In fact, such an event did occur in Sweden in 1992, when the OK Petroleum company successfully lobbied for an increase in the country’s tax on leaded gasoline. This surprising action stemmed from OK’s development of a high-octane (98) lead-free automobile fuel, which burned cleaner than other fuels while still maintaining high performance. The Swedish government agreed to the tax because it was in alignment with its own clean air policies and with international conventions that it supported. Since OK had the only lead-free product on the market, the gas tax gave the company a significant price advantage at the pumps. “The competition was forced to follow suit,” explained OK’s Per Wadstein, leading to cleaner air for all of Sweden.

Economy vs. Ecology

Economy and ecology arc often pitted against each other in the “profitability versus environment” debate. There is a perception that companies can either prosper financially or take care of the earth, but not both. However, as OK Petroleum showed, these pursuits do not have to be mutually exclusive. In fact, ecology and economy derive from the same Greek root, eco, meaning house. (Ecoloqy stands for “study of the house,” and economy means “management of the house.”) This etymology suggests that the two concepts are not contradictory, but actually part of the same larger idea. I low, then, can we study and manage our “house” (the earth) in ways that benefit both industry and society over the long term?

The “Systems ‘Thinking for a Sustainable Future” initiative, based at the MIT Center for Organizational Learning, provides a set of principles, practices, and processes that recognize and reinforce the synergistic link between long-term economic and ecological development. It seeks to provide industrial decision-makers with both a conceptual, framework stud practical tools for building financially healthy companies that arc also ecologically sustainable. In addition, the initiative attempts to foster learning environments in which various stakeholders can grapple with the larger issues of the day. The hope is that within these settings, the participants will create presently unimaginable solutions to some of the world’s most intractable problems.

Sustainabillty

What do we mean by “sustainable”? A sustainable society is one that is self-perpetuating over the long term—meaning that it uses resources at a rare that does not exceed the rare at which they can be replenished, and that it produces waste materials at a pace that does not exceed the rare at which they can be reabsorbed by the environment. Within this framework, a sustainable organization can be described as a company that provides customers with goods and services for living a satisfying life, while maintaining both a healthy balance sheet and a healthy balance with the natural world.

Creating environmentally sustain-able business practices used to be considered a choice for businesses—an optional activity for those companies that had the time, energy, and interest. But now it is becoming a more mainstream concern, due to several trends:

• The marketplace is demanding “greener” products that reflect environmentally responsible management. Supermarket aisles are filled with products that proclaim their eco-friendliness—from phosphate-free detergent and acid-free paper to recycled cardboard and “dolphin-safe” tuna.
• Material resources are becoming more scarce, resulting in a rise in production costs in many industries. For example, integrated steel producers virtually disappeared in the U.S. during the 1980s because the costs of mining iron ore grew financially prohibitive as the availability of that resource decreased.
• Regulatory compliance is becoming an increasingly costly concern. One petroleum company’s environmental compliance costs topped $1 billion in 1994—a figure that exceeded the company’s net profit for the year.

How can business managers think systemically about a sustainable future? How can they balance needs for economic prosperity and ecological survival? To address these challenges, companies need to expand their current strategic thinking to include economic and ecological concerns—creating what W. Edward Stead and Jean Garner Stead call “sustainability strategies.”

A Conceptual Framework

The Natural Step movement. which originated in Sweden, offers clear conceptual framework for creating such sustainability strategies. Lei Dr. Karl-Henrik Robert. The Natural Step has proven to be one the most effective sustainability movements in the world, aligning diverse social business and ecological interests around fundamental scientific principles of natural systems. The Natural step process has been studies: and practiced by corporate managers, urban community members, youth at risk, and schoolchildren; it has been shared via books, audiotape, board game, or CD-ROM with every household in Sweden. It is an approach that does not blame any one sector of society for our current problems, but rather encourages all of us to find ways to contribute CO effective solutions.

The guiding principles of The Natural Step, known as the “four systems conditions,” are derived from the basic hews of thermodynamics: matter cannot disappear, and matter tends to dispense (see “The Four Systems Conditions”). By using the four systems conditions to evaluate whether their products and services are economically and ecologically sustainable, some of Sweden’s largest corporations have produced significant changes in their business strategies.

For example, the ICA supermarket chain in Sweden was asked frequently by its customers whether its refrigerators and freezers emitted CFCs, which are linked to ozone layer damage. After familiarizing themselves with the four systems conditions, ICA’s leadership engaged in a conversation with Electrolux (Eureka in the U.S.), their primary vendor of refrigeration products. Aware that CFCs, a non-biodegradable, unnatural compound, violated systems condition 2, ICA’s leaders asked Electrolux what it would cost to eliminate this compound from their existing inventory. After some technical hedging, Electrolux designers answered that it would take 1 billion Swedish crowns (approximately $140 million) to convert to soft freons—another persistent and unnatural compound, but one that is thought to be less damaging than CFCs. The CEO’s response was, “You want me to invest 1 billion crowns in a product, of which the only thing I know for sure is that it is doomed to failure?! Please come up with a more suitable alternative.”

