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November 11, 2006 Issue 80



"Most are engaged in business the greater part of their lives, because the soul abhors a vacuum and they have not discovered any continuous employment for man's nobler faculties."
—Henry David Thoreau

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."
—Ellen Parr



Give Learning and Give a Better World!

For many of us the end of the year presents an opportunity to pass along to our friends and colleagues the ideas that can make a difference in their lives and the world. Learning is truly "the gift that keeps on giving" for many years and to many people. It's the highest-leverage action you can take to help create a better future.

This holiday season Pegasus has created the "Give a Better World" gift brochure to highlight a number of ways to put this world-changing strategy into action.

Download the brochure now. Below are some gift ideas and bargains from the brochure. Happy Giving!

Gift brochure prices are in effect only through December 31, 2006.

NEW!
Learning for Sustainability
by Peter Senge, Joseph Laur, Sara Schley and Bryan Smith

Featuring the work of a number of members of the SoL Sustainability consortium, this new resource was written as a vehicle for sparking conversation and encouraging dialogue about how to develop the confidence and capabilities to create a world we will be proud to leave our grandchildren. The collection of twelve articles and exercises is based on the Fifth Discipline fieldbook format, and is intended for leaders at all levels, engaged in all types of enterprises, local and global. (Society for Organizational Learning, 2006)
Order #ST014 • Softcover book, 110 pages • $15.00

NEW!
Liberating Greatness:
The Whole Brain Guide to an Extraordinary Life
by Hal Williamson

Part memoir and part science-in-action, Liberating Greatness:The Whole Brain Guide to an Extraordinary Life integrates hard-learned life lessons with the latest in neuroscience to illustrate how to rewire your brain to create the future you've always wanted. By understanding how the brain's neural pathways work, learning basic systems principles, and using simple mental tools, you can unlock your inner capacity and liberate your own greatness. With a storyteller's flair, author Hal Williamson, creator of the celebrated “Pathways to Greatness” seminar series, describes how he and others have put these concepts into practice to live a life of meaning and impact. (Word Association Publishers, 2006)
Order #ST015 • softcover, 322 pages • $17.95

SPECIAL!
The Systems Thinker™ Newsletter
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Individual and Gift Subscriptions to
The Systems Thinker
• Order #TSTFE • 1-year individual subscription • $89.00 (a $30 savings!)
• Order TWO 1-year subscriptions and get the second for just $50.00!
• Order THREE 1-year subscriptions and get the third for just $25.00!
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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, its annual Systems Thinking in Action® Conference, and other events.
 



PEGASUS CONFERENCE UPDATE
 • The Conference Is Sold Out!
• Watch For Our Conference Report-Out in December Leverage Points

LEARNING LINKS
Conflicting Goals: Structural Tension at Its Worst
FROM THE FIELD
Karma Capitalism 
 



PEGASUS CONFERENCE UPDATE

16th Annual Pegasus Conference
Leading Beyond the Horizon: Strategies for Bringing Tomorrow into Today's Choices
Westin Waltham-Boston Hotel
Waltham, Massachusetts, November 13–15, 2006


• The Conference Is Sold Out!

We are pleased to announce that the 2006 Pegasus Conference is sold out.

Thank you to all of our registrants! Every year we make our best effort to top the previous year's conference, and we are confident we have succeeded again this year. We are delighted and gratified to have inspired all of you to seek out the 'learning experience like no other' that is created every year by the Pegasus Conference community. Get ready to be energized by remarkable transformative processes and dazzled by striking insights that explode from the powerful synergy of people, ideas, and community.

We look forward to seeing you on November 13th! Seats are still available in all of the Pre-Conference sessions.

• Watch For Our Conference Report-Out in December Leverage Points

We'll bring back the hottest news and the latest buzz from all the conference excitement. Get the inside story on the best new ideas to emerge from the community and stay connected with fellow participants. Look for video and audio highlights as well as graphic recordings from the conference.
 



LEARNING LINKS
Conflicting Goals: Structural Tension at Its Worst
by David Peter Stroh

Managers everywhere continuously face the challenge of achieving conflicting goals. How you respond to these challenges powerfully influences your organization’s ability to achieve one, both, or neither of these goals.

Torn Between Two Goals

There are two basic ways in which conflicting goals manifest themselves. In the first, the need to achieve two different goals puts pressure on the organization to simultaneously take more (B1) and less (B2) of an action that affects performance relative to both. Given the impossibility of satisfying both conditions at once, the organization usually achieves one objective at the expense of another.

Tips for Tackling Conflicting Goals

How can you manage the unintended consequences that typically arise from a conflicting-goals situation? First, acknowledge that these conflicts exist. Second, ensure that the two goals are explicit and that the consequences of trying to achieve both at the same time are understood. Third, test whether both goals should be considered equally important. Fourth, consider sequencing the achievement of the goals by expediting one and delaying the other. Finally, challenge the very assumption that the two goals are in conflict. By inquiring more deeply into priorities, managers often realize that some seemingly conflicting goals are in fact aligned.

Conflicting goals are an inescapable part of organizational life. Although you can’t always prevent such dilemmas from arising, you can control how you respond to them. You can deny them or act in ways that make them worse. Or, you can develop creative approaches that will actually increase your ability to achieve what you want. With practice, you might even be able to challenge the very assumption that the conflict is inevitable!

Read the complete article.

Subscribe to The Systems Thinker.

 



FROM THE FIELD
Karma Capitalism

A new management style based on ideas from Indian philosophy and embracing soft touch concepts such as emotional intelligence and servant leadership may be supplanting the aggressive “greed is good” executive mindset that went belly-up with the Enron debacle and the tech bust.

The October 19 issue of Business Week dubs this new approach “Karma Capitalism” and reports on the disproportionate and influential contributions of Indian management gurus (not to mention swamis) to creating corporate cultures that balance the interests of shareholders with those of workers, customers, the environment, and society as a whole.

In addition to the broad social implications, many managers are finding in this approach guidance on their own paths to personal fulfillment. Management courses that teach mental or yoga exercises drawn from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita are catching the interest of the highly-successful-but-miserable executive seeking emotional equanimity and better relationships with coworkers.

As the behemoth Indian economy, itself marked by extreme inequities, becomes a more dominant factor in world commerce, these ideas may bring a new vision of responsibility to managers who want their companies to both do well and be a source of good for society.

Read the source article in Business Week.

 



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