A free e-newsletter spotlighting systemic thinking and innovations in leadership, management, and organizational development. Please forward to your colleagues.
   Search all free content on the Pegasus web site.
  
  Any word All words Exact phrase
   Search for products here.  



September 22, 2004 Issue 54



"The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are the primary sources of creativity."
—Margaret J. Wheatley

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you will help them to become what they are capable of being."
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Resources by Danah Zohar and Tim Gallwey

A Quantum Vision for Building the Learning Organization featuring Danah Zohar
The new physics of the 20th century, particularly quantum physics, offers a potent model for creating networked organizational infrastructures, as well as a form of dialogue that integrates the needs of the individual with those of the group. Danah Zohar explores how the quantum infrastructure provides a concrete model for the integrative, cooperative, and constantly inventive infrastructures necessary for the learning organization.
Order #V9521, videotape, 65 min, $99.00

Dialogue, Organizational Learning, and the Quantum Society featuring Danah Zohar and Bill Isaacs
Recent developments in chaos and quantum theory are leading to dramatic new experiments in organizational learning and social governance. At the heart of these developments is the realization that dialogue—the nature of conversation and the quality of relationships among people—has immense bearing on the direction of success of any institution. This tape explores how generative conversation can serve as an essential vehicle for organizational learning.
Order #V9525, videotape, 45 min, $99.00

The Inner Game of Work: Learning How to Change featuring Tim Gallwey
The future of work belongs to those who have learned how to learn and have preserved a strong foundation of independent thinking. These two "inner skills" are as essential to cooperative teamwork as is the appropriate use of technology and information in the modern workplace. But for many of us, the ways we think about learning actually interfere with our ability to learn and perform. In this powerful presentation, Timothy Gallwey discusses ways to overcome barriers to learning and create optimal learning environments.
Order #V9731, videotape, 56 min, $99.00



Deep Discounts on Overstocks of Terrific Products
DEC Is Dead, Long Live DEC: The Lasting Legacy of Digital Equipment Corporation by Edgar H. Schein et al. (Berrett-Koehler, 2003)
This fascinating case history details the rise and fall of Digital Equipment Corporation, one of the pioneering companies of the computer age. During its 40-year lifetime, DEC reached the Fortune 50, had sales of over $14 billion, and for a time was the number-two computer maker, behind only IBM. Yet it failed as a business and was ultimately sold to Compaq. In this book, DEC insiders analyze the culture of innovation that drove DEC to the top, how it was created, how it evolved, and why it ultimately collapsed.
Order #OL022, hardcover book, 317 pages, $13.00 (regularly $27.95)

A Simpler Way by Margaret J. Wheatley and Myron Kellner-Rogers (Berrett-Koehler, 1996)
Using the language of the new sciences, the authors explain a simpler way to organize human endeavor and how it can be applied to organizations through play, the emergence of new structures, and the idea of "coherence." When the world is seen in a simpler way, we can move with more assurance to create, experiment, organize, fail, accomplish, play, learn, and create again.
Order #LP0904SW, two audiotapes, read by the authors, $7.00 (regularly $17.95)

Systems Thinking: The Integrating Discipline by Charlotte Roberts
Charlotte Roberts, coauthor of The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, designs highly effective programs that focus on new strategies for the issues facing today's leaders and an overall improvement of the bottom line. In this lively audiotape, she shares a tool for problem-solving, a methodology for explaining current situations, and an appreciation of dynamic connections.
Order #LP0904STID, audiotape, $8.00 (regularly $19.95)

The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation by Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi (Oxford University Press, 1995)
How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? In their book, two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the performance of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge organizationally and use it to produce successful products and technologies.
Order #LP0904KCC, hardcover book, 284 pages. $10.00 (regularly $25.00)

The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer (Addison-Wesley, 1997)

Ellen Langer uses her innovative theory of mindfulness to dramatically enhance the way we learn. Such familiar notions as delayed gratification, "the basics," or even "right answers" are all incapacitating myths that she explodes one by one. She replaces them with her concept of mindful or conditional learning, which, through examples, she demonstrates can be extraordinarily effective.
Order #LP0904PML, hardcover book, 169 pages, $8.00 (regularly $20.00)



• Contact us at Pegasus Communications, One Moody Street, Waltham, MA 02453-5339. Send an e-mail to info@pegasuscom.com, or call 781-398-9700. Web site: http://www.pegasuscom.com.
• Send comments about Leverage Points to levpts@pegasuscom.com.
• To learn more about Pegasus go to www.pegasuscom.com.
• Leverage Points on the web
• Archives
• To subscribe or unsubscribe, please go to our subscription management page.

