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November 18, 2004 Issue 56



"It is for us to pray not for tasks equal to our powers, but for powers equal to our tasks, to go forward with a great desire forever beating at the door of our hearts as we travel toward our distant goal."
—Helen Keller

"A community is like a ship; everyone ought to be prepared to take the helm."
—Henrik Ibsen



A Systems Approach to Undermining Terrorism by Barry Richmond

This presentation by Barry Richmond was given at the 2001 Pegasus Conference, just a month after the September 11th terrorist attacks. Like many others, Barry was deeply concerned about the attacks and how Americans should respond to them. The original title of this talk was "Improving Performance: A Framework and Set of Thinking Skills for Simplifying Complexity."

In light of the attacks, Barry decided to apply the framework and skills to generate insights about how to undermine terrorist activity. The presentation vividly shows Barry's virtuosity in applying systems thinking to the most gripping and relevant issues of the day and his commitment to finding a way forward to a better future for all. His untimely death in August 2002 left a gap in the field of system dynamics as well as in the lives of his friends, family, and colleagues.

The original video was intended only for archival purposes and was recorded on consumer-grade videotape. Because of the importance of the content, we're releasing the program despite minor aesthetic shortcomings.
Order #V0101D, DVD format, 84 min., $125.00

Pegasus 2004 Fall Catalog Just Released

Download our latest catalog, which includes our newest products, or send an e-mail to Customer Service to request a print copy, or call 1-800-272-0945.


Resources on Facilitating Conversations
Dialogue at Work: Skills for Leveraging Collective Understanding by Glenna Gerard and Linda Ellinor
This volume in our Innovations in Management Series explores how the practice of dialogue can help organizations harness the combined intelligence of their employees, unleash widespread creativity, and inspire new levels of motivation. The authors highlight the core skills of dialogue, share success stories from workplaces that have used them, and offer initial steps that individuals and groups can take to begin to transform their organizational cultures.
Order #IMS017, softcover, 16 pages, illustrated, $10.95
Order #IMS017E, PDF, 16 pages, illustrated, $10.95 Volume discounts available

The Art of Powerful Questions: Catalyzing Insight, Innovation, and Action by Eric E. Vogt, Juanita Brown, and David Isaacs; illustrations by Nancy Margulies
In a growing number of organizations, leaders are discovering that crafting powerful questions is a key skill in today's knowledge economy. Questions open the door to dialogue and discovery and can lead to action on important issues and ignite change. This volume provides a practical framework for formulating powerful questions, a set of skills for leading "inquiring systems," and examples of companies that have created business value by improving the quality of their questions.
Order #WC03, softcover, 16 pages, illustrated, $10.95

The Potential of Talking and the Challenge of Listening featuring Adam Kahane
In this video, Adam Kahane describes how diverse teams of people in troubled regions, including South Africa, Northern Ireland, Israel, Guatemala, Colombia, and Argentina, have grappled with some of the toughest conflicts in the world by talking and listening in new ways. The lessons he has learned from these encounters can help us become more effective in how we approach the thorniest problems we face, whether at home, at work, in our communities, and in the world at large.
Order #D0301, DVD, approx. 55 min., color, $125
Order #V0301, VHS, approx. 55 min., color, $125

Private Conversation: The Left-Hand Column
This handy reference tool illustrates the two dialogues that we continuously have: one in public that we share with others, and the other in private that we keep to ourselves. Includes a diagram of the special format developed by Chris Argyris; an example from an actual left-hand column exercise; comments on the tool's benefits and risks; and guidelines for using the tool in a group.
Order #PG04, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2-inch laminated guide, $5.00, volume discounts available

Productive Conversations: Using Advocacy and Inquiry Effectively
This guide presents a handy diagram for understanding the impact of various ratios of advocacy (stating one's views) to inquiry (asking a question) during a conversation. Includes short suggestions for improving the quality of both advocacy and inquiry, as well as general guidelines for productive conversations.
Order #PG06, 5-1/2 x 8-1/2-inch laminated guide, $5.00, volume discounts available



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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.
 


 

15th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL OFFER!

To celebrate the 15th anniversary of the founding of Pegasus Communications, get a subscription to The Systems Thinker® Newsletter for $55.00—a 50% discount—when you purchase the Systems Thinking Learning Package ($100). This learning package includes many useful resources, such as our new e-book Getting Started with Systems Thinking: Tools for Organizational Change.

When you place your order, use Order #LP0401TST. This offer is good through December 31, 2004.
 



FACE TO FACE
 From Chronic Conflict to Mutual Learning and Collaboration: An Interview with Corky Becker
LEARNING LINKS
Questions to Shape the Future

PEGASUS CONFERENCE CORNER
A Learning Gift for the Holidays

FROM THE FIELD
How to Avoid Surprises We Don't Want to Happen
 



FACE TO FACE
From Chronic Conflict to Mutual Learning and Collaboration: An Interview with Corky Becker

Corky Becker is a founding associate of the Public Conversations Project (PCP), an organization committed to helping people enter into dialogue about polarizing issues related to values, identity, and world view. As a clinical psychologist and family and couples therapist, she has spent many years developing strategies for helping people interact differently with each other. Through her work at PCP, Corky has become involved with "Let's Talk America," a nationwide movement to promote inclusive, nonpartisan, and respectful discussion about the future of democracy. At this year's Pegasus Conference, Corky will be facilitating a "Let's Talk America" session—the session is open to the public at no charge (click here for more information).

In the following interview conducted by Leverage Points editor Kali Saposnick, Corky talks about the process of developing safe spaces for people in extreme conflict to converse in ways that allow them to understand and support each other. She also discusses the dynamics that polarize people around hot topics and how to shift the conversation to promote mutual learning and collaboration.

