  • Mental Models
  • Conversation Tools
  • Emotional Intelligence
  • Systems Thinking
  • Vision and Purpose

Through a combination of lectures, demonstrations and hands-on practice, this workshop provides a valuable foundation to people who have a curiosity and interest, but limited working knowledge of Organizational Learning.

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Creating New Growth from Within: Enabling Disruptive Innovation to Succeed (MF2)
Monday, October 13, 8:30 - 5:30
JIM MYRACLE, TMT Associates, Inc
DIANE OETTINGER, TMT Associates, Inc

Organic growth depends on innovation. Creating organic growth, especially in mature organizations, requires looking beyond process and examining the cultural and leadership land-mines waiting to derail new growth ideas. In this one-day workshop, you will gain an understanding of the personal and organizational reframing that nurtures ideas and enables new growth business to emerge. You will explore the cultural attributes, structural designs and leadership behaviors necessary to succeed at such organic growth. Through a combination of interactive lecture, group exercises and case studies, you will gain a deep appreciation for:

  • Process, sustaining and disruptive innovation
  • The cultural, structural and leadership enablers of disruptive innovation
  • The impact of disruptive innovation on existing organizational systems
  • How leaders create conditions that increase odds of innovation success
  • The best practices of successful disruptors
  • How organizational learning ties directly to successful innovation.

Target audience

  • Senior and middle level managers responsible for both top and bottom line growth
  • General managers seeking to enhance their skills leading new growth opportunities
  • Organizational teams to gain a richer shared learning experience that will help them advance their growth projects.

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Tuesday, October 14, 2008

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Coming Into Your Own: Women’s Life Cycles, Leadership Archetypes and Change (TF2)
Tuesday, October 14, 8:30 - 5:30
BETH JANDERNOA, Consultant
GLENNIFER GILLESPIE, Consultant

This session is a personal development program for women who are interested in engaging in a process of reflection and growth and in understanding and expressing themselves more fully, and in learning a tool for gaining insight into what is emerging for them.

Session objectives:

  • to explore the ages and stages unique to women’s lives
  • to experience four archetypal dimensions of leadership and see one's dominant ways of expression and those that need development
  • to reflect on the highlights of your life/work journey
  • to use a unique process for seeing a current work or life challenge from different archetypal perspectives and uncover the emerging possibilities.

Topics/processes:

  • Presentation and engagement around recent research on women’s stages and phases from biological, psychological, and spiritual perspectives
  • Reflection, drawing, storytelling and feedback on highlights of one's life journey
  • Practices to experience 4 leadership archetypes
  • Symbols Process for seeing current reality and sensing the emerging future.

The concepts and practices can be used to build personal mastery and team collaboration and learning.

The design, experimental and research phases of the longer versions of this program were funded by the Fetzer Institute and the remarkable results in the participants’ lives have been tracked over five years. Organizations that have sent participants include Hewlett-Packard, BP, the World Bank, United Way, Shell, Intel, Boeing, and the University of Michigan. This program is run in the U.S., South Africa and the UK.

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Vital Differences – An Approach for Exploring and Using Individual Differences (TA2)
Tuesday, October 14, 8:30 - 12:30
LINDA O’TOOLE, Vital Differences
JON VOGEN, Vital Differences

While each of us is unique, there are patterns in how we think, feel, and behave in relation to our external environment. These patterns relate to our internal way of functioning which is sometimes similar, and sometimes radically dissimilar, to those around us. These individual differences, often unseen and unacknowledged, are a major source of confusion and misunderstanding in our relationships. This session sharpens your ability to sense differences clearly and objectively and, provides a way of exploring diverse perspectives and needs for structure, engagement, and meaning.

The Vital Differences approach represents a convergence of three factors: the focus on internal processing patterns, the process of self-exploration which builds capacity for awareness and bridging differences, and the grounding of the information in everyday situations. These factors make the approach easy to understand and use without needing a test or to learn a new model of human characteristics.

The session offers participants:

  • Enhanced awareness of your own pattern of internal processing
  • Increased capacity to explore working with differences between you and others
  • A simple and immediately useful framework to cultivate insights and actions in all your interactions

Target audience: Anyone working with diversity, team interaction, leadership coaching, and other areas where improved communication and relationships are critical – particularly in situations where you need to move quickly, yet want to use all the human capacities available. This workshop is prerequisite for “Vital Differences – Building Collaborative Partnerships”, but can be taken separately.

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Intentional Inquiry: Collaborative Learning to Enhance Organizational Performance (TP1)
Tuesday, October 14, 1:30 - 5:30
NANCY SOUTHERN, Saybrook Graduate School

In this session you will learn a collaborative inquiry approach to working with organizational challenges that will help you explore assumptions, more fully understand the complexity of a situation, and support individuals and teams in taking effective action.

By the workshop’s end you will:

  • Learn how to engage in an intentional inquiry process that supports working with complex problems, systems thinking and collaborative action.
  • Hear insights from a leader who has used intentional inquiry as to the personal and organizational opportunities and challenges of engagement in the process.
  • Practice an intentional inquiry process to discover how it supports systems thinking and collaborative action.
  • Take away a defined and tested inquiry process that can be used with small or large groups at all levels in the organization.