Pegasus Communications provides resources that help people explore, understand, articulate, and address the challenges they face in the complexities of a changing world. Since 1989, Pegasus has worked to build a community of practitioners through The Systems Thinker® Newsletter, books, audio and videotapes, and its annual Systems Thinking in Action® Conference and other events.
 


 

FALL SPECIAL OFFER!

Fall is a great time to clean up! Pegasus has overstocks of some terrific products, which we'd like to offer to our readers at hefty discounts of more than 50% OFF. These are timeless gems, full of lessons for organizations and individuals. To take advantage of this offer while supplies last, go to "Pegasus Specials" on the right.
 



FACE TO FACE
 A New Capitalism We Can Live By: An Interview with Danah Zohar

LEARNING LINKS
The Inner Game of Work: Building Capability in the Workplace

PEGASUS CONFERENCE CORNER
What Distinguishes Collaborations That Thrive from Those That Fail

 



FACE TO FACE
A New Capitalism We Can Live By: An Interview with Danah Zohar

Danah Zohar, author of the bestselling books The Quantum Self, The Quantum Society, and ReWiring the Corporate Brain, will be a keynote speaker at the 2004 Pegasus Conference, Building Collaborations to Change Our Organizations and the World: Systems Thinking in Action®, to be held on December 1–3 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA (learn more about the conference). A physicist, philosopher, management thought leader, educator, and author, Danah teaches organizations and executives how modern science can transform how they think and lead. Her work to extend the principles of quantum physics into a new understanding of human consciousness, psychology, and social organization has led to her current groundbreaking books (coauthored with Ian Marshall) on spiritual intelligence and spiritual capital.

In SQ: Connecting with Our Spiritual Intelligence, Danah presents scientific evidence for the existence of spiritual intelligence (SQ), a center in the human brain that lies at the core of innovation and creative leadership. In her most recent work, Spiritual Capital: Wealth We Can Live By, she takes the concept of spiritual intelligence and applies it to the business world. The sustainable vision for capitalism she provides is rooted in a values-based culture in which businesses generate a decent profit while acting to raise the common good and ensure the sustainability of their enterprises. In the following conversation between Danah Zohar and Leverage Points editor Kali Saposnick, Danah discusses the influence of quantum physics on her thinking and how, by building spiritual capital, we can create effective, sustainable collaborations.

Leverage Points: How has your scientific background influenced your thinking about systems thinking, collaboration, and spiritual capital?

Danah Zohar: My scientific background has influenced all my thinking, even the spiritual thinking in my personal life. I discovered quantum physics at 15, and it stood my whole world on its head. The ways things based in Newtonian physics differ from those based in the quantum physics paradigm has been the whole substance of my work and runs through it completely.

Newtonian physics conceives of the universe essentially as little billiard balls, atoms with hard boundaries. According to this principle, there's no way to change an atom—scientists in the early days didn't know about subatomic particles or any of the things that have so radically changed our way of understanding nature. In the Newtonian model, when two of these billiard balls meet, they bump into and knock each other off course, but neither changes the other.

Ideas such as individualism and replaceable parts in industrial settings emerged from Newton's idea of atomism. So did the notion that I am essentially alone in the world, isolated from people. Even Freud said, you are an object to me and I'm an object to you, and we can never meet each other.

