Pegasus Communications

By Chetan Dhruve

If you’ve worked for any length of time, you’ve almost certainly had a bad boss. A bad boss can blight our existence in a way that no one else can.

The thing is, although bad bosses are a common phenomenon the world over, we still react the same way when we have one. We say, “My boss is bad.” The implication is that it’s the fault of the individual boss. But since bad bosses are everywhere and have been around practically forever, it’s time to address the issue in a radically different manner. We need to ask: “Rather than bosses being individually bad, is there something about the system that automatically produces bad bosses?”

So instead of blaming individuals, let’s examine the system. As a reader of the Leverage Points blog, you’re already familiar with systems thinking (ST). But ST has many variants, offshoots, and philosophies. Hence please bear with me while I describe the version of ST I’m going to be using—the version developed by the biologist Ludwig von Bertalanffy.

The Bertalanffian System

In this version of ST, a system is defined as an entity that maintains its existence due to the mutual interaction of its parts. The critical part of this definition is the word “interaction”—without the interaction, the entity cannot exist.

Take water as an example. Water is a system—without the interaction between hydrogen and oxygen, water cannot exist. A property of water—liquidity—is termed an “emergent property.” This is because water emerges from the interaction of its parts (hydrogen and oxygen). The emergent property of liquidity cannot be found in the constituent parts, which are gases. It’s quite incredible, when you think about it, that a gas interacting with another gas produces a liquid.

What does this have to do with you and your boss? Well, every human relationship is a system, because the existence of a relationship depends on the interaction of its parts (human beings). Since all human relationships are systems, the relationship between you and your boss is also a system. What kind of system is it? To answer this question, let’s look at what bosses are called in the workplace.

Bosses in today’s organizations are labeled “leaders”—team leader, group leader, project leader, and so on. Presumably this is done so that bosses behave as leaders. But are bosses really leaders? To find out, we first need to define the word “leader.”

In the context of interpersonal relationships, there’s only one objective definition: A leader is someone’s who’s elected to lead by those s/he is leading. You can be a tremendous orator, a great visionary, an inspiring figure, a consensus-builder, or whatever. But if you’ve not been elected, you’re not a leader.

Similarly, let’s define “dictator.” A dictator is someone with power over you, over whom you have no voting rights. Hence, your boss is a dictator by definition. It’s important to understand that this is true of all bosses—not just the nasty ones. Further, because your boss is a dictator, you are a subject. And the relationship between you and your boss is a dictatorship system.

What are the emergent properties of a dictatorship system? For the subjects, it’s fear. For the dictator, it’s the abuse of power. At the workplace, fear doesn’t have to be body-shaking terror. It could be something as simple as someone not speaking up in a meeting. Remember this is an emergent property of the boss-subordinate relationship—the subordinate could be a very assertive person outside of work. Power abuse doesn’t mean being nasty; it could be your boss stating, “Any questions?” in a way that means, “I don’t want any.” Again, this lack of openness is an emergent property—this boss could be perfectly nice and approachable outside of work.

There’s more to this dynamic. Sometimes, subordinates do muster up the courage to speak, only to be labeled “whistleblowers.” They lose their jobs and have their careers ruined because the dictatorship system hits back with a vengeance. The consequences, while terrible for the individual whistleblower, can be disastrous for organizations too. Take, for example, the recent BP oil spill.

(Check back next Tuesday for the second part of this post, in which Chetan explores how this organizational structure can lead to crises such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and presents ideas for shifting this counterproductive dynamic.)

Chetan Dhruve is the author of Why Your Boss Is Programmed to Be a Dictator: A Book for Anyone Who Has a Boss or Is a Boss (Marshall Cavendish, 2007). He has worked for IBM, Cisco Systems, and the Department for International Development. He is also the cofounder of several Internet start-ups. Chetan has an MBA from Cass Business School (London), an MA in international journalism from City University (London), and a BSc in Mathematics, Physics, and Electronics from St. Joseph’s College, Bangalore University.

 Chain photo by Toni Lozano

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By Gregory Hennessy

There’s been a lot of media coverage lately about an apparent dispute between meteorologists and climatologists regarding the evidence of climate change (here's an example). Precipitating the most recent storm of opinion has been the release of a survey by the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University. Of the nearly 600 members of the American Meteorological Society who completed at least part of the survey, nearly half responded that they did not believe global warming was happening (25%) or that they did not know whether it was happening (21%). Given the visible role that meteorologists play in informing the public (they are largely TV weather forecasters), their perspective plays an important role in how the public forms its opinions on climate change.

On several occasions, I have heard a meteorologist defend denial of climate change through some variation of the argument “I know all too well that beyond four or five days out, our forecast models are meaningless . . . how on Earth am I supposed to believe a model that goes 40 or more years into the future?” For example, see CNN’s Chad Myers. (In this particular clip, Mr. Myers goes so far as to accuse climatologists of inventing climate change for their own personal financial gain). And in a sense they are right—it would be foolish to use a short-term local forecast model to evaluate what might happen 40 or more years into the future. But that doesn’t mean that NO model can be used to forecast 40 years out.

