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A free e-newsletter spotlighting systemic thinking and innovations
in leadership, management, and organizational development. Please
forward to your colleagues.
March 25, 2003 Issue 36
FINAL DAYS OF THE MIDWINTER SALE!
Until March 31, take 20% OFF all products purchased on
our web
site. Simply use Priority Code MWS2003 when you check
out of the shopping cart. (This discount may not be combined with
other discounts and excludes newsletter subscriptions and conference
registrations.)
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"Going
to the balcony is a way to collect your wits
in the midst of conflict, to distance yourself
from your natural impulses and emotions, according
to William Ury. If you mentally go to the balcony...actually
picture yourself walking up the steps to a balcony...and
look down on the stage of any troublesome situation,
you see a bigger picture. You can get above
the emotions of the moment and see the relatedness
of the parts, including you! It becomes clearer
that when something changes in one part of the
picture, it affects the other parts. When you
take the long view, you see patterns and natural
cycles in behavior over time."
—Sharon Eakes
"The
survival of the fittest is the ageless law of
nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong.
The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications
for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable
and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize
with existing or changing conditions."
—Dave E. Smalley
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Save $500 by Registering for the Pegasus Conference
by April 15th—Teams Save Even More!
If organizations don't change, how can
the world change?
This is the clarion call for our upcoming conference,
Changing Our Organizations to Change the
World: Systems Thinking in Action®,
to be held in Boston, Massachusetts, on October
8–10. Why do you need to be part of this
year's conference? As Peter Senge said recently,
"To transform how our larger systems work, we
need to get a critical mass of people doing
things differently."
Join your colleagues from around the world who
are committed to addressing critical issues
facing our global community. By better understanding
and managing the complex systems we live and
work in, we not only increase our own organization's
effectiveness but also contribute to the well-being
of the planet.
The conference will consider these and other
questions:
• How can we enable diverse groups of people
stuck in a problem to work together effectively?
• Which tools can directly influence an
organization at the structural level so it can
accelerate change?
• How can we shift from managing by objectives
to managing by means to increase organizational
performance?
Come explore these questions and enhance your
and your organization's capacity to effect change.
The time is now.
For more information about the conference or
to register, contact Julie Turner at 1-781-398-9700,
or visit our conference
page. Also, request
a free video CD of last year's conference.
Can change begin without you?
The
Systems Thinker CD-Rom
Volumes 10–13
An
invaluable resource for individuals who
want all the incisive ideas presented over
the last four years of the newsletter at
their fingertips. All issues are fully indexed
and searchable in PDF format for quick reference.
Easily access leading-edge articles and
case studies on systems thinking concepts
and other essential management tools.
Order
#ST1013CD, $447
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Resources
on Leadership
Focus
on Leadership: Through Complexity to Results
 Listen
to Glenna Gerard and Mitch Saunders in this
three-part learning path from the 2002 Pegasus
Conference. These sessions explore leading with
impact and effectiveness in the face of continuous,
unpredictable, and quick changes in today's
realities. Learn how to respond to profound
dilemmas with calmness and resourcefulness;
recognize emerging products, services, and organizational
architecture; and test prototypes and future
scenarios.
Audiotape Set, Order
#T0225S, $39.90
Audio CD Set Order
#T0225SC, $45.90
Leading
Ethically Through Foresight
by Daniel H. Kim
 Leadership
thinker Robert Greenleaf has called a leader's
inability or unwillingness to perceive the significance
and nature of events before they have occurred
an ethical failure. In this article, Daniel
Kim discusses how leaders of companies, such
as Enron, Arthur Andersen, and Worldcom, failed
to be good stewards of their organization's
futures, and advocates developing a deep understanding
of the structures of our domains in order to
predict the future consequences of current events.
Order
#130701, PDF article, $6.00
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FACE
TO FACE
A
Continuous Learning Approach to Child Welfare: An Interview with Harry
Spence |
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LEARNING
LINKS
Leadership at the Inflection Point |
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FROM
THE FIELD
An "Owner's
Manual" for Your Boss
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FACE
TO FACE
A
Continuous Learning Approach to Child Welfare: An Interview with
Harry Spence
by
Kali Saposnick
 In
November 2001, Lewis H. (Harry) Spence was appointed commissioner
of the Massachusetts Department of Social Services (DSS). Harry
was chosen for his ability to redesign complex organizations so
they can achieve their goals and better serve their constituents.
He will be a keynote speaker and session presenter at this year's
2003 Pegasus Conference in October, where he will share the learnings
that he acquired in previous positions—including deputy chancellor
for operations for the New York City Public Schools; governor-appointed
receiver for the bankrupt city of Chelsea, Massachusetts; and court-appointed
receiver for the Boston Housing Authority—and how he's applying
them at DSS. The following is a preview of some of the changes with
which he's currently involved.