Electrolux, which had not previously encountered The Natural Step, subsequently phoned Dr. Robert and asked him to come “talk about your damned systems conditions.” A short time later, the Electrolux team announced the development of an interim compound that does not harm the ozone and that is now successfully being manufactured and marketed as a “green” refrigerant. The company is also well on its way to producing a refrigerant that is biologically harmless. As a result of its work with Dr. Robert and his colleagues, Electrolux has begun employing The Natural Step method throughout the company, and is now using the four systems conditions as a framework for its strategic planning process.

Integrating Sustainability Strategies and Organizational Learning

While the four systems conditions offer a basic conceptual framework for creating sustainable business strategies, they do not provide a specific process whereby those principles can be used to develop and implement such strategies. This is where the disciplines and tools of organizational learning can help. For example, the tools and methodology of systems thinking provide a means to test the long-term implications of policy decisions on the wider environmental system.

Systems thinking can also provide an overarching framework for understanding the industrial, governmental, and environmental interactions that play a role in sustainable development (see “The Sustainability Challenge”). An overall increase in industrial productivity (such as the U.S. has experienced for most of the 20th century) leads to a reinforcing cycle of economic growth and profitability (R1), but it can also lead to an accumulation of industrial wastes in the environment. In the U.S., this has led to heightened regulatory pressures designed to reduced waste.

At the same time, increased consumer awareness of the environmental impact of production is leading to emerging new market opportunities in terms of “clean” technologies (B3), which, for those companies that invest in them, can lead to profitable alternatives to unsustainable production techniques (R4). However, the subsequent increase in regulatory compliance costs can constrain profits (B2), which can potentially limit industry’s ability to invest in “clean” technologies (R4).

The disciplines of team learning and mental models also have much to offer in that they can help generate more informed, productive conversations. In the ecology/economy debate, dialogue skills of genuine inquiry, deep listening, displaying one’s own line of reasoning, and respect for other view-points are critical, as are the ability to surface our mental models and to inquire into those of other people (see “The Power of Mental Models”). Through the use of dialogue and role-playing, we can gain deeper understanding of diverse points of view and bring out new ideas and solutions that a single point of view might not have produced.

In a recent learning laboratory at a petroleum company, for example, role-reversal, dialogue, and consensus-building tools were used to develop a new framework for environmental leadership. As part of the workshop, employees from the environmental engineering division took turns role-playing the traditional contestants in the environmental debate: “Government Bureaucrats,” “Tree-Hugging Environmentalists,” and “Big Bad Business.” By humorously taking on their worst perceptions of each other, participants were able to see beyond the stereotypes that they had placed on their professional adversaries.

The Sustainability Challenge

Heightened consumer awareness of accumulated industrial wastes has led to heightened regulatory pressures designed to reduce waste. However, the subsequent increase In regulatory compliance costs can constrain profits (B2) which can potentially limit Industry’s Investment in “clean” technologies (R4).

In the dialogue that followed, the engineers gained insights into the motivation, logic, and humanity of the various stakeholders, and were better able to understand the validity and utility of each point of view, even if the perspective challenged their own position. The engineers found that their subsequent meetings with EPA representatives on a difficult Clean Air Act project were significantly enhanced in terms of quality of communications, creativity of thinking, and efficacy of solution generated—all as a result of their experience in the workshop.

Organizational Learning for a Sustainable Future Integrating sustainability strategies and organizational learning—one approach focused on content (where we need to. go) and the other focused on process (how we’ll get there)—may hold unprecedented potential for producing sustainable ecological and economic development. We have termed this synergy Sustainable Organizational Learning (SOL). Although the development of SOL is only in its initial stages, we can imagine a variety of learning practices through which SOL practitioners will work toward long-term economic and ecological sustainability:

• Aligning industrial cycles and natural systems. Conversations around strategy and future planning will include the question, “What business activities should we engage in that will be aligned with the systems conditions for sustainability?” The answers to this question will strongly influence investment decisions with respect to new products and services. In this way, SOL practitioners will begin to align their company’s industrial cycles with natural systems.
• Building cross-company consortiums. By building consortiums of companies engaged in a similar inquiry, sustainable learning organizations will participate in company-to-company conversations that will enable them to learn from each other’s challenges and successes in the pursuit of sustainability strategies.
• Engaging in ongoing practice. By studying and practicing the disciplines of SOL, practitioners will foster new learning in themselves, their compa

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The Strategic Action Map

A strategic action map is a tool that helps teams think through, articulate, and implement high-leverage action strategies. It could be called a double loop strategy development tool, because it forces teams to go beyond seeking solutions within their current framework to take actions on that framework (for more about double loop learning in teams, see “Working in High-Leverage Zones with the Double-Loop Learning Matrix” in The Systems Thinker, V12N8).

In “Example of a Strategic Action Map,” notice that the gray portion in the middle (steps 8, 9, and 10) contains only three elements: phases, activities, and a timeframe. This is where the action is specified and

EXAMPLE OF A STRATEGIC ACTION MAP

A strategic action map is a tool that helps teams think through, articulate, and implement high-leverage action strategies.

progress is tracked. Notice also that this section contains pictures, for a little right-brain reinforcement of each item. Now, look at the surrounding areas of the map (steps 1-7). These sections literally frame the action portion of the map. This is where the framework, or basis, for the action is made explicit. When someone asks, “What are you planning to do?” you can show them the center of the map. When they ask, “Why are you doing that?” you can refer them to the frame around that action.