The session, which features a description of the inquiry process, its uses and benefits, an opportunity to practice, and insights from a leader, is geared for people of all levels who want to learn collaborative approaches to solving complex problems. Organizational and team leaders will find this a great resource for engaging people in new ways to support building a collaborative culture.

Target audience: HR/OD/T&D professionals, line managers, consultants, coaches, students. Since this session is based on the assumption that every individual is already leaving a legacy, a daily footprint, and that we all can learn a new organizational learning tool, it is designed in an inclusive way, not making distinctions nor setting specific requisites to participate.

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Using a Systems Approach to create an Agile Network while meeting the unprecedented business challenges of Boeing Commercial Airplane's Flight Operations, Test & Validation Organization (TP2)
Tuesday, October 14, 1:30 - 5:30
Boeing Presentation Team:
DENNIS P. O’DONOGHUE, VP Flight Operations, Test & Validation
LES MUSIC
BOB WIEBE
DAN COMPTON
GLENDA TURNER

Most of the problems being faced today are complex, ill-structured, and multi-scaled. There is no one perspective or voice that can simply define the solution and then efficiently communicate the tasks for everyone one within an organization. The Boeing Company’s Flight Operations, Test and Validation organization (FOT&V) launched a practical method for setting strategic context for guidance, engaging participative design of a system people really do want to be part of, and then fine tuning operational details to accomplish the mission and train others as they come onboard.

Dennis O’Donoghue, the Vice President, saw the need for a major breakthrough level of organizational change to support to meet unprecedented challenges and create a new future. Dennis will describe why this was essential and why he used the systems approach to meet this need. Les Music, the process development leader, led the development of an integrated roadmap. This provided a Guidance, Design, and Operation framework which was high enough level to invite emergence and discovery.

  • Bob Wiebe and Dan Compton led the organization in System Dynamics in their unique way, as a guidance system to understand why the system behaves the way it does and where the high leverage points are to focus change efforts.
  • Glenda Turner introduced Value Network Analysis [VNA] to understand the roles and interactions among various teams and organizations that helped people to move beyond their attachment to 40-year old patterns of behavior into new ways of interacting.
  • Simulation and role playing scenarios accelerated the dance of change.
  • With the integration of System and Value Network understanding and insights, FOT&V applied more traditional methods to develop new processes (PMIM, Lean+ tools, etc.)
Any of these methods applied independently, while helpful, would have been significantly less effective than the integrated approach.

Dennis has now launched FOT&V University to encourage focused learning and leadership around Systems Thinking, VNA and the disciplines of becoming a Learning Organization to make them a sustainable part of the culture.

Today you will hear the real story of this massive change in progress, along with its pitfalls such as getting the cart before the horse. You will learn about the methods [some of which you may never have heard of before], and be intrigued enough to probe deeper and have a wee bit o’ fun along the way.

We are sure that you will have experienced some of the same type of dilemmas and said . . . “there has to be a better way of dealing with this!” If you must design a strategy, lead a change effort, set up the supporting infrastructure, or just want to survive the latest round of change, this is for you!

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Wednesday, October 15, 2008

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Systemic Change During Times of Uncertainty (WF3)
Wednesday, October 15, 8:30 - 5:30
CAROL MASE, Consultant

In today’s business environment success hinges on organizational flexibility, resilience and adaptive responsiveness – all aspects of systemic change. This highly interactive, experiential workshop begins by addressing the 5-types of Situational Conversations that organizations need to have in order to navigate during times of uncertainty and turbulence. Using these, a system of transformational change is introduced which explores: external and internal change cycles, organizational learning, and the three typical ways that change efforts fail. Lastly, strategic conversations and organizational change are applied to goal-setting and the creation of future market scenarios.

This workshop provides participants with:

  • The knowledge and tools to understand how others think in order to foster collaboration and cross-pollination of ideas and knowledge
  • A framework for understanding the thinking styles required for tactical plans, goal-setting, and short-term and long-term market strategies
  • A tool for understanding, assessing, and managing organizational change at all levels – from individual members to a portfolio of teams
  • A way of leading organizational goals and strategy that incorporates self-directed change, the processes of a learning organization, and the creation of a shared future

This workshop brings together the conversations, commitments, and change cycles that lie at the heart of every organization. By appealing to all levels of the organization, from leaders to staff, the workshop integrates different points of view and organizational experiences to holistically view the systems of thinking and change that produce business sustainability.

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Vital Differences – An Approach for Exploring and Using Individual Differences (WA1)
Wednesday, October 15, 8:30 - 12:30
LINDA O’TOOLE, Vital Differences
JON VOGEN, Vital Differences

THIS IS A REPEAT OF SESSION TA2

While each of us is unique, there are patterns in how we think, feel, and behave in relation to our external environment. These patterns relate to our internal way of functioning which is sometimes similar, and sometimes radically dissimilar, to those around us. These individual differences, often unseen and unacknowledged, are a major source of confusion and misunderstanding in our relationships. This session sharpens your ability to sense differences clearly and objectively and, provides a way of exploring diverse perspectives and needs for structure, engagement, and meaning.