The factors that go into modeling long-term trends and dynamics are different from those of modeling short-term dynamics. Different relationships are important. Different trade-offs matter. Different models are needed.

Consider business models. The model needed to manage a business over the next two weeks is different from the one needed to manage the next two months, which in turn is different from the one needed to manage the next two years. Over a two-week period, cash flow may be the most important consideration, and a good model is going to track expenses and income in meticulous detail. If my horizon is two months, finances still matter, but operational concerns are likely a more important element of the model. And while finances and operations will make an appearance in a strategic model looking at the next two years, competition, market changes, and technological evolution are bound to play a much more central role.

The two-week cash flow model will be largely worthless for forecasting cash flow two years out. Too much will have changed. But that does not negate the value and validity of a two-year model that focuses on long-term concerns.

We already know this, though. Even the climate change deniers know this. And here’s how. Suppose someone is a motor sports fan. Ask her to forecast the winner of the next big race. See if she thinks her forecasted winner is guaranteed to win. “Well, no, there are no guarantees” will be the likely answer. Then ask her to forecast the season champion. She will have no trouble identifying a small number of likely champions, maybe even just one or two. But how can she predict who will win the championship, if she can’t predict the winner of the next race?

You can do the same thing with any sports. Can you predict with certainty who the winners will be for this week’s baseball (or football or basketball) games? No. But does that stop you from predicting who will make the playoffs?

Card games, board games . . . you can use most any situation that plays out over time to highlight the fact that short-term forecasting is fundamentally different from long-term forecasting, and that limitations related to a short-term forecast in no way negate the ability to forecast over the longer term. Other factors might, but mere shortcomings of short-term models are not among them.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to listen to climatologists tell me about the weather over the next few days, and I’m not going to listen to meteorologists tell me about climate change.

Greg Hennessy is a consultant with Forio Business Simulations in San Francisco, CA. He has previously been an Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company and was on the faculty of Shell Oil’s Learning Center. Greg earned an MS in management with a concentration in system dynamics and applied economics from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and an MS in social science from the California Institute of Technology.

Global Warming Predictions Map was prepared by Robert A. Rohde from publicly available data.

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By Janice Molloy

In the best-selling book Good to Great, author Jim Collins introduced a notion that should strike a chord with anyone familiar with systems thinking: the “flywheel.” A flywheel is a heavy metal disk mounted on an axle that helps a machine maintain a regular speed. It takes a lot of effort to get a flywheel going, but once it has built up a certain amount of momentum, it is hard to stop.

In systems language, the flywheel is a reinforcing process, a dynamic that builds on itself over time, a virtuous cycle (except, of course, when it is running in the opposite direction than we want it to, but that’s a different story!). Collins uses this metaphor to illustrate the process through which organizations launch and sustain lasting success: “No matter how short or long it took, every good-to-great transformation followed the same basic pattern—accumulating momentum, turn by turn of the flywheel—until buildup transformed into breakthrough.”
 
It’s no secret that the past several years have proven challenging across the board. From economic meltdown to environmental disasters, we’ve all been affected by the complex, big-systems crises that have rocked our world. Things haven’t been much easier on an organizational level. Most of us are facing the challenge of doing more with less, of pushing harder for each small victory, of tackling higher levels of intricacy and urgency in everything we do.

But what if we could set that flywheel in motion in our organizations and lives? What if we could make changes at the structural level—real, fundamental shifts—to turn vicious cycles into virtuous ones? What if we could see underlying trends and intervene before they reached a tipping point? How might things be different if we could understand the role we play in creating the situations we are a part of—and learn to think and act differently to achieve the results we want?
 
In designing this year’s Systems Thinking in Action® Conference, “Fueling New Cycles of Success,” we’ve assembled a stellar line-up of speakers and other contributors to introduce and explore proven tools, inspiring ideas, and hard-fought lessons for accelerating momentum in a positive direction. Keynote presenters include Dayna Baumeister, Andy Hargreaves, Daniel H. Kim, Frances Moore Lappé, and Peter Senge. To enhance the experience, Kelvy Bird will capture the plenary content in vivid graphic recordings, and Tim Merry and Marc Durkee will enliven the proceedings with poetry and music. We’ll be adding videos of many of the conference contributors throughout the summer; see the end of this post for a clip of the amazing Frances Moore Lappé.

As Jim Collins remarked, “When people begin to feel the magic of momentum—when they begin to see tangible results, when they can feel the flywheel beginning to build speed—that’s when the bulk of people line up to throw their shoulders against the wheel and push.” At this November’s conference, we will share ways to spark that magic through the power of systems thinking. 

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

Join Pegasus this November in Boston for Systems Thinking in Action: Fueling New Cycles of Success. Meet fellow systems thinkers from around the globe. Keynotes presenters include Peter Senge, Daniel H. Kim, Frances Moore Lappé, and more.

Visit www.SystemsThinkingInAction.com for detailed program and registration information.

