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Around April 1, Pegasus will be resuming in-house Customer Service. All order processing and fulfillment will be conducted by our own staff through an in-house storage facility. As a result of these changes, we'd like to offer you an incentive to move our inventory!

From now through April 1, take 20% OFF all Pegasus products. Make purchases on our web site or by calling 1-800-272-0945. (This discount will not appear in your web shopping cart total, but will be reflected in the charge to your credit card. It may not be combined with other discounts and excludes newsletter subscriptions and conference registrations.) Take advantage of this deep discount to stock up on old favorites and explore new fields of interest!

LEARNING LINKS
In Search of the Perfect Causal Loop Variable

PEGASUS CONFERENCE CORNER
Keynote Speakers Announced

FACE TO FACE
Gates Foundation Funds Program That Brings Organizational Learning to Educators
by Kali Saposnick

When asked to design and direct an educational leadership program that would ultimately improve student performance, Lynda Irvin and Julie Schlichting saw the chance to create a unique curriculum. It was 1999, and the Illinois State University College of Education had just been awarded a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Leadership Challenge Grant to help K–12 school leaders gain skills at the personal, organizational, and technological levels. The grant included three key components to guide the program design: the national standards for school leadership, the Baldrige criteria for excellence in education, and technology applications. To weave together these seemingly disparate elements, Lynda and Julie adopted a systems thinking approach to leadership development.

As they designed the new program, called Illinois Technology and Leadership for Change (ITLC), the codirectors integrated many opportunities for participants to collaborate in surfacing and examining the systems in which they worked. Their goal was to create an environment in which administrators could shift away from the tendency to blame individuals or groups for problems in education toward identifying concrete ways to produce effective school programs. Over the last four years, the program has trained more than 1,700 administrators from all over the state, 98 percent of whom would recommend this program to their colleagues. In addition, Lynda and Julie's wise use of grant money and matching funds has enabled ITLC to expand into the Illinois School Leaders Development Institute (ISLDI), which opens on July 1, 2004.

Stories That Illuminate the System
This spring ITLC is hosting "Leaders Paying Forward: Practicing the Democratic Ideal," a conference to further participants' exposure to the program, its conceptual frameworks, and essential tools for leadership. One of those tools is the popular Learning Fables series published by Pegasus Communications. Lynda and Julie began using the fables in the program because the entertaining stories engage participants, and the concise discussion guides effectively link organizational learning lessons with practical applications in the workplace. As Lynda says, "One of the things I know from being a trainer and a school administrator for the last 20 years is that you can spend 14 hours talking about systems theory and people will probably tune out, but if you can give them a compelling story, they get the point."

Continue reading the interview

Learn more about the Learning Fables

LEARNING LINKS
In Search of the Perfect Causal Loop Variable
by Lauren Keller Johnson

Causal loop diagrams, one of the basic tools of systems thinking, can provide new perspectives on a problem (learn more about CLDs). But to create an accurate depiction of the issue at stake, a group first needs to identify and properly name the key variables. What makes good variable names, and how do you identify them? Here are a few guidelines to get you started:

• Use nouns instead of verbs, action terms, or words suggesting a direction of change (e.g., "Number of Products," NOT "Sell Revenue" or "Increasing Profits"). Nouns let the CLD arrows show the action.

• Use a neutral or positive term whenever possible (e.g., "Morale" NOT "Bad Feelings"). Such terms help you avoid confusing double-negatives when reading a CLD.

• Identify hard-to-measure variables (e.g., "Experience Level" or "Trust") as well as more concrete variables (e.g., "Orders" or "New Hires"). Those intangible variables are often just as important as the quantifiable ones.

Once you've properly named the key variables in your problem situation, you can start to identify the causal relationships between them and link them in one or more balancing or reinforcing loops. When you have completed the diagram, walk through the loops and "tell the story" to be sure they accurately capture the behavior being described. Refining the variable names makes it easier to identify the causal relationships between them. The resulting CLD should yield rich insights and maybe even point a way to a solution.

Read the complete article, or see The Systems Thinker, V14N1 (February 2003)

Subscribe to The Systems Thinker

Additional Resources on causal loop diagrams

PEGASUS CONFERENCE CORNER

Keynote Speakers Announced
Join us December 1–3 for the 14th annual Pegasus Conference, "Building Collaborations to Change Our Organizations and the World: Systems Thinking in Action," at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. We're pleased to announce this year's remarkable line-up of keynotes:

• Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline and founding chair of the Society for Organizational Learning
• Christiano Schena, vice president, Component Products & Control Systems Division, Caterpillar Inc.
• Deborah Meier, author of In Schools We Trust: Creating Communities of Learning in an Era of Testing and Standardization and principal of the Mission Hill School in Boston
• Julius Walls, Jr., vice president of Enterprise and Jobs Development for the Greyston Foundation, and members of the Greyston Bakery community
• Others to be announced

Each presenter has been at the center of powerful collaborations among business, educational, and nonprofit organizations to address problems too complex or challenging for lone enterprises to resolve.

PLUS, there will be:
• Skill-building and application case study sessions
• Three Learning Paths that delve into the fundamentals of systems thinking and leading collaborations
• Collaboration Clinic, for one-on-one coaching on your toughest challenges
• World Café conversations within and across sectors
• Experiential learning experiences
• Authors' Night, showcasing notable authors with newly released books

Come to this annual gathering of our global community of learners to co-create a conference experience like no other. Bring your current and potential collaborators—and your vision of creating a better future for ourselves, our communities, our organizations, and the world.

Conference Registration Information
For a limited time only, register for the 2004 Conference for $995. Register on our web site, or call 1-781-398-9700.

SPECIAL OFFER! When you register, you will receive 10% off Pegasus products purchased on our web site, from the day you register until the conference starts on December 1, 2004. (This offer is not applicable to other conferences or newsletters and cannot be combined with other discounts.) The sooner you register, the sooner you'll start saving on your Pegasus purchases, so sign up today!

FROM THE FIELD
Increasing Patient Safety with a Systems Approach

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine's report "To Err Is Human" estimated that as many as 98,000 Americans die annually as a result of medical mistakes. The report sparked several initiatives, including federal funding to study the problem. But two physicians claim that these efforts have not led to safer practices. In their new book Internal Bleeding: The Truth Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes, Dr. Robert M. Wachter and Dr. Kaveh G. Shojania argue that to create real safety, healthcare professionals must implement a coherent system that anticipates and prevents medical error.

The authors, pioneers in the patient safety movement, advocate a "systems" approach to discovering errors. Drawing from examples in the aircraft industry, they show how errors during flights decreased only when pilots and other employees stopped keeping them secret. Why? Because obvious errors, such as plane crashes, result from a series of mistakes, not just one individual's failure, and detecting even one error in advance could prevent a tragedy. The authors also recommend increased computer usage to reveal dangerous drug interactions and incorrect dosages, team training for health providers, and a culture that supports openness around disclosing mistakes.

One obstacle to change is that few people feel comfortable divulging errors. Another is the unintentional conflicts that have resulted from numerous medical reforms. For example, one hospital's system for reducing the work hours of sleep-deprived doctors-in-training also increased the number of physicians handling a patient's case, leading to a drop in continuity of care. Despite the obstacles, medical professionals would benefit from looking systemically at reducing error. Patients can contribute by asking questions about medications and speaking up if they're uncertain about diagnoses. Creating a culture of safety requires the input and ongoing efforts of all stakeholders.
—KS

Source: Barron H. Lerner, M.D., "Healing an Error-Prone Medical System," The New York Times, February 10, 2004