Peter Senge is a senior lecturer at MIT and the founding chair of SoL, the Society for Organizational Learning. His latest book, The Necessary Revolution: How Individuals and Organizations are Working Together to Create a Sustainable World, co-authored with Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz, Joe Laur, and Sara Schley, draws from their work over the past decade with the SoL Sustainability Consortium and related collaborative efforts to offer stories and tools for practitioners seeking to transform the way their organizations do business. Peter recently spoke with Leverage Points about the relationship between organizational change and individual action.

With the publication of his latest book, The Necessary Revolution, Peter Senge and his coauthors have taken another step in galvanizing a movement of individuals who understand that their greatest leverage for transforming society lies through organizations. As many of us are already taking action in our personal lives to reduce waste through our consumer choices and new behaviors, it becomes increasingly apparent that it's our organizations--particularly interconnected webs of organizations, business partnerships, supply chains, even whole industries--that have the greatest clout.

Senge believes that organizations represent a blind spot in the sustainability field, which has focused more on individual and government action, when neither has the broad-reaching influence that organizational action has. "For the most part," he explains, "it isn't government policy that's destroying species, and certainly you or I couldn't destroy a species if we tried. But we succeed in doing just that by the way our individual decisions are mediated through the webs of institutions that define the global economy." The key, then, lies in transforming the Industrial Age economic system by adopting more sustainable ways of doing business, individually and collectively.

A daunting task, to be sure. But Peter is convinced that this shift is already starting to happen and that each of us has a role to play. He suggests that we start by asking, "What are some of the things my organization could be doing? What are ways in which I could become a more effective instigator and leader of these changes?" Peter points out that there is often an obvious business case to be made--particularly as energy costs rise--for redesigning a process or making an operational change that saves enough money to matter. It could be as mundane as installing light switches that automatically go off if nobody is in a room, or agreeing to adopt the practice of turning off the light in the bathroom when you leave it, or striving to move toward a "zero waste" office environment where everything is reused or recycled. A funny thing happens when you start talking with each other about making these kinds of simple changes in your workplace: You build a sense of shared vision.

Senge points out, "Building a shared vision in an organization is not about everybody saluting the wall where the vision statement is posted. It's about people doing things together that they care about. It doesn't matter if it's mundane. All of a sudden you realize, 'Hey, we're doing this together.'" Beyond the economic benefits, these moves can become a source of fun and constitute one of the more effective ways to unite people around a common goal. He continues, "In many parts of Vermont, you pay to have your trash picked up, but recycling is free--think about what that does to get people working together to reduce waste." These preliminary steps also start to build a common awareness for the major changes coming: new products, new processes, new business models, and wholly new networks of collaboration.

We will continue to accept applications until the position is filled. Click here for more details about the position and information about the application process. And feel free to share this link with anyone with a passion for systems thinking!

Twice in the last few weeks we've been tickled to hear one of our keynote speakers, Dr. Atul Gawande on NPR during the morning commute--once talking about his latest New Yorker essay entitled "The Itch," and once talking about the practice of using a checklist to avoid disasters in the operating room. This had us smiling because, for the second year in a row, Pegasus has had the good fortune to connect with a speaker who is drawing significant attention in the mainstream media. (You'll remember that last year it was Van Jones in the spotlight).

We love all of our keynote speakers, of course. And we're particularly excited when one of these naturally systemic thinkers reaches a place of high impact visibility in the popular culture. We think it's a great reflection on the conference and very encouraging for the planet!

To celebrate our keynote speakers' work, we will send a FREE copy of one of the books they've authored to anyone who registers for the conference between now and August 31. Choose from among the many books we have available, and mention this special when you call 1-800-272-0945 to sign up today!

Download conference brochure...

Register now and save $300 off the full conference rate! Teams of ten or more still register for under $1,000 per person. Click here for pricing details, and call us at 1-800-272-0945 to register your team.

If you haven't received a brochure, please send us an email with your mailing address, so we can make sure you are on our list, and/or download a copy in PDF format.