The map summarizes the following information: “We intend to go from our current condition (2) to our desired condition (3) by operationalizing the strategy (1) listed at the top of the page, and this is why we think this strategy will work (4). We have named the barriers we must overcome (5), we know what ‘success’ will look like (6), and we have considered the perspective of key stakeholders (7). What we will actually do is specified by the phases (8), timeframes (9), and activities (10).” Isn’t this the very stuff that a board of directors or leadership team would expect to know?

The Power of the Map

A strategic action map incorporates several of the organizational learning disciplines. In encompasses systems thinking by taking into account the “big picture” and the interests of key stakeholders throughout the system. It includes shared vision by establishing creative tension between our vision (desired condition) and our current reality (current condition). Additionally, a strategic action map supports team learning. Because teams complete the map together, members must make their assumptions about the change process explicit: Why are we trying this strategy, and what are we trying to create—really?

Because a strategic action map is more of a conversation facilitation tool than a precision planning tool, it is not a substitute for project management tools. However, we have found that, as a result of the high-quality conversation that this tool generates and the visual way in which the information is presented, we have less of a need for a deadline-driven tracking system. The work just seems to get done because of the high levels of synergy and alignment that creating the strategic action map as a group engender.

Completing the Map

As a first step for completing a strategic action map, the project team must analyze the problem situation and discover some new insights for addressing it. Team members then ask themselves specific questions at each of the 10 steps and enter the answers into a blank process map (you can easily create a template using Microsoft Visio or some other business drawing software package). A facilitator is usually helpful in guiding a group through the process.

1. Strategy. What is the goal and how do we intend to achieve it? Naming the “how” is the same as naming your strategy for this change initiative.

2. Current Condition. What is the current condition of the goal? What symptoms are you seeing? What data do you have? A little soul-searching goes a long way here. If a team has not already done so, developing causal loop diagrams at this point is helpful in describing “what is.”

3. Desired Condition. What is the desired condition of the goal? What is your vision for this change initiative? Notice that the team has just established creative tension by juxtaposing the current condition with the desired condition.

4. Strategy Assumptions. What leads you to believe that this change initiative will work? What has been tried in the past and why didn’t it work? Why do you even want this goal? This is where you test the strategy you have named in step 1. You must define clear reasons why you selected this strategy, so you can defend it when others ask you about it. Test the validity of the assumptions by asking questions such as: How often is this assumption true? When would this assumption not be true? What are some examples? Does anyone see it any differently?

5. Barriers/Obstacles. What barriers must we overcome for this change initiative to be successful? What are we up against?

6. Desired Accomplishments. How will we know that we have achieved the desired condition? What measurable outcomes will we see?

7. Key Stakeholders. What groups are affected by this change initiative? Whose view do we need to consider?

8. Phases of the Process. What phases (groups of activities) must we go through to move from the current condition to the desired condition? Add a symbol to represent each separate phase.

9. Timeframe. What are the dates by which each phase must be completed?

10. Activities. What specific actions or events must occur during each of the phases for them to be completed successfully?

Strategic Action Maps in Action

At GMHS, we develop strategic action maps for our organizationwide initiatives, as well as for smaller projects. We create our diagrams over the course of several meetings, refining and changing them as our thoughts percolate. The team that completes the map shares it with other associates to track progress, communicate action strategies, and induce further learning.

As an organization, we have found many of the mainstream business tools to be “too hard,” in that they fail to take into account the insights that emerge when participants compare their mental models. We have also found some of the organizational learning tools to be “too soft,” in that they don’t integrate enough measurement and concrete action steps. So, we have developed this hybrid tool that we think encourages insight for action—a way to operationalize our systems thinking all on one page.

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At each stage of the journey no matter how old we are, no matter how psychologically young we are we need to take stock of where we come from, where we are, and where we are going. These are the questions that the great writer Carl Sandburg asks through his protagonist in the novel Remembrance Rock. In that novel, the main character goes out every year to his “remembrance rock” and sits a spell to contemplate his life. He asks these questions: Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going? These three questions, it seems to me, imply a fourth: What is the meaning of my life? Like Sandburg’s hero, we have a responsibility to be cognizant of our journeys to take stock of things as we go, to sit a spell, to reflect. So today, painting in broad strokes, I’d like to talk about the journey of leadership, which really can be a journey into meaning and fulfillment. After all, leaders, according to Warren Bennis, are those who use who they are in creating solutions for tomorrow.

So who are we? It’s a good question, isn’t it? It’s a question that the novelist Mary Hood puts into perfect perspective in writing about the difference between Northerners and Southerners. She says, “Suppose a man is walking across a field. To the question ‘Who is that?’ a Southerner would reply by saying something like ‘Wasn’t his granddaddy the one whose dog and him got struck by lightning on the steel bridge? Mama’s third cousin dead before my time found his railroad watch in that eight-pound catfish’s stomach the next summer just above the dam. Big as Eunice’s arm. The way he married for that new blue Cadillac automobile, reckon that’s how come he’s walking like he has on Sunday shoes, if that’s who it is, and for sure it is.’A Northerner would reply to the same question (only if directly asked, though, never volunteering),‘That’s Joe Smith.’To which the Southerner might think (but be too polite to say aloud),‘They didn’t ask his name, they asked who he is!’” (Mary Hood, “On Being a Southern Writer,” River of Song Project www.pbs.org/riverofsong/pressroom/ pr-month.html).