Imagine getting a knock at the door from a social worker telling
you that you're being investigated for abusing your child, and at
the same time being asked to partner with DSS to ensure your child's
safety in your home. "It's no surprise that right off the bat we
get an adversarial reaction from the parent," says Harry Spence.
"One of the deepest wounds any adult can experience is around their
parenting capacity. Yet our social workers have to inflict this
wound every day in order to help families keep their children safe."
Since his appointment last November, the new commissioner has been
thinking deeply about the paradoxical nature of the child welfare
system. Chosen for his long and impressive record of advocating
for children and families, providing fiscal stewardship, and understanding
complex systems, Spence says that one of the first things he initiated
for himself was "an analysis of the coherence among the organization's
values, structure, process, praxis, and content."
In the course of his analysis, Spence came upon studies that showed
that the gap in child welfare agencies between espoused theory and
theory in practice is as great as any recorded in organizations
that have been studied. He attributes this gap in part to the enormous
stress the child welfare system is under at any given time—particularly
the stress that frontline workers face by constantly having to make
life and death decisions with little real support from their own
organizational culture or the culture at large. People don't automatically
consider child welfare in the same category of heroic public service
as police and fire departments. And, unlike those institutions,
when something goes wrong, such as when a child dies, the public
immediately blames DSS.
Read
the complete article.
Listen
to an audio recording of interview excerpts.
Learn
more about or register for the 2003 Pegasus Conference.
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LEARNING
LINKS
Leadership
at the Inflection Point
by Mitch Saunders
For a
leader, few experiences compare with the gut-wrenching discovery
that you are unprepared to face a changing reality. It's even worse
if you recognize that your organization is also ill-equipped to
trek into uncharted territory. For example, the CEO of a semiconductor
equipment company realized that his organization's future depended
on creating new e-diagnostic software. What's more, he found that
he and the leaders of his key business units were utterly unschooled
in managing the processes that give rise to successful software
development, let alone creating robust business models for this
kind of product line.
Facing an unprecedented demand or opportunity for which there are
no easy answers often signals that the tide is turning—one
phase is ending, while something new is struggling to emerge. We
might call this key moment in time an "inflection point." Leadership
at the inflection point requires recognizing and being able to react
adeptly when an organization is dramatically changing its course,
quickly developing a wide range of individual and organizational
responses to novel situations, and challenging long-held reflexes
and mental models in order to help sense and influence the future.
To effectively lead people through a metamorphosis from what is
known in organizational life to something unfamiliar, leaders must
direct a radical refocus of the organization and simultaneously
alter our own leadership styles. We can begin by being intentional
about increasing our personal resiliency and assessing our own way
of living and leading others. Fortunately, a leader's personal experience
of the change process can provide the validation, confidence, and
perspective he or she needs to guide the enterprise along its evolutionary
path.
Read
the complete article, or see The Systems Thinker,
Vol. 13, No. 1 (February 2002).
Subscribe
to The Systems Thinker.
For additional
resources on leadership, see "Pegasus Highlights" on the right.
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FROM
THE FIELD
An
"Owner's Manual" for Your Boss
How comfortable do you think your employees feel asking you questions
about their assignments or disagreeing with your decisions? And
how often do they become frustrated because they don't know the
best way to present information to you?
During the process of hiring a new executive, Dr. Ron B. Goodspeed,
president and chief executive of Southcoast Hospitals Group in Fall
River, Massachusetts, took a consultant's advice and developed an
"owner's manual"—a one-page document outlining his managerial
assets and liabilities. Based on self-assessment and feedback from
associates, the manual advises employees to give him, for example,
more not less information and to make recommendations before experimenting
on their own. It urges them to warn Goodspeed if he's going down
the wrong path and to ask him to get to the point if he rambles.
Such feedback bolsters his direct reports' chances for success when
dealing with him. It also helps Goodspeed—who refers to the
manual regularly—confront his own shortcomings. For instance,
when he catches himself "talking around" something, he knows he's
having trouble understanding an employee's idea.
This type of ongoing performance critique can increase a new manager's
effectiveness as well as improve interactions with current employees.
It has definitely impressed the recently hired vice president, who
is grateful for the time saved trying to understand and deal with
his boss. His decision to write his own manual for employees reporting
to him is, he says, a reflection of Goodspeed's ability to inspire
others.
Source:
Joann S. Lublin, "Job Candidates Get Manual from Boss: 'How
to Handle Me,'" The Wall Street Journal, January 7,
2003
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Copyright 2003 Pegasus Communications. Leverage Points®
can be freely forwarded by e-mail in its entirety. To obtain rights
to distribute paper copies of, reproduce, or excerpt any part of Leverage
Points, please contact permissions@pegasuscom.com.
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