By Mark Graban

An editorial written by an American Airlines pilot in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram caught my attention ("Unintended consequences of the Passenger Bill of Rights"). The pilot makes the case that Congress's actions to prevent multi-hour passenger delays on the tarmac give the airlines incentive to proactively cancel flights rather than face the risk of million-dollar fines for a single flight. The result is that, rather than simply being delayed, passengers end up stranded, often not able to book another flight until the following day.

The pilot writes:

"The Passenger Bill of Rights is the wrong answer to the right question that demonstrates two important points. First, a simplistic legislative solution is completely inadequate to a complex problem like tarmac delays.

And second, for all who lobbied for this legislation based on a handful of overpublicized and anecdotally enlarged tarmac tales, when you're in line waiting to rebook your travel, remember that you got what you asked for: You're not waiting on the tarmac. You're simply not going anywhere."

Well-intended actions often lead to unintended consequences. This is a core lesson of the system dynamics field popularized by Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization. I was fortunate to take a course on this topic during my graduate studies at MIT. We learned many lessons of simple actions that, while locally helpful, made the system worse.

One classic example was towns along the Mississippi River that built levees to keep flood waters back. As our professor said, your town's levee only had to be an inch taller than the levee of the town across the river. This led to a levee arms race that inevitably pushed flooding further upstream. The further upstream, the worse the flooding. Locally brilliant, globally suboptimal.

In the case of the airlines, policy makers framed the problem as "passengers shouldn't have to wait without food, water, or working toilets." At the time, the airlines couldn't create a compelling and workable plan either for providing water, food, and toilets or for calling a plane back to the gate temporarily, so Congress stepped in with a "solution" that sounded great as a sound bite. But now you might be more likely to miss the start of a vacation altogether instead of being delayed for three hours.

We can see similar overly simplistic thinking in healthcare. In the United Kingdom, the problem was seen as patients waiting too long in the "Accident & Emergency" department. So the government set an arbitrary target of a 4-hour limit for waiting in A&E.

Hospitals responded in many cases with dysfunctional behavior--unintended consequences. Ambulances were kept parked just outside the door with the patient still inside so that, by a technicality, the 4-hour clock was not yet ticking. Or, patients were admitted unnecessarily, even if they still hadn't seen a doctor, tying up a bed that might have been needed by another patient who hadn't yet hit the 4-hour limit. Instead of improving the overall flow, a simple "solution" was created that didn't take the whole system into account.

Whether it's an airline, factory, or hospital, we need to combine lean with a system dynamics view of our work and value streams. Instead of local solutions that harm the whole, we need to avoid the "quick fix" and the "easy answer" that might cause more harm than good.

As we move forward with the Passengers' Bill of Rights, here's a chance to see if the government practices PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act). If the law isn't working (or the unintended consequences are worse than the benefit), Congress should kill the law. Now I'm being overly simplistic, eh?

Mark Graban is a senior fellow at the Lean Enterprise Institute and is the author of the book Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction, winner of a 2009 Shingo Research and Professional Publication Award. Mark is the founder and lead contributor of LeanBlog.org, where a longer version of this post originally appeared.

by Ross Leadbetter

The traditional campfire has a natural draw. In my experience, a warm campfire is a simple invitation to gather around and talk.

Systems tools and processes are natural gathering points as well. Like a campfire or a friendly game of cards, they create a purposeful visual focus that is concentrated enough to be productive while social enough to allow constructive, generative conversation.

Having a group gather around a large piece of paper on a table or a whiteboard on a wall and draw out a story or concept using causal loops or behavior over time graphs creates a loosely coupled, productive dynamic. The drawing is centered and thus a focal point. It is also impartial and non-emotional--it is a simple diagram that people work and rework together to construct a meaning that everyone can share.

A systems diagram prompts discussion and action, and it stays around well after the words have been spoken. It is a reminder--a visual cue--that helps people remember what was said and what will be done as a result.

Why is this visual aspect of systems thinking so important? If I asked you what your car looks like, you would not see a paragraph that explains your car; you "see" your car, then you put that information into words; then you send those words out across the void between us; and I intake the words to create a picture. With luck, my mental picture will look like the car you are trying to get me to see. This is one reason that visual tools, such as causal loop diagrams, can be useful--they give us a way to graphically depict our thoughts and ideas so others can clearly see them.

The visual nature of systems thinking tools is naturally aligned with best instructional practice and simple psychology. It corresponds with the language of our brains and our communication. And what is an organization if it is not communication between members? What is teaching and learning if it is not communication?

To learn more about systems thinking tools and concepts, click here to receive a free current issue of The Systems Thinker newsletter.

Ross Leadbetter has taught every grade from kindergarten through adult. He has been a principal and vice principal at the high school and elementary levels, and has taught English, acting, mathematics, social studies, and other subjects. He is currently a consultant. Ross is the author of The Edu.Systems Approach to Instruction and The Synergy in Life System: A Practical Life Guide. This blog post is adapted from his website.

