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Our hearts go out to the people of China
and
Myanmar as they
come to terms with
their losses and begin to rebuild. At a time when many
of us in the Pegasus office are preoccupied with
happy new beginnings in the form of gardens,
weddings, and commencement ceremonies, we are
ever mindful of our interdependence with our faraway
neighbors. Pegasus has made a donation to
relief efforts in both regions.
| When Relationships Get Stuck |
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An interview with Diana McLain
Smith
by Vicky Schubert
Diana
McLain Smith is the author of the
new book Divide Or Conquer: How Great Teams
Turn Conflict into Strength (Portfolio/Penguin
Group, June 2008). She is a partner at the Monitor
Group, a global management consulting firm, where
she teaches, consults, and conducts research, as
well as a founding partner of Action Design. She
recently spoke with Leverage Points editor
Vicky Schubert about her work.
It was somewhat of a Goldilocks moment that
nudged Diana McLain Smith in the direction of
organizational relationships. After studying political
science as an undergraduate, she began her
professional life as a community organizer, but she
soon determined that political systems were just too
big to get her arms around.
She shifted her focus to kids and their families,
working with an adolescent mental health clinic and
then the Cambridge Family Institute where she started
thinking about families from a systemic perspective.
But she soon began to feel that family systems were
too small to keep her engaged. "When I trundled off to
Harvard to get a masters degree in consulting
psychology," she explains, "I met Chris Argyris and
Don Schön and encountered organizations for the first
time. That felt 'just right' for me, because organizations
combined the impact and dynamics you find in large
systems with the more intimate aspects of
interpersonal relationships."
Diana recognized significant differences between
understanding relationships in a family context and
understanding them in business, where the interplay
between formal roles and informal affinities is so
complex. She decided to focus not just on helping
individuals develop insight and interpersonal skills
but on trying to determine how relationships really
work in a business context, particularly in teams.
The Waiting Game
Early on, Smith started bumping up against what she
calls "the waiting game," a debilitating dynamic in
which each person on a team is waiting for someone
else to change before changing themselves. A
dramatic run-in with the waiting game got her hooked
on relationships for good. She had been working with
the top team at a well-known, highly regarded
manufacturing firm for eighteen months, using all the
organizational learning and team design skills she
had in her arsenal. But no intervention could get this
group to move seriously in the direction of improved
performance. Their abysmal progress forced the
board to fire the CEO and half the team--and of course
Diana and her partner went out with them.
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| Are You the Next President of Pegasus Communications? |
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Pegasus Communications (Waltham, MA), a
leading conference and publishing company in the
fields of systems thinking and organizational learning,
is seeking a president to take the company to its next
stage of development. Current president Ginny Wiley
will be stepping out of the position in late 2008; after
more than a decade of providing inspired leadership,
she seeks flexibility and more personal time. The new
president will join a strong, experienced staff of 9
employees in building on the successes of the recent
past--including the company's most successful
annual conference in a decade--while seeking new
markets and business
opportunities.
Click here for more details about the position and
information about the application process. And
feel free to share this link with anyone with a passion
for systems thinking!
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| Register for Serious Fun with Systems Thinking Workshop |
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An intensive introductory workshop
Facilitator: Ginny Wiley, president,
Pegasus Communications
After this entertaining full-day, fast-paced, small
group training you will have the foundation you need to
start using systems thinking immediately to:
- Get unstuck from persistent problems
- Understand the dynamics that are driving your
results
- Avoid the unintended consequences of short-term
thinking
- Make smarter decisions that lead to lasting
improvement
WHEN: Monday, June 16, 2008; 9:00-
5:30
WHERE: Waltham, Massachusetts
COST: $695 through May 31; $795 May 31-
June
16
Fee includes continental breakfast, lunch, and a
generous selection of take-home
materials
Workshop limited to ten participants
Call for more information: 781-398-9700; or send your
questions by email.
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| One More Week to Save $400 |
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Synergy at Work:
Gathering Momentum for Meaningful Performance
November 17-19, 2008 - Boston, MA
The Pegasus Conference has sold out for the last
two years. If you're planning to be part of the
conversation this year and take home powerful new
tools for positive change, I urge you to sign up soon.
As an added incentive for acting quickly, you will save $400 off the full
registration fee if you register by May
31.
Check your mailbox for the final conference
brochure which you should have received by now.
Inside you'll find details on...
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