By following our calling our passion we begin to discover more fully who we are.

Let’s talk for a moment about who we are. Whether you’re a banker, a lawyer, or a corporate leader, all of us want to have some kind of meaning in our lives. All of us want to make a difference. It’s not just making a living that matters, it’s making a life. Recently, I gave a talk to the top leaders of a great corporate entity. I asked them, “How many of you consider your work a calling?” Not one hand went up. At my own university, I asked our faculty the same question. Every hand went up. I submit to you that no matter what our business, we should consider it a calling, or else we ought to get out of it. By following our calling our passion we begin to discover more fully who we are.

What is it that makes work a calling? When I first became a dean at the University of Florida in 1972, I was the only woman dean in the entire state that was not affiliated with nursing or student affairs. I was a child psychologist and had no idea what a leader did, so I read all the books I could on the subject Power!, Looking Out for Number One, The Art of Deception, Dress for Success, Eat for Success, and The Art of Intimidation. All of them had the same thesis:, “I win, you lose.” Finally, I came across In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America’s Best Run Companies by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, which had a different message:, “It’s not what you know, what you wear, or what you eat that makes a difference. It’s what you believe about people.” Then just recently I read Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, and I found a similar message. Rather than focus on quick fixes or the flavor of the week, these last two books ask us to explore our meaning more deeply and discover the vision of our lives and careers. The best leaders again, according to Warren Bennis are those who enroll others in their vision.

The Decathlon Leader

A colleague and I have been working for a long time on the question, What constitutes leadership? I used to think of a leader as a solo performer, the hero at the helm, always of the command and control variety. Now I think that a leader must be like a decathlon athlete. Because they compete in 10 track and field events, decathlon athletes are good at many things, but they may not be the best at any one thing. Yet when they put it all together, they emerge as remarkable athletes.

Decathlon leaders are the same. We have so many responsibilities as leaders so many different roles to play and we cannot possibly be the best at everything we do. But we can learn to be good at many things and to surround ourselves with people who are enrolled in a shared vision of success.

On a trip I took to the Sequoia National Forest in California, the guide told me that sequoia trees are the largest in the world, the tallest being 300 feet high. Their roots are shallow, lying just under the earth. The secret to their growth is that each tree’s roots reach across to the roots of another sequoia, entangling them so that they can both stand tall. The guide said, “It’s impossible to see a solitary sequoia in the forest.” Isn’t this similar to the idea that we can only stand tall in the company of others who are working toward the same goal who share the same vision?

One of my faculty members recently brought me a story that illustrates the same point: If you take a cell of the heart of an animal and put it in a Petri dish, and then you take a cell from the heart of another animal and put it in the same Petri dish, the cells, each of which at first is beating to the rhythm of the original hearts, begin to beat together. Again, we work best when we work to create a new rhythm together when our hearts, you might say, begin to beat as one.

The decathlon leader believes in sequoias reaching across roots, in cells coming together and he or she invites others to share in work that goes forward joyfully.

QUALITIES OF A DECATHLON LEADER

Ten Characteristics

My colleague and I came up with 10 characteristics of a decathlon leader that is, 10 different ways in which we should address who we are, how we work together, and what our calling is, and then offer that truth in our organizations (see “Qualities of a Decathlon Leader”).

1. Be an Intentionalist.This means purposefully knowing what you believe and where you want to go. An interesting metaphor for this characteristic is the starfish. When starfish feed on oysters, they expend very little energy compared to someone using a knife with a great flourish to shuck open the oyster’s shell. Gradually, gently, and continuously, the starfish uses each of its five radially disposed arms in turn to keep steady pressure on the one oyster muscle. While one arm works, the others rest. Inevitably and irresistibly, the oyster shell opens, and the starfish has its meal.

   The starfish illustration offers one analogy for how the decathlon leader can address each and every part of an organization’s structure and culture. The five arms of the starfish might be considered metaphors for what I call the five P’s of an organization: people, places, policies, programs, and processes. Working intentionally with great purpose the decathlon leader can bring these five aspects of the institution into alignment, allowing for maximum return for minimal efforts. Everything about the institution should be intentionally inviting, and all efforts should be go toward reaching the same goal. Such intentional alignment eliminates wasted I’d like to define this idea of being an “intentionalist” a bit more fully by offering four ways of issuing invitations to others some negative and some positive. I think you’ll see that we all have it within our power to help change the culture of our institutions simply by being intentionally inviting in all that we do.

   • Being Intentionally DisInviting. How many of us have been intentionally disinvited from being a part of something? From being involved in our companies? African-Americans, women, Latinos, nonconformists, and disabled people have long been left out. And how can a company possibly succeed in the long run if it doesn’t show respect for its own employees? While we can never be sure that we are truly motivating others, we can intentionally invite them to see themselves as able, valuable, and responsible.
   • Being Unintentionally Disinviting. Often people don’t mean to be disinviting, but even the way we say “good morning” can make somebody feel either welcome or offended. Similarly, the places where we work the environment surrounding us can have a profound impact on our attitudes. Kennesaw State University has grown from 3,700 to 18,000 students since I’ve been president. When I first arrived, I found a cloistered little college with no flowers on the campus. It looked like an institution. I wanted to have flowers, but when I approached our plants manager about putting some in, he said, “We don’t have the staff or the money. We mow right to the walls, and it’s clean and pretty.” I asked him for a few potted plants, just to welcome some important officials on their upcoming visit, and he agreed. After geraniums were planted at the student union, I would regularly brag about them to everybody. What do you think happened? Our campus today is a riot of beauty. Do you know the number one reason why people apply to a certain college? The way it looks. To be unintentionally disinviting creates an unnecessary obstacle.