Editor's Note: As oil continues to pour into the Gulf of Mexico, BP has come under scathing criticism for the litany of errors and omissions that led to the current crisis. In a classic article, "Leading Ethically Through Foresight," Pegasus cofounder and 2010 conference keynote speaker Daniel H. Kim talks about leaders' ethical responsibility to understand the underlying structures within their domain well enough to predict future consequences of current actions. We offer Daniel's timely and provocative article with the hope that his insights might help prevent disasters down the line.

By Daniel H. Kim

Rereading Robert Greenleaf's renowned 1970 essay "The Servant As Leader" is always an exercise in humility for me. His writings are a constant reminder of the high standards leaders must set for themselves if they are to be worthy of people's full commitment. Of all the things that Greenleaf wrote, I have found the following passage to be the most striking and most challenging to live up to:

"The failure (or refusal) of a leader to foresee may be viewed as an ethical failure; because a serious ethical compromise today (when the usual judgement on ethical inadequacy is made) is sometimes the result of a failure to make the effort at an earlier date to foresee today's events and take the right actions when there was freedom for initiative to act. The action which society labels 'unethical' in the present moment is often really one of no choice. By this standard, a lot of guilty people are walking around with an air of innocence that they would not have if society were able always to pin a label 'unethical' on the failure to foresee and the conscious failure to act constructively when there was freedom to act."

I have never heard anybody talk about leadership responsibilities in that way. Others may admonish us for not having exercised better foresight or for incorrectly anticipating the future. They may call it a failure of planning or an error in judgment. But to call such a lapse an ethical failure is such a strong stance that it compelled me to take a deeper look at the issue so that I could come to better understand why Greenleaf used such provocative terminology.

Click here to read the entire article.

This article originally appeared in The Systems Thinker, Vol. 13 N. 7 (September 2002). Click here to receive a free current issue of The Systems Thinker.

Daniel H. Kim is co-founder of Pegasus Communications, founding publisher of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and a consultant, facilitator, teacher, and public speaker committed to helping problem-solving organizations transform into learning organizations. 

photo of Brown Pelican by Alan D. Wilson This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

by Janice Molloy

Like almost everyone else, I've followed the news about the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico with horror, disbelief, sadness, and anger. The death of the 11 oil-rig workers, the loss of countless animal lives and devastation of the food chain, the befouling of a beautiful and important natural resource, and the impact on jobs--any one of these consequences would be a tragedy in and of itself.

Of course, there are plenty of fingers to point in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil-rig explosion and ensuing ecological disaster. The folks at Grist even created a pie chart showing their estimation of "Who's to blame for the Gulf oil gusher."

The problem with blame is that, as Marilyn Paul says in an article in The Systems Thinker titled, "Moving from Blame to Accountability," "Where there is blame, open minds close, inquiry tends to cease, and the desire to understand the whole system diminishes. . . . Blame rarely enhances our understanding of our situation and often hampers effective problem solving." She was referring to the organizational setting, but it's relevant in this case, too.

If we focus on casting blame for what happened with Deepwater Horizon and think our job is done, then we'll never get to the real root of the problem and develop long-term solutions. But if we're truly ready to understand the system, even if we don't like what we see, then we may be able to prevent future crises.  

Going back to Grist's "The Blame Game" pie chart, most of what appears is no surprise: BP clearly and rightly bears the brunt of the responsibility, and other parties contributed through acts of omission if not commission. But who did Grist list as the number two contributor to the problem? The answer: All those who drive, fly, heat and cool our homes, use the multitude of products that contain petrochemicals--in short, each and every one of us. Unlike a hurricane, earthquake, or tsunami, this disaster occurred in the course of extracting resources from the earth to support our way of life. At some level--BP's criminal negligence notwithstanding--this crisis is something we have done to ourselves.

But if there's any bright spot, from what I've seen in the media, more and more people seem to be acknowledging our collective role in the larger issue at stake--that of oil dependency. And as systems thinking teaches, when we acknowledge that we are part of the problem, then we can start being part of the solution.

Yesterday was World Oceans Day. Huffington Post, in collaboration with Meetups Everywhere, encouraged concerned citizens to get together to talk about ways to help the Gulf oil-spill clean-up effort, strategies for reducing our reliance on oil, and possibilities for working toward a clean energy future. More than 1,500 people self-organized into 300 Meetups around the country. Other initiatives have been launched around the U.S., as people begin to recognize the limitations to relying on corporations and the government to solve complex problems.

As Stanford economist Paul Romer said, "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste." Let's assume collective responsibility for creating a better future by working to ensure that the current crisis leads to fundamental changes--at all levels.

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

Deepwater Horizon photo from the U.S. Coast Guard

by Larry Dressler 

A volcano erupts in Iceland. Tens of thousands of flights are cancelled, and millions of passengers stranded. This is the kind of surprise I call an "oy vey moment." Oy vey is a Yiddish term. I grew up hearing my grandparents use the expression frequently. It's an exclamation of dismay, frustration, or exasperation.

