Chapter 12: Reflections from Practice
FOUNDATION ▪ Participative is useless if u do not understand
Reflections From Practice
- Taking a systems view involves looking at how
dysfunctional behaviors result from interactions
among the parts of a system over time.
▪ Look systems as a HOLLISTIC APPROACH
PROTOTYPE is use generally to evaluate a
design or precision of a process. Used in variety
of concepts like grammars and semantics.
- also used as metaphor.
FOUNDATIONS
Shaping A Culture of Reflectiveness and Deeper
Conversation: Change through Conversation
Vivienne Cox, Executive VP, BP Alternative
Energy Ltd.
• The best way to people get the new
organizational model to work is to just get
people talking to one another.
• If each person could get better understand
what others did, we would begin to get a sense
of the possibilities, and the right structure and
design would flow from that.
Shaping A Culture Of Reflectiveness and Deeper
Conversation: Reflective Openness
Participative Openness exists when
organizational members have the freedom to
express themselves.
1 l yssa ପଓ
- also called EXPRESSIVE OPENNESS.
what have been shared and contributed.
Reflective Openness occurs when
organizational members allow themselves to
hear and understand what others are saying.
- based on skills
Reflective openness starts with the willingness
to challenge our own thinking, to recognize that
any certainty we have is, at best, a hypotheses
about the world.
- better than participative openness.
Robert Saillant, Senior Executive, Ford Motors
Company
• If you can get connected with what's inside of
you, you can be fearless in your openness.
• The core problem is that learning together
starts when we actually listen to one another
rather than just talk at one another. And
listening is not easy.
• Building an environment of reflectiveness
starts with our own willingness to open
ourselves, to be vulnerable to be "exposed".
Shaping A Culture of Reflectiveness and Deeper
Conversation: Growing People
Rich Teerlink, former CEO, Harley-Davidson
• Being truly committed to growing people is
an act of faith
• You have to believe in your heart that people
want to pursue a vision that matters, that they
want to contribute and be responsible for
results, and that they are willing to look at
shortfalls in their own behavior and correct
problems whenever they are able.
Shaping A Culture Of Reflectiveness and Deeper
Conversation: A Purpose Worthy of
Commitment
• Creating an environment where people can
grow starts with "having a purpose worthy of
people's commitment”.
• "Making money for a company is like oxygen
for a person, if you don't have enough of it
you're out the game." - Peter Drucker
Shaping A Culture of Reflectiveness and Deeper
Conversation: Transformative Relationships
• Transformative Relationships - naturally
grounded in presence and engagement,
authenticity, compassion, and the honoring of
personal power.
- Relationships are the container for a potential
of transformation
Organizations as Living Systems
Two distinct intellectual traditions behind the
systems viewpoint:
1. Engineering Theory of Systems - provides
practical tools like system archetypes and
computer simulation models for making sense
of complex, interdependent problems.
2. Understanding of Living Systems - helps us
appreciate the capacities of teams,
organizations, and larger systems to learn and
evolve.
- Combination of being practical and
understanding
Organizations as Living Systems: Machine Age
Thinking
2 l yssa ପଓ
"Seeing a business as a living system simply
means seeing it as a human community."
-Arie de Geus' book The Living Company
VISA - Inspired by abandoning our old
perspective and mechanistic model of reality
and embracing principles of living systems as
basis for organizing.
• One of the business world's best-kept secrets
• Doesn't look like a typical global corporation;
it has no publicly traded stock because it is
owned by its 20,000 member organizations
• Has no large corporate headquarters
• Lacks a typical high-profile CEO
• It was inspired by an image different from the
machine imagery accompanying most
corporations
VISA – Digital payment company, they
abandoned their own perspective
The source of all the problems today comes
from the gap of how we think and and how it
works.
Organizations as Living Systems: How The Work
Gets Done
Anne Murray Allen, former Head of IT and
strategy for the Ink Supply Organization at
Hewlett-Packard
• Knowledge is Social
• Knowledge is what we know how to do, and
we do things with another.
• Collaboration is the flip side of knowledge
management
• Knowledge Networks, Networks of
• Collaboration, how people work together to
create value and to create new sources of value.
- Organizational heritage
- Collaborate rather than competing
Chapter 13: Reflections from Practice
IMPETUS
IMPETUS - the force that makes something
happen or happen more quickly
- energy or driving factor that pushes you to
do something
• Building learning-oriented cultures is hard in
any work setting.
• Building learning-oriented cultures is
demanding because learning stretches us
personally, and it is always easier to stay in our
comfort zone.
A Different Approach to Change
Dorothy Hamachi-Berry, VP of Human
Resources at the International Finance
Corporation, part of the World Bank that invests
in private enterprise in developing countries
• Building aspiration and Capacity for Dialogue
and Inquiry
• People learned to be candid, to openly
disagree and to be intentional about surfacing
conflicts rather than skating around them.
Ad hominem
Balance the advocacy and inquiry, hence
you can produce a generative learning
strategy
You need to develop dialogue, mental
model, systems thinking
Building Adaptive Organizations: The
Future of It
Marv Adam, CIO of Ford Motors Company
Adaptive Organizations - organizations with
greater capacity to deal with ongoing
change
3 l yssa ପଓ
Adaptive – once the problem is there, you
can easily find a solution; being reactive
Generative – continuous learning, even
without a problem, you are devising ways
and means to learn
Two things standout in seeing a business as
a whole:
1. Extraordinary level of connectedness of
the organizations we are creating
2. Interdependent and volatile
environments we are operating in
"Systems modelling, collaboration and
dialogue, and looking for instances of too
much variability are the analogs in the
organizational system. If the can all be
combined effectively, they foster
innovations."
Archetypes are timeless
VOLATILITY, UNCERTAINTY, COMPLEXITY,
AMBIGUITY – Changes in environment
Building Adaptive Organizations: An
Adaptive Police Force
Khoo Boon Hui, Commissioner of Singapore
Police Force
• As with other core problems, their interest
is in not only reacting but diagnosing the
sources of these problems through working
closely with the community patterns.
• Trust and focusing on how people in the
organization relate to one another form the
basis of their core theory of success.
• As the quality of relationships
strengthens, the quality of thinking
improves.
• As the members of a team consider more
facets of an issue and share a greater
number of different perspectives, the
quality of their actions improves, which CHAPTER 14:
ultimately improves the results that they
can achieve.
STRATEGIES
Performance and Happiness
STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP
Vivienne Cox: getting people to talk with
one another in order to rethink a complex Learning has 2 levels:
organizational structure. LEVEL 1: Learning is assessed through
Hamachi-Berry: quality of relationships has performances and products
improved a lot
Adams: people feel more creativity and LEVEL 2: Learning Competency
satisfaction of accomplishment in situations *Level 2 is higher than Level 1
where they previously felt there was no way
to change the systems
Allen: it's all about productivity, personal
and organizational productivity
When people become more engaged in and
committed to their work, they are usually
willing to confront more difficult issues.
They are willing to risk doing things beyond
their comfort zone. They are even willing to
fail in pursuit of goals that really matter to
*Deep learning cycle – psychology, mental
them, rather than being trapped in avoiding
models, individual level, how do you enter
shortfalls.
organizational actions