   

   • Being Unintentionally Inviting How many of you have people in your organization who are the salt of the earth? They do good things but don’t know how or why. For example, at our university, every year we give $1,000 dollars to the best teacher. I then ask that person to give a major talk to our campus on what makes them a great teacher. Every year I’ve gotten the same response: The teacher says, “I don’t want to do that. It just comes to me. I just get in there and teach.” I say, “I just gave you $1,000 dollars. I want you to talk about what makes you a good teacher.” They have to labor over the answer. Imagine getting that response if you asked the question to the pilot flying the plane you’re on. We have to be able to articulate, to validate, and to replicate that which we do.

   We have to be able to articulate, to validate, and to replicate that which we do.

   • Being Intentionally Inviting. To be intentionally inviting to others is to encourage them to see themselves as able, valuable, and responsible, and to find ways to invite them to get involved. One thing I recommend is to go back to your organizations and identify some of the unintentionally disinviting things that are happening there. Thankfully, we have laws that keep us from intentionally disinviting people. But if there are some unintentional ways in which the people, places, programs, policies, and processes of our organizations send a negative signal, let’s find those things and change them.
2. Be an Activist. I’ve found that there are four ways that people respond to change. As an illustration, imagine these responses to news of a party. The first response is “There is no party.” These people brighten the room when they leave it. They get that tone in their voice that says, “It won’t work. We tried that 32 years ago, it didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.” The second response is “There is a party, and I didn’t get an invitation.” Even if you declare that you sent the e-mail announcement to everyone, they didn’t get it, they’re not appreciated, and they’re not going. The third response is “There’s a party, and I’m invited, but I’m not going.” These people think they’re not good enough, with it enough, or smart enough. They’re the ones that say, “I’ve been to the party with all my hopes and buried them one by one.” The fourth response is “There’s a party, I’m invited, and I’m going.” They may not be with it enough, smart enough, or strong enough, but they might be and they are willing to try. Let’s invite people to come to the party who welcome change. Let’s be active and also surround ourselves with activists.
3. Be a Futurist. The great hockey player Wayne Gretsky, in a wonderful, almost Zen-like statement of his playing philosophy, said, “You skate to where the puck will be, not where it is.” To be a futurist means skating to where the puck will be. It involves anticipation, monitoring all the boundaries so that you have an informed idea of what will be coming next, and it requires a certain amount of risk-taking. Go and find out what the best practices are and put them into your own model of the successful institution. Better yet, experiment with creative practices of your own; be willing to put innovative ideas to the test. Don’t wait to play catch-up later in the game, but get ahead now by gearing your thinking toward the future.
4. Be an Optimist. Pessimists curse the wind. Optimists believe the wind will change. Winston Churchill said, “To accept change, you must change often.” The author Gail Godwin once described people as being either congealed or fluid. Congealed people reach final form in their youth; they get stuck in a role and repeat themselves. Fluid people are those who are constantly making new trysts with life.Optimists are also more willing to change, even when they have concerns about outcomes. The decathlon leader treats change not as a threat but as a necessary step in personal and professional growth. In The Nature of Leadership, Stephen Covey encourages leaders to approach change in precisely this way:, “For the effective leader, change is a friend, a companion, a powerful tool, the basis of growth.” Only the optimistic leader embraces change as a companion.
5. Be a Generalist. To be a generalist means knowing something interesting about many things. Oscar Wilde said that when you’re invited to a dinner party, you have a moral obligation to be interesting. I know people who go through life unimpressed. As a consequence, they’re boring. A generalist is a lifelong learner, always alert to fresh ideas and new subjects. He or she knows that lessons can be gleaned from the most unlikely sources, and finding them requires that we remain curious and inquisitive. We might lament with the poet the life so short, the art so long to learn but by keeping ourselves open to new knowledge, we will spend less time lamenting how little we know and more time discovering the true pleasures of lifelong learning.
6. Be a Pluralist. Decathlon leaders understand that honoring diversity is crucial to the work of being intentionally inviting, just as it is a key component of lifelong learning. Nearly 20 years ago, Dr. Ernest Boyer, former U. S. Commissioner of Education, wrote of the importance for students to “be informed about people and cultures other than their own.” He pointed out that “if students do not see beyond themselves and better understand their place in our complex world, their capacity to live responsibly will be dangerously diminished.” We can substitute leaders (or, indeed, human beings) for students in Boyer’s formulation and discover the importance of becoming a pluralist.To live responsibly, Boyer implies, is to look outside oneself. It means looking beyond everything that is immediate and familiar and comfortable. It means challenging yourself, perhaps the most important requirement of lifelong learning. Today, this imperative to look outside ourselves is more pressing than ever. For all of us, exposure to other cultures is essential if we are to prepare adequately for the future. The pluralist must learn to reach across boundaries to others in a spirit of tolerance and understanding.