Oy vey moments have three defining characteristics. They are unexpected. They are unwanted. They are uncontrollable in that we have little ability to contain or influence them directly. Organizations have their own versions of volcanic events--a product failure, the loss of a key employee, an economic recession. We often label these events as distractions, disruptions, or disasters.

In the midst of unwanted surprises, leaders and change agents often lose their calm and clarity. We get stuck in fight-flight-freeze mode. Have you experienced any of these typical reactions in the face of an oy vey moment?

• Lost your sense of humor
• Became fixated on what wasn't working
• Gave up completely
• Felt annoyed and resentful
• Looked for someone to blame
• Pretended it wasn't happening

It's natural to feel frustrated and confused by unwanted surprises. It's just not all that useful. Being stuck in self-protection blocks our access to our creative resourcefulness and delays resolution of the problem.

It's in oy vey moments that Peter Senge's notion of personal mastery becomes particularly important. He defines personal mastery as the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.

Here are four practical ways in which you can put personal mastery into practice in an oy vey moment:

1. Check-in: In the moment of breakdown, notice what you are feeling physically and emotionally. Simply notice without judgment (e.g., I am feeling angry and frustrated).
2. Name It: Try to name the underlying thought, judgment, or belief that you are holding onto very tightly in this moment (e.g., I need to travel to Europe this week for an important meeting).
3. Pause: Take some deep and conscious breaths. Refrain from taking action.
4. Shift: Ask yourself some questions aimed at shifting you into a more productive mental, emotional, and physical state. Some of these questions include:

• What is my real purpose and who am I here to serve?
• What beliefs can I let go of right now in order to serve my highest purpose?
• What are the hidden gift and opportunities in this moment?

How do you recognize that you are developing greater personal mastery in the way you deal with the volcanic eruptions in your organization? Where others see disruption and disaster, you will increasingly see opportunity for creativity and breakthrough.

Larry Dressler is the founder of Blue Wing Consulting, LLC, and author of the recently released book, Standing in the Fire: Leading High-Heat Meetings with Clarity, Calm, and Courage (Berrett-Koehler Publishers/ASTD, 2010).

Volcano photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/latzenhofer/ / CC BY-SA 2.0

by Janice Molloy 

Where are new ideas born? While some develop through formal processes and innovation think tanks, throughout history, many of the most transformative notions have arisen from informal conversations over a glass of wine or cup of coffee in a café, living room, or neighborhood pub. In this way, sewing circles and "committees of correspondence" played a role in the birth of the American Republic, and debates that took place in cafés and salons helped spawn the French Revolution.

A methodology known as the World Café captures the best qualities of these kinds of "conversations that matter." Over the course of several hours, people move between groups, cross-pollinate ideas, and discover new insights into the questions or issues that are most important in their life, work, or community. As a process, the World Café can evoke and make visible the collective intelligence of any group, thus increasing people's capacity for effective action in pursuit of common aims.

The World Café website includes many articles and other resources about the process. Now, two short videos provide an overview of the World Café and the seven principles that guide the experience. Hosted by Samantha Tan, who has spoken at the Pegasus Conference a number of times, the videos serve as an excellent introduction to an important and useful tool.

Watch these videos and tell us your experience with the World Café and other conversational methodologies. When are they useful? Under what circumstances should they be avoided? 

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

by Nalani Linder and Colleen Ponto 

In part 1 of this post, guest bloggers Nalani Linder and Colleen Ponto reported on what they learned about teaching systems thinking in the K-12 classroom during a recent visit with the Waters Foundation in Tucson, Arizona.  

Back home in Washington, we have been reflecting on all that we saw in Tucson. Of the many good lessons we took away with us, some of them seem appropriate to share with anyone interested in teaching systems thinking (ST) or system dynamics (SD) to any audience:

• Don't spend too much effort on convincing skeptics about the value of ST and SD. Rather, focus your energy on those who are easily intrigued and receptive to the power of this way of thinking.
• Be open to experimenting with the full array of SD tools. For example, we were introduced to connection circles in Tucson (found in The Shape of Change) and recently experimented with teaching them at a workshop for adults. Participants found them useful for identifying variables and seeing interconnections in a story.
• Create examples in the area of the audience's expertise, once people get some of the time-tested systems stories typically used to illustrate concepts (such as a thermostat to show a balancing loop, compounding interest to demonstrate reinforcing loops, and bathtubs to explain stock/flows). This may take work, but is worth the effort in order to create better understanding and more effective application.

For our part, we are focusing on developing systems thinking lessons within the K-12 science and environmental sustainability curriculum, as those are the two subject areas driving the integration of systems thinking into our state's classrooms. We see our task as helping teachers to learn ST basics so that they can insert systems language and tools into the curriculum they are already using.

Continuing on this journey, we are eager to learn more from the many who have been doing groundbreaking work in systems and education, such as the Waters Foundation, the Creative Learning Exchange, the Cloud Institute, the SoL Educational Partnership, and others--including those who have left us, like Barry Richmond and Dana Meadows, whose ideas continue to inspire and guide.

