A workshop for leaders of all sorts passionate about building more sustainable organizations, value chains, industries and communities

Facilitator/Host: Peter Senge
CONFIRMED RESOURCES:

• Darcy Winslow, Nike Foundation;
• Roger Saillant, former Ford Executive and CEO of PlugPower:
• John Ehrenfeld, author of Sustainability by Design;
• Hal Hamilton, co-director of the Sustainable Food Laboratory;
• Bryan Smith, co-author of The Necessary Revolution

LOCATION: MIT Faculty Club - Cambridge, Massachusetts USA

DOWNLOAD BROCHURE AND REGISTRATION FORM

Current circumstances lead many to think that a focus on sustainability is something we will get to later when we have more time and money. As a champion for change, is your approach relevant when organizations are focusing on only the essentials? Join Peter Senge and leading practitioners of sustainability and organizational change in February to fine tune your strategy and implementation plan to take advantage of the opportunity offered at a time when everything is up for grabs.

PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF LEADING FOR SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is not a problem to be solved. It is a future to be created. Leadership is not about position or formal authority but the capacity of human communities to shape futures that people truly desire.

Here are seven concrete business benefits of working together to create a sustainable world.

1. There is significant money to be saved.
2. There is significant money to be made.
3. You can provide your customers with a competitive edge.
4. Sustainability is a point of differentiation.
5. You can shape the future of your industry.
6. You can become a preferred supplier.
7. You can change your image and brand.

RADICAL CHANGE IS BECOMING THE NORM

What does it take to nurture and unleash such leadership? How can we build the networks of collaboration that will embody both the flexibility and robustness to sustain innovation in times of financial stress and pressures to revert to established mental and business models? How can systems thinking become integral to how all organizations work?

For more than twenty years, organizations within the SoL network have been building practical know-how around such questions. Today, their drive for basic management innovation is joining with the imperative to re-invent the industrial age economy.

But a new path is starting to emerge, led by companies, NGOs, governmental, and educational institutions, and countless new collaborations among them. “Once you see the interdependencies in today’s economy, you realize that it is more than stupid, it is reckless to think of commercial sustainability in isolation of either social or environmental sustainability,” says Andre van Heemstra, former Management Board member at Unilever, one of over 50 major food companies and NGOs working together in the Global Sustainable Food Lab.

Gradually, new products, new processes and new business models are becoming integrated into core strategies in major companies. Nike has developed a system for rating all new products based on embedded water, energy, waste and toxicity, across their entire value chain – with a target of “zero waste, zero toxicity, completely closed loop production” by 2020. GE reaped $17 billion in sales last year from its “eco-imagination” product line, and has a backlog of over $50 billion in orders. Coke, along with competing drink manufacturers, is working with WWF to promote integrated watershed management around the world.

Educators are starting to realize that they too need to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. The American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment has been signed by 590 educational leaders who have committed their universities to be carbon neutral in their operations and to “produce graduates that will help all of society do the same.”

WHERE ARE YOU ON THE JOURNEY FROM REDUCING UNSUSTAINABILTY TO INCREASING SUSTAINABILITY?

Even the most advanced organizations are at the beginning of a long journey. Reductions in waste and improvements in energy efficiency are natural starting points not final destinations. Most organizations lack a clear strategic vision of how healthier social and environmental systems are integral to their sense of purpose and strategic intent. Most have made modest progress at best in rethinking energy- or water-intensive products and services they provide. Few have started to work seriously across the boundaries needed to build truly healthy value chains that can assure quality supply, healthy producing communities and healthy ecosystems, and responsible consumption. Most lack a clear picture of the types of capabilities they must build, individually and collectively, to be a leader in the turbulent times that likely lay ahead. (From p. 115 of The Necessary Revolution - based on the work of Bob Willard.)

WHAT ARE THE KEY COMPETENCIES THAT DISTINGUISH THE LEADERS FROM THE REST OF THE PACK? THEY...

1. Excel at seeing systems. They recognize basic system phenomena everywhere - limits to success, shifting the burden to the intervener, accidental adversaries. In particular, they see the system independent of organizational boundaries.
2. Collaborate across boundaries with ease. They know how to get the whole system in the room and respect the different interests and perspectives of all stakeholders, making it possible to build their social networks and realize breakthrough innovations.
3. Move easily from problem solving to creating. Fear and anxiety can definitely motivate action, but rarely does it encourage our best contributions or sustained effort. These leaders are both pragmatic - they're always prototyping and experimenting - one definition of creating. They are also oriented toward possibility, evoking inspiration and creativity throughout the system.

ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING & PRACTICAL KNOW-HOW

This workshop will be a synthesis of core organizational learning disciplines - systems thinking, mental models and collaborative inquiry, personal mastery and building shared vision - and the practical know-how developed within the SoL Sustainability Consortium over the past decade, much of which is captured in the book, The Necessary Revolution.

In particular, we will focus on:

(1) How these core learning disciplines can build 'learning for sustainability' capabilities: seeing systems, collaborating across boundaries, and shifting from reactive problem solving to creating new futures;

(2) How to understand the basic systems that shape the modern economy - food and water, energy, material production and distribution, and the side effects of these how these systems function (like waste and toxicity, excessive concentration of power, and persisting gaps between rich and poor) - and how these systems are starting to shift; and

(3) Practical insights into shifting these systems: how organizations and communities are developing new strategies, practices, and ways of thinking for innovation.

As with all SoL programs, this will be a reflective, hands-on workshop, with lots of time for practice and deeper conversation. As such, it will demand your willingness to participate and to be open to discovering more of your own deeper sense of vision and to inquire into taken-for-granted assumptions that might be limiting change. The focus will be both personal and organizational.

COACHING FROM EXPERIENCED PRACTITIONERS

We will be joined by several “resource people” with extensive practical experience in building more sustainable enterprises. They will share their stories and coach participatns. Confirmed resources include:

• Darcy Winslow, former head of the women’s division at Nike;
• Roger Saillant, former Ford executive and CEO of Plug Power, a pioneering fuel cell manufacturer;
• Hal Hamilton, co-director of the Sustainable Food Laboratory;
• John Ehrenfeld – renowned industrial ecologist and author of Sustainability by Design
• Bryan Smith, co-author of The Necessary Revolution and veteran organizational learning and strategy consultant, and co-developer with Brian Kelly, Stuart Hart and others of The Sustainable Enterprise Academy.

The overall focus will be next steps for organizations who are already engaged and leading. The participants in the workshop will be mostly executives, line managers, senior staff and internal network leaders.

IN SUMMARY – THE PRACTICAL BENEFITS OF PARTICIPATING

1. Assessment and planning - acknowledge your accomplishments and sketch out a sustainability development path for your organization/system
2. Capacity building – ground yourself in the basics of seeing systems, collaborating across boundaries, moving from problem solving to creating
3. Networking – engage in peer coaching from a diverse group spanning industry, government, education, non-profits

You’ll leave on Thursday with more questions, more colleagues and more clarity about practical next steps you can take to help your organization/community/industry/system be a leader in the necessary revolution. We look forward to working with you.

You can download a registration form now. Save 15% by registering before January 16th, 2009.

Please contact Sherry Immediato, Managing Director, SoL for more information about this program.