7. Be a Minimalist. The minimalist is an expert at setting priorities and separating what demands our attention from what is merely there to distract us. Years ago, I read that, over a lifetime, the average American will spend seven years in the bathroom, six years eating, five years waiting in line, four years cleaning house, three years in meetings, one year searching for lost keys, eight months opening junk mail, and six months sitting at red lights. How much time will we waste on our computers or making calls on our cell phones? What can we minimize so that we can concentrate on what is truly important? Four and a half years ago, I gave up watching the 11 o’clock evening news. I had just heard our commencement speaker say that if you spend 15 minutes a day studying something you know nothing about, in one year you will become something of an expert on that subject. Besides, I knew that I would see and read the news the next morning anyway. Guess what I substituted for the first 15 minutes? Reading poetry. I am now something of an expert on poetry, and more importantly, it has enriched my life immeasurably. In the second 15 minutes, I practice putting on a golf machine. I now play golf in the low 80s if it gets any hotter than that, I just don’t play.

As soon as we show that we are willing to laugh at ourselves, we become more trustworthy, especially if we consistently show respect toward our colleagues and associates.

8. Be a Humorist. Don’t take yourself too seriously, but do take other people very seriously, indeed. There’s nothing more potentially damaging to professional relationships than the attitude of those who take themselves too seriously, and especially those who are constantly stroking their own egos. The world is much, much bigger than any one individual. As you can imagine, the academic world has more than its share of overfed egos, people who have fooled themselves into believing their opinions are the only ones that matter. How can such a person cordially invite our students to enter into lives of meaning, fulfillment, and purpose? Such professors are not modeling the essential humility that distinguishes the authentic scholar, who can say with Chaucer’s Clerk:, “Gladly would he learn and gladly teach.”We must be humble in our work, and we must be humble in our interactions with others. As soon as we show that we are willing to laugh at ourselves, we become more trustworthy, especially if we consistently show respect toward our colleagues and associates. Who could resist an invitation offered with humor and humility? It’s a winning combination for the decathlon leader.
9. Be an Inspiritist. Find enthusiasm for your work. Psychologist Abraham Maslow once described true creativity as work that goes someplace joyfully. In 1996 I was on the board of the Paralympics sports for athletes with disabilities when the games were held in Atlanta, Georgia. At the opening session, a young man with no use of his legs climbed hand over hand 96 feet up the Paralympics tower while clutching the torch. When he reached the top, he lit the torch and held it high with one hand. It was a remarkable triumph of the human spirit. Sometimes we forget how hard people must fight to succeed against the odds, and sometimes we surrender too easily to even the smallest obstacles in our way. We must be of good spirit. We must not be dismayed. How else will we raise the torch in triumph?
10. Be an Ethicist. This last characteristic of the decathlon leader really is the foundation for all the others. It has to do with character. It’s about doing the right thing, giving of yourself to a cause greater than yourself, giving something back. In 1982 Time magazine’s “Man of the Year” was a machine: the computer. Surely, there must have been someone a human being, I mean more deserving of the title. My choice that year would have been the man in the water in the Air Florida 90 crash. On January 13, 1982, an Air Florida plane hit the 14th Street Bridge over the Potomac River in Washington, D. C. (ice had formed on the wings) and began to sink as it landed in the water. Cameras documented the few survivors clinging to the aircraft’s tail as a hovering helicopter dropped life vests and a lifeline into the water. Time and again, one man reached for the lifeline, pulled it to himself, and then passed it along to someone else. Finally, when everyone else had been rescued, the helicopter returned for the man, but, too chilled by the cold, too diminished by his efforts to save the others, he slid beneath the waters and drowned before our very eyes on television.He was an ordinary burly, balding, mustached man. When I think of him, I think of Joseph Campbell’s idea of the “hero with a thousand faces.” And that is what heroes are: Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. Later, I learned he worked at the Federal Reserve Bank in Georgia and went to Peachtree Presbyterian, where my husband and I worship. You see how close it gets?Four years ago, as I gave the commencement address at the Citadel, the Military College of South Carolina, something possessed me to put away my formal talk and share the episode of the last man in the water. I noticed that everyone was being very, very attentive, and when I sat down, the Citadel’s general walked to the microphone and said, “Oh, Dr. Siegel, closer than that. He was a graduate of the Citadel.” This summer, as I gave the baccalaureate address at Woodward Academy in Atlanta, again I put aside my formal remarks and closed with this story. And again, I noticed everyone being very attentive. At the end of my talk, the headmaster said, “Oh, Dr. Siegel, closer than that. He was the father of one of our graduates.

We make our living by what we get, but we make our lives by what we give.

The “hero with a thousand faces” is right next to us, you see. It should make us pause and reflect. Certainly, few of us will have to make that kind of sacrifice, but still we might ask ourselves if we have the ethical character of that “Man of the Year.” And what of the thousand smaller sacrifices we are called upon to make? Will we do the right thing? These are the questions of the leader as ethicist.

