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blog yet? We're excited about making it easier for you
to engage with us and with each other around the
practical aspects of systems thinking and
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and perspectives to make good choices and take
smart, informed action? What can we learn from a
systems take on current events? Some of our readers
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| Not a Question of Balance: A Marriage of Marriages |
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An excerpt from The Three
Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and
Relationship, by David Whyte, courtesy of
Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin Group (USA)
In his latest book, The Three
Marriages: Reimagining Work, Self and
Relationship (Riverhead Books, 2009), poet and
business consultant
David Whyte proposes
that our current understanding of work-life balance is
too simplistic. "People find it hard to balance work with
family, family with self, because it might not be a
question of balance. Some other dynamic is in play,
something to do with a very human attempt at
happiness that does not quantify different parts of life
and then set them against one another." In the
following excerpt, Whyte suggests a more integrated
understanding of our interdependent marriages with
others, with our work, and with ourselves.
Not a Question of Balance: A Marriage of
Marriages
Each of the three marriages is
nonnegotiable. They cannot be "balanced" against
one another--a little taken from this and a little given
to that--except at their very peripheries. To "balance"
work with relationship and with the self means we
only work harder in each marriage, while actually
weakening each of them by separating them from one
another. Each of the marriages represents a core
conversation with life that seems necessary for
almost all human beings and none of the marriages
can be weakened or given up without a severe sense
of internal damage.
The three marriages are eternal and internal
human conversations; they can occur whether we are
officially married or not, whether we have a real
vocation or a terrible job, whether we have astonishing
revelations about our identity or have never given a
second thought to our place in creation. These three
conversations occur in the human psyche,
consciously or unconsciously, whether we decide to
speak them out loud or hide them away. They are part
of the way we pay attention to the world and part of the
way we attempt to make a home in it. To ignore them
is to be caught constantly in invisible, internal battles,
which become a source of puzzlement and
unhappiness to the personality struggling on the
surface.
The three marriages are especially
nonnegotiable in their early stages. Only later do we
learn to put them into conversation with one another.
In youth we abandon our parents to go out in the
world, in love we often abandon our friends for a good
while, and in work we abandon "other interests" when
we start to concentrate on our vocation.
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| New Open Space Workshop to Clarify Your Conference Learnings |
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The 19th
Annual Pegasus
Conference
Now More Than Ever:
Critical Skills for
Courageous Organizations
November 2 - 4, 2009 ·
Seattle, Washington · Westin, Seattle
We've added a half-day
post-conference option to help you integrate your
takeaways:
 Bringing the
Conference Home: An Open Space
Conversation
Wed., November 5; 2:00 to 6:00 PM
Peggy Holman; Bob Stilger, The Berkana
Institute
Do you feel "full" at the end
of a great conference? One way to make sense of a
powerful experience is to reflect with others,
discovering what has heart and meaning by being a
mirror for each other. Join your colleagues to help
internalize your own learnings and clarify what you
wish to share with others back home. If you weren't
able to attend the conference, this is a chance to catch
the spark from those who were there. Peggy Holman
and Bob Stilger will be opening the space using Open
Space Technology--a process that enables a diverse
group to address individual and collective meaning
making.
Learn
more... | Order#PRE03,
$200
And through June 30, take
advantage of the early registration discount on these
other great skill-building workshops before and after
the conference:
 Leading Change
Through Applied Systems Thinking
Sat./Sun., October 31-November 1;
9:00 AM to
5:00 PM
Michael Goodman,
Innovation Associates Organizational
Learning; David Peter Stroh,
Bridgeway Partners
Learn
more... | Order#PRE01,
$1395 $1195
 Life at the Frontier: Leadership
through Courageous Conversation
Sun., November 1; 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
David Whyte, Many Rivers
Company
Learn
more... | Order#PRE02,
$895 $795
 The Change Lab: Putting the
U-Process into Practice
Sun., November 1; 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
LeAnne Grillo and Joe
McCarron, Reos Partners
Learn
more... | Order#PRE03,
$895 $795
 Systems Literacy: Living Stories
about Living Systems
Thurs., November 5; 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
Linda Booth
Sweeney
Learn more... | Order#POST01,
$895 $795
 Facilitation Tools for
Organizational Learning
Thurs./Fri., November 5-6; 9:00 AM to
5:00 PM
Kristina Wile and
Rebecca Niles Peretz, The Systems Thinking
Collaborative
Learn more... | Order#POST02,
$1395 $1195
Save on Full Conference Registration!
Less than 2 weeks
remaining to save $400 off the full conference rate!
Register by May 31 to secure your seat at the
discounted rate of $1295 for 2-1/2 days of
unparalleled learning and networking.
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| Intercepting the Incentive Trap |
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 by Janice Molloy, from the
Leverage Points blog
When
economic times are tough, businesses tend to focus
on boosting employees' productivity--on
accomplishing more with fewer people. With the
current high levels of unemployment, some
organizations rely on fear of layoffs to "motivate" their
workers. Seeking a more positive spin, others may
turn to incentives. But as explained by Dan Heath and
Chip Heath in "The Curse of
Incentives," published in the February 2009 issue
of Fast Company, incentives "are effective,
irresistible, and almost certain to backfire."
The "Fixes That Backfire" systems archetype (also
referred to as "Fixes That Fail") commonly occurs
when people think they have solved a problem, only to
have it recur with a vengeance later. In their article,
Heath and Heath give several examples of how
incentives produce their intended effect in the short
run while causing serious collateral damage down
the road.
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Online Systems Thinking Course |
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You want to learn how systems thinking can help
you solve your thorniest problems and make better
decisions. But you don't have time for an offsite
workshop. How about an online solution that you can
access whenever you want it, and digest at your own
pace? This eight-module course gives you a robust
introduction and provides real-time learning as you
apply the tools to the challenges you face today.
Save 10% off a 12-month,
single-user subscription when you sign up through
Pegasus.
View course preview
Order
#STWEB, $299 $269
Now
Available
from
Pegasus
The Three Marriages: Reimagining Work,
Self & Relationship
Drawing on his own
exper-ience and the lives of
some of the world's great writers and poets, David
Whyte brings compelling insights to our three most
important commitments--to another, to our work, and
to ourselves--to frame a complete picture of a
satisfying life.
Order
#OL052, $25.95
Special Event
for
Educators
The Waters
Institute with Daniel H. Kim
June
28-July 1, 2009
St. Louis,
Missouri
Join over 200 educators for dialogue, discussion,
and training about the use of systems thinking in K-12
education. Learn
more...
Applied
Systems Thinking Award
Competition
Do you know of an outstanding example of applied
systems thinking in the area of national security,
homeland security, energy, environment, health care,
or education? The ASysT Applied Systems Thinking
Prize is a $20,000 prize awarded annually for a
significant accomplishment in one of these areas,
achieved through the application of systems
thinking.
Sponsored by the ASysT Institute, last year's prize
went to the Centers for Disease Control, NIH, and the
Sustainability Institute for their work on the complex
dynamics of public health policy related to multiple
interacting epidemics.
Learn more...
"You cannot choose either the artist
or the pragmatist inside you. There's a place for both."
--David Whyte
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