We expect that the road to statewide implementation of systems thinking in education is long and winding. However, we hope and firmly believe that through the implementation of these standards, Washington's students will learn to make better choices about their own actions in the many systems in which they live. And in a lovely reinforcing loop, adults will be able to witness and learn from students: to pay attention to systems and to ask ourselves what we're noticing, too.

Many thanks to Nalani and Colleen for contributing their story. Share your thoughts about their learnings or on your experiences with teaching systems thinking by commenting on this post.

Nalani Linder is an independent consultant and workshop facilitator who works with change agents of all ages to help them learn, practice, and apply systems thinking ideas and tools in their schools/organizations, communities, and personal lives. She is currently co-principal of a research study exploring connections between systems thinking and learning preferences.

Colleen Ponto, Ed.D., teaches at Seattle University, where she is a core faculty member of the Organization Systems Renewal Graduate Program. OSR specializes in helping adult learners to become designers and leaders of systemic organizational change. Colleen is also an independent educational and organizational consultant; one of her current passions is helping learners of all ages develop their systems thinking skills.

By Nalani Linder and Colleen Ponto

Thanks to the recently revised science and environmental sustainability education standards in the Washington State K-12 system, teachers are now required to teach and assess children's understanding of systems. (Click here to see the standards.) As parents, systems educators, and Washingtonians, we have been on a learning journey over the last few months to find out more about how we can help support the teaching of systems thinking in our state's classrooms.

In February, we visited the remarkable team at the Waters Foundation in Tucson, Arizona: Tracy Benson, Anne Lavigne, Sheri Marlin, and Joan Yates. They took us to various schools where they have been working with teachers and students to weave systems thinking (ST) and system dynamics (SD) throughout the curriculum.

What an inspiration! We saw:

• Eighth-grade social studies students learning about World War II through the lens of mental models and using the ladder of inference;
• Fifth graders assessing ideas about slavery during the Civil War using stock/flow diagrams; and
• Kindergarteners using behavior over time graphs to look at the changing behaviors of the characters in the story of the gingerbread man.

Perhaps one of the most inspiring sights for us was at Borton Primary, a K-2 magnet school, where systems thinking is integrated where appropriate into the school's curriculum. First- and second-grade teacher Molly Reed has a behavior over time graph on her whiteboard that the students fill out each day about their own patterns of learning. Above the graph hangs a sign that reads, "What do you notice?" This query invites reflection and inquiry, a stepping back to observe patterns and trends--a challenge for adults, too!

Click here for the lessons Nalani and Colleen learned about teaching systems thinking and system dynamics to any audience.

Nalani Linder is an independent consultant and workshop facilitator who works with change agents of all ages to help them learn, practice, and apply systems thinking ideas and tools in their schools/organizations, communities, and personal lives. She is currently co-principal of a research study exploring connections between systems thinking and learning preferences.

Colleen Ponto, Ed.D., teaches at Seattle University, where she is a core faculty member of the Organization Systems Renewal Graduate Program. OSR specializes in helping adult learners to become designers and leaders of systemic organizational change. Colleen is also an independent educational and organizational consultant; one of her current passions is helping learners of all ages develop their systems thinking skills.

by Robert Fritz 

In part I of this post, Robert used the example of a pottery class to make the case that the more you produce, the more mastery you will have in any given realm. Here, he addresses the question, "How does learning take place?"

We begin, as always, with structural tension, a clear vision of an end result and a clear view of the current reality in relationship to that result. This is essential, because without structural tension, you would be limited to a series of spontaneous improvisations.

Quantity without structural tension does not lead to comprehensive learning. Without an end in mind, you are left with a purely statistical approach: make a lot of things, hope that some of them work out. When that is the case, each creative event is random. Each event is an individual episode that does not connect with future creative events. This is like a non-relational database in which the information is isolated and does not connect with other bits of information. Therefore, there is no traction leading to momentum, no sense of development, no foundation upon which to build. No organizing principle that enables learning to lead to mastery.

One thing that the pottery students had was enough of a vision of each piece so that they could establish structural tension. They had their target. The current reality was under their fingers and in their awareness. This was true for both the quality and quantity group. So we can conclude that structural tension is simply a prerequisite. Without it, it would be hard to throw a pot. But if the vision were to produce the highest quality imaginable, the final result would miss the mark. Higher levels of quality come from adequate experience over time.

When I was a high school kid, I studied with the Boston Symphony clarinetist Felix Viscuglia at the New England Conservatory of Music. I would bring Phil a coffee (he insisted on everyone calling him Phil) to every weekly lesson, not unlike the proverbial apple to the teacher. He always talked to me as if I were a colleague rather than a student, which was kind of nice for me. He would say of the college students who studied with him, "How can they expect to play like me? I've been playing over 25 years." I would nod as if I knew what he was talking about. But I only realized what he meant after I had been playing for over 25 years.

There is a long-term view of the creative process, which includes experience over expanded periods of time and learning. And there is the short-term view, which tries to rely on inspiration, impulse, and improvisation. And while there is a place for short-term impulsive moments, you can't build and sustain real mastery from that alone.