We make our living by what we get, but we make our lives by what we give. As I travel around the country speaking at colleges, I remind people that we must be about service learning. We must take what we know and make a difference in our society. We’ve got to do it in our companies, too. What a difference we could make as leaders if we gave something back to our culture!

Standing Tall

My message has been a simple one: It’s what you already know that’s important. I’ve invited you to see yourselves as able, valuable, and responsible, and to see your role as one of sending invitations to others to let them know that they, too, are able, valuable, and responsible. Let us be like the sequoias and stand tall in each other’s company. Let us become decathlon leaders intentionalists, activists, futurists, optimists, generalists, pluralists, minimalists, humorists, inspiritists, and ethicists. I’d like to close with a story entitled “Whose Job Is It?” It’s a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done, and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry because it was Everybody’s job, but Everybody thought Anybody could do it. Still, Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

Whose job is it? Comedian Sam Levinson said it best., “If you’re looking for a helping hand, you’ll find one at the end of your arm.” It’s everybody’s job, isn’t it? We are all responsible for doing the best job that we can in all of our endeavors. There are no givens in the odyssey of leadership in the quest for meaningful work, lifelong learning, self-fulfillment, and service to others and community. But the quest itself, if undertaken seriously and with care, should produce a life of meaning and fulfillment.

Betty Siegel has been president of Kennesaw State University since 1981. She was the first woman to head an institution in the 34-unit University System of Georgia.

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A Shift in Awareness

In keeping with its theme of emerging futures, the book itself unfolds as a dialogue among the authors over a period of a year and a half (tellingly punctuated by September 11, 2001). Through a series of informal meetings, the four, all established organizational learning leaders and clearly also good friends, explore and enrich their understanding of the concept of “presence.”

It is not easy to say in a sentence or two what they mean by this word. The nature of presence is by definition experiential—something we feel and know in certain moments of insight, inspiration, and power. The basis for presence is awareness—being present in the moment to what is happening just now as opposed to our habitual ways of knowing, saying, and doing (which the authors refer to as “downloading”). But presence is more than merely being in the moment; it is also a deeper way of listening that allows us to let go not only of habitual ways of understanding the external world but also of our own fixed sense of identity. It loosens our desire for personal confirmation and control in favor of “making choices to serve the evolution of life.” Presence is a process of “letting come,” a way of “participating in a larger field of change” by which “the forces shaping a situation can shift from recreating the past to manifesting or realizing an emerging future.”

The authors acknowledge that this shift in awareness has much in common with traditional teachings and practices of Buddhism, Taoism, esoteric Christianity, Sufism, and indigenous cultures. They say that what is now needed in modern society is an account of how such a shift of awareness can be cultivated as a collective practice. Here lies the concept’s crucial connection to contemporary institutions, and it is here that Presence makes a fresh and provocative contribution to organizational learning theory. Organizations, from small working groups to—potentially—global companies, can be the fertile ground for cultivation of a life-serving collective transformation.

“Theory of the U”

The unfolding conversation presented in this book is by no means random or lacking in rigor. It is built around a strong theoretical skeleton that itself is based on research carried out over several years prior to and during the conversations. The research, conducted by Scharmer and Jaworski, consists of more than 150 probing interviews with “thought leaders”—leading scientists and business and social entrepreneurs around the world. Among the most frequently cited are Francisco Varela, the Chilean-born biologist, cognitive scientist, and practicing Buddhist who developed groundbreaking theories about the nature of life and living systems before his untimely death in 2000 (Presence is dedicated to him), and Brian Arthur, Santa Fe Institute economist, complexity theorist, and practicing Taoist.

The theoretical skeleton, developed by Scharmer from the interview material, is called “Theory of the U.” It proposes a three-stage model for deep change, with the letter U serving as a simple and elegant visual device (see “The U Process”). The lefthand, downward stroke of the U is called “sensing,” the turn at the bottom is “presencing,” and the upward stroke is “realizing.” The authors make the point that these three stages are not in themselves so different from standard models of learning and innovation that involve a progression from observation and data-gathering to reflection to action. What is different, and crucial, is the depth of experiencing achieved in the U process. In other words, a conventional observe-reflect-act model is a sort of shallow U. It may produce innovation, but only within the same frame of reference from which it began. The standard model “pays little attention to the inner state of the decision maker.” It does not challenge and remake the identity of the change agents themselves.

THE U PROCESS

Reprinted from Presence, with permission

To arrive at the deeper experience of presencing, we must first cultivate a deeper kind of observation, called “sensing.” This involves a specific set of experiential capacities that, though innate, must be developed. Based in the work of Varela, these subtle internal gestures are called “suspending,”, “redirecting,” and “letting go.” Roughly speaking, “suspending” is the ability to pause one’s habitual flow of ideation and mental models built up in the past, in the service of opening up a space of consciousness that is free from already-formed concepts.

“Redirecting,” also described as the ability to “see from the whole to the part,” is especially subtle and crucial. It is essentially a psycho-spiritual capacity to dissolve the boundaries between seer and seen, subject and object. “What first appeared as fixed or even rigid begins to appear more dynamic because we are sensing the reality as it is being created, and we sense our part in creating it. This shift is challenging to explain in the abstract but real and powerful when it occurs.”