People have one thing in common: THEY *Relationships – learn though constant
ARE NOT VERY HAPPY dialogue with other people

If we live our lives in pursuit of what *Beliefs and assumptions – mental models
matters most to us, and we do our work used in practice, personal biases
with people whose friendship we value, we
*Strategic Architecture – how it is envision
will have all the happiness we need.
Happiness is simply a by-product of a life
well lived.

4 l yssa ପଓ
 - The power of conversation
7. Working with “the others”
- The power of embracing
diversity
- *amplifying voices, echoing
8. Developing learning infrastructures
- The power of forever
- *Life long learning

First Step Matters

Learning Organizations are not
1. Guiding Ideas - constitutes why an built overnight. Most successful
organization exists (purpose), what we examples are the products of
seek to accomplish (vision), and how we carefully cultivated attitudes,
intend to operate (values) commitments, and
2. Theory, Tools, & Methods – refers to management processes that
how things work and the practical have accrued slowly and
means in applying theories, solving steadily over time. Still, some
problems, negotiating differences and changes can be made
immediately. Any company that
monitoring progress
wishes to become a learning
3. Innovations in Infrastructure
organization can begin by taking
a few simple steps.
EIGHT STRATEGIES IN BUILDING
LEARNING ORGANIZATION Starting is always the hardest.
1. Integrating Learning and Working
Finishing what you have started
- The power of reflection and is always the sweetest.
review
2. Starting where you are with
whoever is there
- The power of initiative and the
people
- *job mismatch
3. Becoming Bicultural
- The power of openness and
respect
4. Creating Practice Fields
- The power of play
5. Connecting with the core of the
business
- The power of connection
- *Top management is the core
of the business
- * if united, the better impact
6. Building learning communities