So, make a lot of creations. Make sure you have structural tension as the framework. Don't get obsessed about how good any creation is, but do make a point of learning from each episode of the creative process. Mastery will come over time, and you will find your ability to create what you want increases dramatically.

©2010 Robert Fritz

What is your experience with the question of quality versus quantity in the creative process? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

Robert Fritz, a composer, filmmaker, and organizational consultant, is founder of Technologies For Creating® and author of the international bestseller The Path of Least Resistance. This post first appeared in his free monthly e-newsletter, Creating. Click here for more information about Robert and his work.

by Robert Fritz

In a now famous story, a pottery teacher divided his class into two groups. He told one group that their grade would be determined by the quality of their work no matter how many pieces they made. The second group would be measured not on the quality of their work, but on the quantity. The more pieces, the higher the grade.

At the end of the semester, the results were clear. The group that had made the most pieces also had produced the highest quality work. Ironically, those students who were directly focused on quality were less able to produce quality. How come?

What is the relationship between quantity and quality? Often, the more you produce, the more mastery you will have. Creative mastery comes in many levels. How you make critical decisions along with the ability to be decisive. How your mind understands the creative process as well as a type of visceral understanding that develops over time and experience. How free you are to make mistakes while increasing the sense of the right direction to take.

Learning allows you to move from one level of understanding and competence to a higher level. Usually there are mistakes to make. Usually the more demanding the learning, the more mistakes.

Quantity does not always lead to quality. If there isn't a learning dimension, nothing will change, and quality might even decline. But the most natural pattern when creating anything is a progression of mastery through a progression of learning. How does learning take place?

©2010 Robert Fritz

Click here for part II of Robert's article.

Robert Fritz, a composer, filmmaker, and organizational consultant, is founder of Technologies For Creating® and author of the international bestseller The Path of Least Resistance. This post first appeared in his free monthly e-newsletter, Creating. Click here for more information about Robert and his work.

"Making pottery" photo by Randy Oostdyk; used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Back in the fall, I had the privilege of participating in part of the annual alumni gathering of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program. You can read my report on this event here and see one of the visioning activities they used here.

On the first afternoon, Vermont artist Jay Mead led the group in an activity designed to "help participants experience systems in nature, observe patterns, and work from a creative influence to balance the intellectual."

Mead called the three-hour experience the "Leadership Earth Art Project," or LEAP! As a catalyst for the activity, he introduced the group to the work of British artist Andrew Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy uses natural material, including snow, ice, leaves, bark, rock, clay, stones, feathers, petals, and twigs, to create outdoor sculptures. Some of these are ephemeral, like a glittery star formed from icicles secured in the center by the artist's saliva, while others are designed to be more enduring, such as a continuous crack in the courtyard pavers at the M.H. de Young Museum in San Francisco.

Jay encouraged participants to follow Goldsworthy's lead and learn from the natural landscape by creating their own in situ pieces. Through this "playful meditation," the alumni discovered patterns in nature that revealed the larger systems they are a part of and suggested metaphors for their own life experience, current work, and vision.

Videographer Colleen Bozuwa captured this activity in a lovely video. Watch it and share your thoughts in the comments section. What other ways might the arts support the development of systems understanding? How else can nature serve as a teacher in this realm?

Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.

by Michael Ballé

What is the relationship between systems thinking and lean? That's a fascinating question, one not so easily answered, because we're talking about two very different approaches, one a philosophy as well as a set of tools, the other, a practice. In its broadest sense, systems thinking is a framework that takes into account the interconnected nature of systems. It is also a thinking tool, which helps us look at the impact of feedback loops on how a system behaves; analyze specific situations to explain otherwise puzzling behaviors; and design interventions with an eye for potential unintended consequences.

Lean, on the other hand, is strictly a practice, not a philosophy. It is based on hands-on know how about how to teach people to improve their own processes in terms of both customer satisfaction and cost management by eliminating waste. Taiichi Ohno, a key figure in developing the lean approach, would often say things like: "Don't look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don't think with your head, think with your hands." As a practice-oriented movement, lean is by and large wary of abstract thinking and generalizations.

Nonetheless, although systems thinking and lean operate at these two different levels, I have learned from personal experience that they are complementary and are based on similar insights. An understanding of system thinking dramatically improves the learning curve of lean techniques. Having worked with systems thinking concepts and system dynamics simulations for years before studying lean practices in detail, I immediately saw the purpose (if not the application) of lean, which wasn't the case for my colleagues without a systems thinking background.

Conversely, at the time, I was part of a group tasked with figuring out ways to practically apply systems thinking concepts in day-to-day operations. Although we experimented, we generally floundered. What we did find was that the lean techniques offered a hands-on way to apply systems thinking concepts. Because lean practices have been developed over several decades, an entire field of experience exists in terms of how to make them work.

The bottom line: Without an understanding of systems thinking, it's hard to get lean right, and without the practice of lean techniques, it's difficult to make systems thinking a day-to-day reality to concretely improve system performance.