The third gesture, “letting go,” is the capacity to “surrender our perceived need to control.” It is the antidote to fixed views and attachments, self-concepts, and even ideas that form during the process of innovation. The gesture of letting go brings us back to the present moment, the here and now, as both concrete reality and an endless open field of fresh possibility.

The bottom of the U is “presencing,” the mysterious, transformative moment of “field shift”—a deeply felt paradigm shift in which participants’ sense of who they are alters in synchronicity with the arising of new, previously unimaginable options for action. The authors give dramatic examples of this moment, drawn from both individual and group experiences. The two most powerful examples of collective presencing are from conflict-mediation situations. In one, a meeting among black and white South Africans during the Apartheid era leads to a stunning, in-the-moment realization by a taciturn Afrikaans businessman of the deep racial prejudices ingrained in him from childhood. His anguished but genuine confession generates an extraordinary collective experience of pain, mutual recognition, and breakthrough. In the second instance, an eyewitness account of a mass grave site from the Guatemalan civil war produces one shocking detail that dissolves the conceptual and emotional barriers among a group of former enemies. A long and pregnant silence ensues, in which a deep commonality is recognized and a commitment to building a life-affirming future for the country is born.

The final movement of the U is “realizing,” a three-stage process of operationalizing the radical learning achieved in “sensing” and “presencing.” A key injunction here is that, after the slowing down and deepening of the earlier stages, realizing must be executed with swiftness and courage. Given that many of our organizational situations do not lend themselves to abrupt change, how is this possible? The authors recommend “rapid prototyping”— quickly enacting innovative ideas as small-scale, real-world experiments. They make the point that, in prototyping, you construct and test a model before you understand the whole of the emergent situation. It is only through a rapid cycle of experiments involving the “capacity for self-observation and course correction in real-time” that a sustainable new operational design can emerge. “Prototyping is not about abstract ideas or plans but about entering a flow of improvisation and dialogue in which the particulars inspire the evolution of the whole and vice versa.”

The end point of the U comes when innovation is institutionalized. Scharmer says, “[Institutionalizing] can sound like making something that is rigid and fixed. I think of it as more like the collective equivalent of embodying—we know we’ve learned something when it becomes part of how we do things. Until the new becomes embedded in its own routines, practices, and institutional laws, it’s not yet real.”

As an example of this kind of institutionalizing, and of the whole U process successfully carried through to unforeseen and powerful results, the authors describe the creation of Visa in the late 1960s and early 1970s under the leadership of Dee Hock. Visa is now one of the largest businesses in the world, but rather than being publicly traded, it is owned by its 22,000 member institutions, which are simultaneously one another’s suppliers, customers, and competitors. Its groundbreaking network design—Visa operates as a worldwide democracy governed by a common purpose and set of principles but with an unfettered capacity to grow and change in response to local conditions—emerged through a multi-year process of dialogue among key players in the industry. “Visa was born out of deep immersion in the chaos of the early days of the credit card industry. That chaos ultimately gave way to a sense of the unique opportunity that was available—if people could suspend their established assumptions about banking, set aside their self-interest, and truly see what was needed to serve an emergent whole.” The ultimate breakthrough came about when Hock and his colleagues were able to imagine a business model patterned after a complex living system built up from genetic code.

Senge emphasizes that both the process of reinventing the credit-card industry and the innovative solution arrived at were democratic processes, as opposed to the “totalitarian dictatorships” that still function in most of our institutions. He makes a powerful plea for true democracy within organizations:, “[T]his is the defining feature of our era regarding leadership. In a world of global institutional networks, we face issues for which hierarchical leadership is inherently inadequate.”

Our Own Sources of Power

For deep organizational and societal change to occur, there must be an ongoing synergy between the personal and the collective.

In the end, Presence returns to a theme first articulated in The Fifth Discipline, that the capacity to do all of this depends on personal mastery, and specifically on the cultivation of reflective awareness. The authors cite Buddhist meditation and other Eastern contemplative practices as powerful methods for this cultivation. Senge, who speaks from his own deep commitment to study and daily meditation under the direction of a remarkable Chinese Zen-Taoist-Confucian master, uses a simple systems diagram to illustrate the pervasive dysfunction lying at the heart of modern culture. He says: “Western culture’s growing reliance on reductionist science and technology over the past 200 years fits the shifting-the-burden-dynamic remarkably well, revealing a play of forces that create growing technological power and diminishing human development and wisdom. . . . By giving us perceived power, modern technology reduces the felt need to cultivate our own sources of power.”

For deep organizational and societal change to occur, there must be an ongoing synergy between the personal and the collective. Generating new options depends both on the inner development of individuals and on collective processes in which they mutually enact the field of the emergent future. Presence concludes on a hopeful note that contains a call to inquiry and to action. “The changes in which we will be called upon to participate in the future will be both deeply personal and inherently systemic. The deeper dimensions of transformational change represent a largely unexplored territory both in current management research and in our understanding of leadership in general.” Auspiciously, this book serves as a personal and collective compass to guide us into this new land.

David I. Rome is senior vice president for planning at the Greyston Foundation, an integrated system of nonprofit and for-profit organizations in Yonkers, New York, that offers a wide array of programs and services to more than 1,200 men, women, and children annually. He also presents “Deep Listening,” a training program in reflective awareness and communication skills. David and his colleagues from Greyston will be presenting at the 2004 Pegasus Conference.

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