The Vital Differences approach represents a convergence of three factors: the focus on internal processing patterns, the process of self-exploration which builds capacity for awareness and bridging differences, and the grounding of the information in everyday situations. These factors make the approach easy to understand and use without needing a test or to learn a new model of human characteristics.

The session offers participants:

  • Enhanced awareness of your own pattern of internal processing
  • Increased capacity to explore working with differences between you and others
  • A simple and immediately useful framework to cultivate insights and actions in all your interactions

Target audience: Anyone working with diversity, team interaction, leadership coaching, and other areas where improved communication and relationships are critical – particularly in situations where you need to move quickly, yet want to use all the human capacities available. This workshop is prerequisite for “Vital Differences – Building Collaborative Partnerships”, but can be taken separately.

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Vital Differences – Building Collaborative Partnerships (WP1)
Wednesday, October 15, 1:30 - 5:30
LINDA O’TOOLE, Vital Differences
JON VOGEN, Vital Differences

The complexity of organizational life requires interaction with others to produce innovative and effective results. This workshop provides ways to explore and work effectively with the differences that exist between you and others so that you can bring more vitality to your relationships and allow the fullness of each one’s contribution to emerge and be sustained.

This experiential session builds on the initial workshop, your capacity for partnerships based on collaboration, rather than simply cooperation. You will explore commonalities, distinctions, and capacities that exist within the relationship or team, and gain insight into how your individual pattern of processing may, or may not, align with group or organizational patterns. From these insights, you can create strategies and actions for more resilient and satisfying relationships.

The workshop offers participants:

  • Exploration of the differences in how people in a team engage in work and relationships • Methods for finding commonalities, distinctions, and capacities that exist in team members • Capacity to work more effectively with differences within the group experience • Practice with operationalizing these understandings in the workplace in such areas as coaching, team development or customer/vendor partnerships, decision making and planning

Target audience: Anyone working in a collaborative partnership or team where effective interactions are essential to produce results or have a positive relationship – and where individuals are interested in applications to their work or personal situation that can be immediately applied.

The basic workshop – “Vital Differences – An Approach for Exploring and Using Individual Differences” is a prerequisite for this session.

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Thursday, October 16, 2008

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Leading Systemic Change (RF3)
Thursday, October 16, 8:30 - 5:30
MICHAEL GOODMAN, Innovation Associates Organizational Learning
DAVID PETER STROH, Global Action Network Net and Bridgeway Partners

The purpose of this workshop is to enable participants to develop and integrate the skills of change management and systems thinking. It is based on extensive experience that:

  • Change agents can help their organizations achieve breakthroughs around chronic complex problems by applying systems thinking to these issues.
  • Systems thinkers are more effective when they embed the principles and analytic tools of the discipline into a coherent change management strategy.

Objectives for the session include:

  • Understand how systems thinking promotes organizational change
  • Develop your ability to think systemically about complex problems
  • Practice a multi-stage process of leading systemic change

Topics to be covered:

  • A Process of Change
  • The Differences Between Systemic and Traditional Thinking
  • Building the Foundation for Change
  • Gathering Data and Stimulating Curiosity
  • Clarifying the Dynamics Underlying Current Reality
  • Cultivating Compassion
  • Developing Commitment
  • dentifying Strategies for Bridging the Gap Between Vision and Reality

The session is designed to maximize hands-on application. Participants will have opportunity to identify a change problem that they would like to work on during the session and apply many of the tools and frameworks presented. They will also benefit from feedback from colleagues as well as the facilitators.

Target audience: Change agents who want to increase their effectiveness and people familiar with systems thinking who want to improve their ability to apply it in organizations.

Prerequisites Visit the Applied Systems Thinking web site and read the article Leveraging Change: The Power of Systems Thinking in Action http://www.appliedsystemsthinking.com/res_levchange.html

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Friday, October 17, 2008

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Putting It All Together – Integrating Our Learning as Practice – World Cafe (FA1)
Friday, October 17, 8:30 - 12:30
LINDA O’TOOLE, Vital Differences
JON VOGEN, Vital Differences
KAREN STRATVERT

This workshop will offer participants the opportunity to share and ground their learning experiences from the week in an interactive world café type setting. This facilitated session will be run in a conversational small group and plenary format to offer a high degree of engagement with others and the content from the week.

It will also offer the host organizations and participants the chance to generate information and questions that can be incorporated into the knowledge base of organization learning that exists within the SoL Community.

This forum will provide the ability to interact with others and build upon the shared sense of community which is one of the foundations of SoL.

The target audience will be anyone who participated in the sessions during the week that would like to consider how to put concepts into practice. It can also be beneficial for an individual who wants to engage in a learning experience that provides an overview of the weeks content through the eyes of others.

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