Leverage Points: How has your background in clinical psychology and family therapy influenced your work with the Public Conversations Project?

Corky Becker: Much of my experience has been working with couples and families in chronic conflict. Before I began working at the Public Conversations Project, I had been examining the effects of the vicious cycle of blame/attack/defend on families and couples, and developing strategies for helping people interact differently. This cycle creates a victim-villain relationship in which people blame, negate, and overgeneralize, creating defensiveness in others. It then becomes very hard for couples or family members to feel a sense of intimate connection, to reflect openly on their experiences, or to find ways to problem-solve creatively together.

This work translates pretty directly to the Public Conversations Project. The idea for the group was born while Laura Chasin, the project's founder, was watching a televised debate on abortion. In the debate, the pro-choice and pro-life leaders were hurling invectives at each other and not listening, until finally the moderator had to stop them and say, "There's nothing going on here but a lot of noise." Laura invited a group of us, who were experienced family therapists and knew how to facilitate constructive conversations on extremely polarized topics, to put something together that would create a safe enough context for people to speak and listen to each other about differences of value, world view, or identity. We were interested in abortion because it had those qualities.

LP: What are some of the outcomes of your work? In what ways, if any, has the Public Conversations Project been able to build collaborations? Have any of these collaborations brought about large-scale change?

CB: First of all, our idea of an outcome is that people talk to each other differently. It's a very unusual idea, and most people would say that that isn't an outcome. We look at it as a process outcome. In fact, some staff at the Public Conversations Project would call it a "ripple effect" rather than an outcome or large-scale change.

Read the complete interview

Learn more about the 2004 Pegasus Conference

Explore resources on facilitating conversations

 



LEARNING LINKS
Questions to Shape the Future
by Elizabeth Sawin

Viagra may help to save endangered species. That was the odd-sounding headline of a recent Reuters story. It turns out that Viagra has reduced demand for reindeer antler velvet and Canadian seals' sex organs. For years, wildlife protection programs have been trying to protect those species, parts of which are used in Chinese cures for impotence. Because Viagra provides a cheaper, more effective remedy, demand for the organs of these animals is now diminishing.

This story has an amusing side, but also makes an important point about the transition to sustainability. Identifying and addressing fundamental needs can be a powerful point of leverage, where small efforts can create large changes. So, what are our real needs? Are they actually met in the ways we expect them to be?

These are hard questions because they reveal a growing tension in our society—between our assumption that we need an awful lot, which requires growing our economy endlessly, and the assumption that our basic physical needs could be easily satisfied on our finite planet if we could just be efficient with resources and equitable about their distribution. The rest of our needs are non-material—love, respect, appreciation, creativity, a sense of contribution—and the resources to meet them are virtually limitless, although not yet very well tapped.

How we see our needs shapes what we take from the earth. And the questions we ask shape how we see our needs. That is why we must ask questions—of ourselves and of others—about how we can best fill our needs, no matter how hard these questions are to raise. The future is at stake.

Read the complete article, or see The Systems Thinker, V14N4 (May 2003)

Subscribe to The Systems Thinker
 



PEGASUS CONFERENCE CORNER
A Learning Gift for the Holidays

Give yourself a "learning" gift for the holidays by registering now for the upcoming 14th annual Pegasus Conference. 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.

People from around the world who want to challenge the way they think, who want to grow and develop themselves and their organizations, who want to understand what it means to experience deep learning, and who want to contribute their own insights and hear their colleagues' stories will gather at this groundbreaking event. Together this highly motivated group of intentional learners will apply the tools of organizational learning and systems thinking in order to discover how to create collaborations that can truly effect the kind of change we want to see in our lives, our organizations, and our communities.

Register by November 22 for $1395—a savings of $200 off the standard rate! Register on our web site, or call 1-800-272-0945. Team discounts are still available.

Download the Final Conference Brochure

SPECIAL OFFER! 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
How to Avoid Surprises We Don't Want to Happen

Why do devastating yet predictable surprises happen so frequently in organizations? And, when they do, should leaders be held accountable for failing to thwart them? According to Predictable Surprises: The Disasters You Should Have Seen Coming and How to Prevent Them by Max H. Bazerman and Michael D. Watkins (Harvard Business School Press, 2004), vulnerabilities in three areas block people from dealing with foreseeable problems.

Psychological vulnerabilities stem from biased thinking that allows us to live in denial and undervalue risks, as well as from our tendencies to stick with the status quo and discount the future because of its distance from us. Organizational vulnerabilities come from structural barriers, such as departments that operate independently of one another and information that must filter up through hierarchies. Political vulnerabilities arise when groups can use the organization for their own benefit.

The recent shortage of flu vaccine in the U.S. exemplifies how psychological vulnerabilities lead to predictable surprises. For decades, health experts have warned of serious flaws in the nation's system for vaccine supply and distribution. While countries such as Great Britain have at least five suppliers to avoid disruptions, the U.S. has become dependent on only two, because most pharmaceutical companies find producing the vaccine financially unprofitable and have left the business. Had the federal government treated vaccines as a public good and provided appropriate subsidies for their production, this problem could have been avoided.

A key way for leaders to prevent such disasters is to assume a "veil of ignorance," that is, to look at a situation through non-partisan eyes. This involves rigorously challenging and testing our assumptions before making decisions. By allowing our point of view to be changed by reality, we can increase the wisdom guiding our actions and reduce the potential to be unpleasantly surprised.
—KS

Source: Martha Lagace, "Planning for Surprises," Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, October 25, 2004

 



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