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It has been two years since Hurricane Katrina tore
into the Gulf Coast shocking us all with a sense of
vulnerability and dismay. Now, as the slow process of
recovery continues, the storm's most enduring legacy
may lie in the lessons it has to teach us about
leadership. With its success stories grounded in
courage and personal responsibility, Katrina calls us
to appreciate the value of action learning and leading,
not just in the face of disaster, but in response to the
accelerating complexities of every facet of our
lives.
| Remember New Orleans: Lessons in Leadership Two Years after Katrina |
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Nancy Margulies is one of the
pioneers of the World Café and the developer of the
visual recording methodology called Mindscaping.
She has actively supported recovery efforts in New
Orleans through her art and through facilitated
conversations both in the city and around the country.
On the two-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, she
took some time to reflect with Leverage Points
editor, Vicky Schubert, on what we have learned from
the disaster and its aftermath.
LP: What led you to your personal
involvement with the survivors of Hurricane Katrina?
NM: My son is a jazz drummer who went to
school in New Orleans and lived there for six years.
Through him, I experienced the city's wonderful sense
of community, exemplified in the way that older
musicians really mentor younger ones. The first night
we were there, we went to hear a musician who was
from our home town of St. Louis. When he learned
that Evan was in the crowd, he said, "New Orleans,
this is Evan Howard. He just arrived. Let's have him
come up and play a set with us." That is typical of how
people there make you feel welcome.
When the news broke about Katrina, I could not
stop watching television. Seeing these people on their
rooftops waving for help, going so long without
rescue, I felt ashamed for our country that we could let
this happen. When I got home, I began a series of
paintings drawn from the newspaper images that we
had all seen. I didn't want this crisis to die in people's
awareness. I also made a poster, showing a mask
fading into water, that says, "Remember New
Orleans."
See Nancy's gallery.
LP: How did you use these works to
contribute to the recovery effort?
NM: I realized that I could do more than
just use my paintings as a way to express my
feelings. I offered posters of them for sale and sent
the money to nonprofit groups in New Orleans. And I
started hosting World Cafés--not initially in New
Orleans, but here in my own community--with the
paintings displayed around the room. I asked
people, "What can we learn from what happened in
New Orleans?"
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| Workshop Discounts for Teams of Ten or More |
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Workshop Discounts for Teams
of Ten or More
This year's Pegasus
Conference is almost completely sold out, but we hate
to have to turn anyone away. With the prospect of a
cap on general conference registrations looming, our
pre- and post-conference workshop presenters have
agreed to extend a 20% discount on the price of their
sessions to groups of ten or more people registering
together.
Save now when you register your team of ten or
more for one of the following learning opportunities:
PRE-01--The Art of Hosting and Convening
Conversations in Organizations and
Communities;
Sat./Sun., Nov. 3-4, 9:00-5:00; $1116 per person for a
group of 10 or more
PRE-02--The Change Lab: Putting the U-Process
into Practice; Sun., Nov. 4, 9:00-5:00; $716 per
person for a group of 10 or more
PRE03--Mastering Uncertainty; Sun., Nov. 4,
9:00-5:00; $716 per person for a group of 10 or
more
PRE04--Theory U in Action: Leading from the
Future As It Emerges; Sun., Nov. 4, 9:00-5:00;
$716 per person for a group of 10 or more
POST-01--Facilitation Tools for Improving
Organizational Effectiveness; Thurs./Fri. Nov.8-9;
$1116 per person for a group of 10 or more
Click here for pre-conference workshop
descriptions.
Click here for post-conference workshop
description.
A limited number of seats are still available for the
full conference. Register now to secure your
spot.
REMINDER: There are just
a few rooms left in our reserved block
of sleeping rooms which closes October 12. If you
have registered for the conference but
haven't yet reserved your hotel room, please
click here to make your reservation,
while there are still rooms available at a
discounted rate. If the hotel reports that the block is
full, please contact us for assistance.
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| If everyone lived like you... |
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Among the many resources now available to help
us measure and reduce our carbon footprint, few are
as entertaining as American Public Media's
Consumer Consequences, an interactive
game designed to illustrate the impact of American
lifestyles on the Earth (though calibrated on American
lifestyles, the game is an eye-opener regardless of
where you're sitting). As you respond to a series of
questions about your daily life, the game calculates
your impact on the planet's finite number of
biologically productive global acres. Find out how
many Earth's we would need to sustain all 6.6 billion
of its current inhabitants if they all lived like you, and
discover the highest leverage areas for making
change in your own life. This game is not just for kids,
but they'll love it, too.
Use the "Forward Leverage Points to a
friend" link below to share the game and to share
Leverage Points with
colleagues, friends, and family.
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Build a Learning Culture |
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Save Over 30%
To help introduce the latest addition to our
bestselling workbook series, for a limited time we are
offering all three workbooks for one low price of $99!
With the publication this month of The
Learner's Path: Practices for Recovering Knowers,
by Brian Hinken, we have expanded the range of
resources available to you for building and sustaining
a learning culture in your team or organization.
Praise for
The Learner's
Path:
"Brian Hinken displays a sound grasp of the key
concepts of organizational learning, honed through
years of learning and teaching others. With
compelling personal stories, he has synthesized
these concepts in a clear, well organized presentation
that will help readers make themselves better
learners."
--Robert Putnam
Partner and Cofounder, Action Design
Practical and effective, our workbooks are
designed to help you increase your understanding
and skill in key areas of systems thinking and
organizational learning. By providing clear,
fundamental instruction and plenty of practice
exercises, they also give you the confidence to apply
what you learn in real-world settings. Ideal for self-
study as well as group learning, these volumes are
our most comprehensive, practical introductions to
organizational learning, systems thinking, and the
systems archetypes.
Buy The Learner's Path: Practices for
Recovering
Knowers
Buy
Systems Archetype Basics: From Story to
Structure
Buy Systems Thinking
Basics: From Concepts to Causal
Loops
BUY THE
THREE-WORKBOOK SET
First Time on
DVD
 Reflective Conversation: Art
and Possibility
Robert
Putnam
Major learning opportunities often
come in the guise of intergroup conflicts, clashing
priorities, errors, and missed commitments. In order
to create intentional learning from these situations,
organizations must be able to talk productively about
difficult issues. The ways people usually deal with
conflict, however, actually prevent--rather than
encourage--learning. In this classic presentation, Bob
Putnam discusses how the unconscious creation
of "undiscussable" topics hinders team and
organizational learning. He also offers possibilities for
creating reflective conversation for surfacing and
addressing such issues.
Order
#V9623D; DVD, 54 min., $79.00
"The leaders who
work most effectively, it seems to me, never say 'I'. And
that's not because they have trained themselves not to
say 'I'. They don't think 'I'. They think 'we'; they
think 'team'. They understand their job to be to make
the team function. They accept responsibility and don't
sidestep it, but 'we' gets the credit.... This is what
creates trust, what enables you to get the task done."
--Peter. F Drucker
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