Plenary Sessions

Creating a Living and Learning Space
19:00 – 21:00 Tuesday, 13 September
Presenters: Design Team members and Hosts from SoL Austria; Otto Scharmer via video link

The 2nd SoL Global Forum opens with a general session that will set the tone for our three days together. A welcome from the design team and our hosts from SoL Austria will be followed by a multimedia introduction to Austrian music and culture. We will then shift our focus to a more intimate perspective and check-in with the small groups around us to share our aspirations for the Forum and raise the questions we are most eager to explore together. Otto Scharmer will join us via a video link-up to share some of his reflections on our collective capacity for learning from the future, and how presencing is key to innovation. A question and answer session with Otto will conclude the evening’s schedule and launch us into our Symphony of Innovation.

How Can We Leverage Complexity and Learn Together?
11:00 – 13:00 Wednesday, 14 September
Presenters: Alain de Vulpian, Anne Murray Allen, Arie de Gues

We are living at the core of a new process of civilization within more and more complex social systems. Rapid social and technological change is inducing new patterns of governance. How do we make sense of and respond to the social and organizational challenges inherent in this reality? How can we help our organizations recognize that “learning together” is part of a biological process, as essential to our survival in this complex environment as water is to fish? Alain de Vulpian, a sociologist who has worked extensively with large organizations in Europe and the US, will lead us in an exploration of these questions by sharing his research and his professional experiences specifically in France, Germany, and the U.K. He will invite us to consider how only those enterprises willing to become true learning organizations can remain competitive in the face of hyper-complexity. Arie de Geus, a former Royal Dutch Shell strategist and SoL co-founder, and Anne Murray Allen, director for Knowledge and Intranet Management for Hewlett-Packard, will comment, providing practical examples from their own working lives.

“Making Sense” - The New Sciences of Simplicity
16:00 – 17:30 Wednesday, 14 September
Presenters: David Snowden and others

In this presentation, Cynefin Centre director David Snowden will draw on seven years of co-evolutionary work between theory and practice in sense making to discuss five aspects of the way we perceive the world:
• The nature of the physical world, chaos, complexity and order
• The nature of the way we have knowledge of the world, and in particular the role of narrative
• The nature of the way we perceive the world, the pattern basis of human intelligence and its consequences
• The nature of the way in which we assume and create identity structures to exist in the world
• The way that we exercise, and are the subjects of the exercise of power.
Using a combination of dialogue and presentation, we will explore the basic concepts being pioneered by the Cynefin Centre in the development of an open source movement for consultancy practicing a philosophy of abundance. The session will also introduce participants to some of the practical exercises and tools, such as “Butterfly stamping,” that the Centre is using to practice the new sciences of simplicity.

The Art of the Waltz
17:30 – 18:30 Wednesday, 14 September
The Waltz, Vienna and the music of Johann Strauss form a musical braid that is still alive in Vienna. For 45 minutes we will together experience the Art of the Waltz and listen to music by Johann Strauss. To experience the waltz means to actually dance. So the Plenary room will become the dance floor and Hanna and Christoph Mandl will give a layman's introduction to waltzing - the Waltz of Change as a fun experiment.

Creating a World Where All Life Flourishes
11:00 – 12:00 Thursday, 15 September
Presenters: Brigitte Tantawy Monsou, Sibel Bulay Koyluoglu, Sara Schley, John Beckett

“Nature innovates in the presence of what already is”
- Humberto Maturana

“What if we embrace the notion that companies are living systems, or at the very least comprised of living systems? Living systems either regenerate or degenerate. What we commonly call sustainability is more truly a process of regeneration: continuous regeneration of financial and built capital, natural systems and communities. The alternative is degeneration, and prolonged degeneration on any of these fronts will eventually lead to degeneration on all of them. What will we do to keep our companies, communities and society regenerating?”
- Joe Laur, Convenor, SoL Sustainability Consortium

Over the past several years, companies and members of the SoL Sustainability Consortium and the European Sustainability Group have been talking, experimenting and taking practical steps to see how they can work together with communities, with stakeholders, and with natural systems. How is it possible to be successful in the traditional sense – financially – and also to contribute to the well-being of the societies who provide resources, or who live close to our factories? Can we also work in harmony with nature in our use and re-use of resources? What has nature to teach us? Does attention to all aspects of the systems we are part of actually help us to create organizations, society and a world that will flourish? If so, what do we need to pay attention to? What are the underlying conditions that allow us to thrive? Through stories by Unilever's Brigitte Tantawy-Monsou and Ford's Sibel Koyluoglu, we will begin to explore these questions together as a whole and in small group conversations. This Plenary session will be followed by a number of parallel Lunch & Learn Sessions, and one of these will be hosted by Sara Schley of the SoL Sustainability Consortium and Edna Pasher of the SoL European Sustainability Group, giving the opportunity for deeper and more extended exploration of this important topic.

Creating a Learning Organization: The Shell Experience
15:00 – 16:30 Thursday, 15 September
Presenter: Adam Lomas

How do you share learning and build capacity effectively in a loosely-coupled, networked organization? Through a network of entrepreneurial learning hubs, Shell provides support for its leaders and technical professionals around the world. Adam will share his personal journey as well as part of Shell's story in increasing the organization's capacity for collective intelligence and innovation.

Arie de Geus: Organizational Learning Innovator
17:00 - 18:00 Thursday, September 15th
Presenters: Arie de Geus and Design Team Members

We are delighted to honor the many contributions of Arie de Geus to the field of organizational learning and to SoL. Arie will share reflections on his journey and his view about the needs and opportunities the future holds. By reframing strategy as a learning process, Arie has influenced a generation of managers to look beyond what they know to imagine future possibilities. He is an advocate for focusing on collective decision taking as an opportunity for learning everyday, yielding enhanced creativity, improved performance and a more playful work environment.

Innovative Thinking for Innovative Action
11:00 -– 13:30 Friday, 16 September
Presenters: Juanita Brown, David Isaacs, Jim Davidson, Alfred Hanner

Expanding the day’s theme of ‘Performing: Inspiring Confidence,’ this session will explore actions generating from our symphony. Using the connections of the week, what do we want to carry forward with renewed confidence? Through the World Cafe, an innovative methodology based on living systems and complexity theory, as participants we will frame our own inquiry and action steps as we go forth into our lives and work. What seeds will we and others plant and grow? What questions will travel with us? What relationships do we want to nourish as a result of our time together? By calling on our own collective wisdom, the session will help all of us, as active participants and co-creators, make meaning of our time together in ways not available in most conference settings. These sessions will be hosted by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, co-originators of the World Cafe, along with Jim Davidson and Alfred Hanner of Saudi Aramco, pioneers in the use of the World Cafe.

Closing Session: From Cacophony to Symphony
14:30 – 16:00 Friday 16 September
Presenter: Peter Senge

In his closing remarks, Peter will share his experience of the symphony of innovation while in Vienna, and in his work. When Peter spoke at SoL's first Global Forum in 2003, he emphasized the need to derive confidence from a creative rather than reactive orientation, while recognizing that we also need a dynamic appreciation for complexity to increase our true understanding of the systems of which we are a part. In looking toward the future, he will ask us to consider: What are the few issues that most require our attention, and how can we continue to develop organizational cultures that nurture social well being and effective action?