Quantum systems, on the other hand, are thought to be concretized balls of energy that take on different forms as they relate to each other through participating in the system together. When two quantum systems meet, they overlap and combine their total identity. All the patterns of dynamic energy within these systems change dramatically in relation to each other, leading to the emergence of a whole new thing that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Read the complete interview

Learn more about the 2004 Pegasus Conference

Explore resources by Danah Zohar
 



LEARNING LINKS
The Inner Game of Work: Building Capability in the Workplace
by Tim Gallwey

Learning, coaching, and building a learning culture are critical to the success of modern businesses. Because learning increases our ability to perform, the capacity to grow capability is becoming indistinguishable from the capacity to grow wealth. However, unacknowledged resistance to learning and coaching can make it difficult for us to realize the ideals of the learning organization.

As children, we were naturally engaged in learning in everything we did. Thus, as adults, we don't really need to learn how to learn, as much as we need to remember what we once knew. We need to unlearn some of the attitudes and practices we picked up from our formal education that seriously undermine our natural appetite and inherent capability for learning.

The Inner Game approach is about unlearning the personal and cultural habits that interfere with our ability to learn and perform. It's about increasing capacity for performance and learning either by actualizing potential or by decreasing interference-or by a combination of both. The natural learning process—which is how we actualize potential—is gradual and ongoing. By contrast, reducing interference can have an immediate and far-reaching impact on learning and levels of performance. Thus, revealing the barriers to learning and performance can be an important first step in maximizing an individual's or a team's potential.

Managers can play a key role in the learning process by helping individuals become aware of their barriers to learning and drawing out and augmenting characteristics and potential that are already present in a person. By providing what support and resources they can to the effort, the best managers can shape their workplace into an optimal learning environment.

This article, adapted from The Systems Thinker® Newsletter, appears in the anthology, The New Workplace. Take advantage of our special offer to get 40% off any of our print anthologies or 60% off when you purchase all 5.

Read the complete article, or see The Systems Thinker, V8N6 (August 1997)

Subscribe to The Systems Thinker

 



PEGASUS CONFERENCE CORNER
What Distinguishes Collaborations That Thrive from Those That Fail

 The inspiration to collaborate arises because we realize that we can't reach our goals by acting alone. But while some collaborations soar, leading to sustainable excellence or transformational change, others fall prey to short-sightedness, lack of shared vision, and conflict. What distinguishes joint efforts that thrive from those that fail to fulfill their promise?

The speakers at this year's Pegasus Conference bring deep insight into this question—they know from experience what it takes to forge and sustain successful collaborations under challenging circumstances. In industry, schools, community-based organizations, and cross-sectoral partnerships, these leaders have created radically new solutions to daunting problems by looking beyond the boundaries of their immediate spheres of influence with an open heart and mind. Through unique collaborations with others, they have come to accurately understand the systems in which they work and live, identify a set of common goals, design strategies for both the short and long term-and achieve unprecedented results.

Effective collaborative action isn't easy. It takes profound levels of self-awareness, innovative leadership practices, highly tuned interpersonal skills, new analytical and thinking approaches, and creative organizational structures. To support the learning process, we have designed a comprehensive conference experience that includes:

• Speakers with years of commitment to and experience with successful collaborations, including Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline); Cristiano Schena (Caterpillar); Deborah Meier (Schools That Learn); Danah Zohar (Spiritual Capital); Bill Isaacs (Dialogos); John Sterman (MIT); and Julius Walls, David Rome, Wendy Powell, and Rodney Johnson (Greyston Foundation and Greyston Bakery)
• Sessions on systems thinking for those who are new to the tools as well as for those who want to further advance their capabilities
• World Café conversations that foster collective inquiry, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation
• Skill-building and case study workshops that offer opportunities to practice and experiment with new ways of working together
• Ideas for implementing what you've learned when you return to the workplace

Bring your current and potential partners—and your vision of creating a better future for yourself, your organization, your community, and the world.

REGISTER BY SEPTEMBER 30 for the 2004 Pegasus Conference $1095—and save $500 off the standard rate! "Building Collaborations to Change Our Organizations and the World: Systems Thinking in Action®" will be held on December 1–3 at the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Register on our web site or call 1-800-272-0945.

DOWNLOAD the Final Brochure PDF

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!
 



  Copyright 2004 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.