To Understand and to Change
The rapid progress of science since the Industrial Revolution has been driven by the close interplay of theoretical and practical advances. I believe that the mutual interdependence of systems thinking and lean offers a true opportunity here. By recognizing the synergies between these two fields, we can drastically increase our capacity to improve systems.

The bad news is that integrating these two approaches means more work. If I'm correct, system thinkers must acquire the discipline of lean practice. This has been my own particular path: fun, interesting, but never easy. And lean practitioners must make the effort to understand systems thinking, which is a significant intellectual investment.

Still, I believe this challenge is worthwhile. In today's hypercompetitive markets, companies need the performance improvement promised by lean. Furthermore, the strong systems thinking undercurrent of lean makes it focus on reducing waste of all kinds, including externalities such as pollution and garbage. Since its humble beginnings to its recent 2020 global vision, Toyota has continuously aimed to offer value to society overall. Considering the problems we collectively face in this new century, a proven method of industrial improvement also intent on reducing waste in all its forms should not be dismissed lightly.

One of the enduring puzzles of the lean movement is why it hasn't spread more quickly through industry: Many try, few succeed. Systems thinking, I believe, could contribute significantly to solving this conundrum by providing an overall framework to lean practice. To paraphrase Karl Marx, the point is not merely to understand the world, but to change it. Systems thinking offers the means to understand; lean, the practice to change. By pursuing both jointly, we can learn faster how to change the world in the right way to face our global challenges.

Adapted from "What Is the Relationship Between Systems Thinking and Lean?" published in The Systems Thinker, November 2009, V20N9.

Michael Ballé is associate researcher at Telecom ParisTech and managing partner of ESG Consultants. He has written several books and articles about the links between knowledge and management (Managing with Systems Thinking, The Effective Organization, Les Modèles Mentaux), and more recently, co-authored two business novels, The Gold Mine, which has received the Shingo Prize for Excellence in Manufacturing Research, and The Lean Manager. Michael is co-founder of the Projet Lean Entreprise and the Institut Lean France.

Lock photo by Nancy Daugherty

By Deborah Meehan

As the debates raged over healthcare reform in an attempt to break the political gridlock on Capitol Hill, I wondered what had happened to "yes we can." The election of Barack Obama was an energizing time that mobilized high levels of participation across the political spectrum. Change was a big theme. Presidential candidate Obama's rallying cry reminded many of us that we were a part of making change happen.

During the campaign, tens of thousands joined meet-ups, used online tools for campaign organizing, and contributed small donations. But what happened to this active engagement among Obama supporters once he was elected? While there is much to learn from the 2008 campaign about how to create the conditions for self-organization and how to leverage social networks, I would like to focus on how our mental models about leadership are limiting our ability to achieve breakthrough change.

Our current thinking about leadership, whether in communities or boardrooms, is heavily influenced by the idea of the hero. We generally think of leadership as the skills, qualities, and behavior of an individual who exerts influence over others to take action or achieve a goal using his or her position, authority, or charisma. Our attachment to the heroic model is one plausible factor for why high levels of civic engagement did not continue among Obama supporters after the election. People who participated in the campaign retreated and expected the president to deliver on change by virtue of his office/authority, without their continued involvement.

In this way, the culture of heroic individuals is undercutting our ability to mobilize ourselves for large-scale change. We cannot approach systems-level transformation one leader at a time. We can reach more people and tackle bigger problems by investing our energy and resources in strengthening leadership processes that support organizations, communities, and networks to take collective action.

My colleagues and I have joined forces with key innovators in the leadership field to promote leadership as a process through which individuals and groups identify and act on behalf of a larger purpose, such as greater equality and the well-being of people and the planet. We believe leadership as a process is grounded in relationships that are fluid, dynamic, and non-unilateral. 

Although the dominant model of leadership in the U.S is deeply rooted in individualism, numerous other cultures understand it as collective and relational. Intuitively, many of us have experienced the power of shared leadership through teams, sports, and music groups, but we have not brought this experience to how we think about leadership.

Imagine a different way for how we could become involved in the topics that we care most about, such as healthcare, the environment, or the economy. To support our engagement in leadership that can tackle systems-level change, we need to focus on how individuals and groups are connecting, organizing, thinking systemically, bridging, and learning as a dynamic leadership process.

Those of us looking to sustain our involvement in the issues of the day need to build relationships and shared commitment with others around our common concerns. We need to develop transparent communication pathways and employ organizing (and self-organizing) principles and structures to set direction, plan, allocate resources, make decisions, and mobilize action within networks, organizations, and movements. We need to inform our change strategies with a systems perspective that helps us identify patterns and feedback loops, intervene using leverage points, and continually learn and adapt our strategies. This is the type of leadership process that will help us to implement "yes we can."

Deborah Meehan is founder and executive director of the Leadership Learning Community (LLC), a nonprofit organization focused on transforming the way leadership is conceived, conducted, and evaluated. The LLC recently launched a collaborative research initiative that promotes leadership as a collective process.