5 l yssa ପଓ
 GENERATIVE
CHAPTER 15: THE
• Expanding our capability, it is about
LEADER’S NEW WORK creating not just coping

THE PROBLEM • Anticipatory learning

Traditional view of leadership • Motivation is intrinsic - the energy for

 Heroes occasion - great men who
rise to the occasion
 Reinforces a focus on events and
charismatic control of those events
 Based on assumptions of people's
powerlessness, their lack of personal
vision and inability to master the
forces of change
change comes from the vision, form what
we want to create, juxtaposed with current
reality
GENERATIVE LEARNING
Grasping fundamental source of problems
not just symptoms vision

Current Management System Leaders are responsible for everyone's

learning
 Let the leaders do the thinking
Leader creates tension between where you
 Leadership by control
are and where you need to be
 Leadership by force of reward
Creative Tension
WHO CAN LEAD?
comes from seeing clearly where we
- Human Beings
want to be (vision) and telling the truth
According to Confucius, “to become a about where we are (current reality)
leader, you need first to become a human
being”
TRANSFORMATION
Leader’s new roles
LEARNING CATEGORIES
1. Leader as Designer
ADAPTIVE
- Builds foundation
• Coping with responding to the - Designs learning
environment infrastructures - can
integrate working and
• Maintenance learning
learning
• Motivation is extrinsic - the energy for - Designs technology for
change comes from attempting to get away communication
from an aspect of current reality that is - Designs guiding ideas - the
undesirable purpose, vision, and core

6 l yssa ପଓ
 values by which people will
live
- * the first one who sets the
standard for execellence
2. Leader as Teacher
- Helps people gain insight into
CHAPTER 16:
current reality - seeing the
gap SYSTEM CITIZEN(SHIP)
- serves as coach
- helps learners develop
difficult new skills
- begins as a learner
- * Always practices
benevolence and care
3. Leader as Steward
- Advocates
servant leadership - serve
first by creating
opportunities for people to
contribute to organizational
purpose Vague Interdependence
- Serves & protects the others,
 Globalization and Future are alien to us
the people, and the purpose
- We can define but the impacts
- Commits stewardship - doing are unknown
what is right for the whole  Networks of Mutuality
which requires courage.  We have never been here before
- Embracing new culture
LEADER'S NEW SKILLS
- Xenocentrism
1. Building shared vision  Lack of concern about how our
decisions affect people and larger living
2. Surfacing and testing mental models systems thousands of miles away
- Interdependent but lack of
3. Developing systems thinking
concern
- Oblivious
- If people will create policies
that will divide society, it will
soon vague.
- Religious (going to church
regularly) there are criticisms
because they try to divide
people

7 l yssa ପଓ
 - Spiritual (its within you,
connection with God)

Societies Waking Up
 Kyoto Protocol
- Started in Japan
 OEU's Extended Producer Responsibility
- Part of corporate social
What Does All This Mean for Leadership?
responsibility
 China's Circular Economy - A kind of leadership that calls
- Minimize waste, upcycling(form for:
of recycling but transforming - Systems intelligence
into a better one)
- Building Partnership across
- Lean innovation (eradicating
boundaries
the unnecessary processes)
- Openness of Mind, Heart,
Insurers, Consumers, and Investors Taking and Will
A Stand
Systems Citizenship
 The terms of global trade often unfairly
favour the rich  Systems Intelligences
 Corporate Social Responsibility - Seeing patterns of
- Sustainability of sources interdependency
- Sources are growing - Seeing into the future
arithmetically
“Once people start to see systemic patterns
Business Discovering They Cannot Go It and understand the forces driving a system,
Alone they also start to see the systems is headed
 The global food system is the world’s
if nothing changes”
greatest generator of poverty  Building Partnerships with “The
 Race to the Bottom Other”
- Because of being competitive
- Takes time and real
- Octopus way
commitment
 Sustainable Food Lab
- Strength comes from
differences
*unity in diversity, multiple
intelligences
- Myth of the Management
team

8 l yssa ପଓ
 *opinions clash, results to a
synthesis, management
should understand both
sides
- Organizations are coercive
systems
*lessen being coercive
 Openness
- No “right model” for a
complex system
- Judge based on usefulness,
not absolute accuracy
*not all things are used in all
situations
- We are all part of the
problem
*hence, we are all part of
solution

“To become a leader, first

become a human being”
Confucius

9 l yssa ପଓ