Transcript Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program 2003-2004

Donella Meadows
Leadership Fellows Program
2003-2004
Sustainability Institute
Hartland Four Corners, Vermont
SI is a think-do tank dedicated to:
sustainable resource use, sustainable economics and
sustainable community.
Our Mission:
To use the tools of systems thinking, system
dynamics and organizational learning to further a
global transition to sustainability.
Sustainability Institute works in a variety of ways to help
integrate environmental and social goals into global systems.
Action-Research
Consulting
• Sustainable Agriculture
• Systems Thinking Facilitation
• Renewable Energy
• System Dynamics Modeling
• Natural Resource
• Collaborative Learning
Commodities
Publications
• Research Reports
• Articles
• Opinion Columns
• Donella Meadows Archives
Projects
Leadership Training
• Donella Meadows Leadership
Fellows Program
• Sustainable Agriculture
Leadership Lab
Donella Meadows Leadership
Fellows Program
Systems Thinking for Sustainability
To empower the next generation of
environmental leaders with the tools of
systems thinking…
....Honoring analytic clarity and
attention to spirit, values, and meaning.
Donella (Dana) H. Meadows
(1941-2001)
• Founder of Sustainability Institute, 1996
• Systems Analyst, Teacher, Writer,
Journalist, Farmer
• PhD (Biophysics), Harvard University
• Professor, Dartmouth College
• MacArthur Fellow
• Pew Scholar
• Leading Voice for Sustainability
"A sustainability revolution requires each person
to act as a learning leader at some level, from
family to community to nation to the world.”
Three qualities that Dana combined:
• dedication to scientific rigor and analysis
• deeply grounded vision of a sustainable world
• the ability to communicate well in writing
System tools enabled her to see clearly the root causes of
seemingly intractable problems — poverty, war,
environmental degradation.
Her deep affection for people and the earth gave her a
unique power to reach others.
Dana’s guiding message was simple:
“We humans are smart enough to have created
complex systems and amazing productivity;
surely we are also smart enough to make sure that
everyone shares our bounty, and surely we are smart
enough to sustainably steward the natural world
upon which we all depend. “
Goal of the Fellows Program
To learn from Donella Meadows’ life example and
increase the effectiveness of leaders applying
systems thinking to social and environmental
challenges by:
(1) Building Fellows’ skills in systems thinking,
organizational learning, mental models, and visioning
(2) Building Fellows’ understanding of systems
principles
(3) Applying new skills to projects within Fellows’ work
environment
(4) Building a Fellows’ community
Selection Process and Criteria
130 Applicants —> Narrowed it down to 26
Non-profit, government, business, philanthropy, university
Interviewed 26 —> Choose 17 —> 16 accepted
Criteria:
• Scientific rigor in their analysis of an issue
• Ability to work with multi-stakeholders on an issue
• Working on an issue that SI has expertise in
• Placement within an organization or network so they can
influence others
• Personal growth and mastery
Donella Meadows Leadership
Fellows Program
16 Fellows
2-year cycles
4 four-day workshops
Apply learnings to a current work project
Coaching , homework, and community building
SI Staff and Fellows
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16 Accomplished Environmental Leaders
13 women, 3 men
14 US States & 1 International (Brazil)
Representing major cities, rural communities,
tribal lands, university towns
Areas of Fellows’ Impact
ISSUES
– Urban Environment
– Climate Change and
Energy
– Sustainable Community
Development
– Biodiversity and Land
Conservation
– Agriculture and Food
Systems
– Pollution Prevention
STAKEHOLDERS
– Activists • Legislators
– Government Officials
– Consumers • Farmers
– Industry Executives
– Citizen Boards
SECTORS
– University
– Philanthropy
– Non-profit
– Government
– Business
– Tribal
Outcomes of the Fellows Program
• Process Design and
Facilitation Skills
• Systems Thinking Skills
• Powerful Relationships
Among Fellows and
SI Staff
• Increased Personal Mastery
• Effectiveness of Fellows’ Organizations
The Fellowship Program Provides
Both Practice And Application
Workshop 1
Foundational
Skills
Workshop 2
Process
Design
Workshop 3
Project
Clinics
Workshop 4
Fellows
Support
Skill Building &
Systems Principles
Learning Projects
Fellows Teambuilding & Co-learning
Practice with
disciplines
Project Work
Project Work
Core Capabilities of Learning in
Complex Systems:
reflective
conversation
strategic
thinking
aspiration
capacity to reflect
on assumptions
and patterns of
behavior
capacity of individuals and
teams to orient towards
what they truly care about
capacity to
understand and
change complex
systems
Skills Fellows Learn Include:
Strategic thinking
– Systems thinking
– Causal loop diagramming
– Action to outcome mapping
Reflective Conversation
– Collaborative learning
– Inquiry based intervention
– Organizational learning
Aspiration
– Visioning
– Networking and community building
What Are Systems Tools for?
• To move focus away from events and symptoms and toward
system structure.
• To elicit and articulate mental models, then expand them
– by accounting for feedback, time delays, non-linearity, and
other components of complex systems.
• To test and improve mental models via simulation.
• To develop shared mental models within teams and
communities.
• To understand where leverage points are and are not.
 Better mental models lead to better decisions about how
to lead the transition to sustainability.
The Iceberg – A Metaphor for the Level at
Which We Address a System
Events
Patterns
of Behavior
Systemic
Structure
Mind-sets
Increasing
Leverage
Objectives for the First
Workshop, June 23-27, 2003
• Build Fellows’ skills in systems thinking,
mental models, and vision.
• Build Fellows’ understanding of systems
principles.
• Prepare for applied projects within Fellows’
work environment.
• Build a Fellows’ community.
Uniting Strategic Thinking, Reflective
Conversation and Aspiration for Effective Change
Strategic Thinking
Reflective Conversation
Reflective
Conversation
understand
current reality -what’s happening and
the underlying drivers
take action based on a
strategic understanding
of the system
Aspiration
develop a shared vision of the
future we are trying to create
Adapted from the “U” Leadership Model
“The first Fellowship
workshop was extremely
valuable because it taught
us a means of describing
complex problems in such a
way that reveals the
underlying drivers. When we are aware of what is causing
a problem we can focus more of our productive energy on
finding solutions and acting upon them, rather than
addressing symptoms of the problem.”
—John Fisk
Food and Policy Consultant to the Kellogg Foundation
“Systems thinking will be an
extraordinary tool for me
to analyze the issues and projects
on which I work. Connecting the
daily living of the Cobb Hill
community to the workshop was an
ideal way to ground the experience
and gave us such inspiration and
optimism.”
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—Angela Park
Environmental Leadership Program
Objectives for Workshop 2
(1) Introduce and practice next level of
systems concepts and tools.
(2) Reflect on the goals and meaning of
leadership for sustainability.
(3) Design projects for Fellows to apply the
workshop learnings and disciplines within
their home work environment.
Individual Projects can be
one of the following:
1) New Work Initiative – a new multi-stakeholder
forum to achieve an outcome in the system.
2) New Process Initiative – a new framework to
engage colleagues in making an existing work effort
more effective.
3) Specific Opportunity – a specific challenge where
the learning tools could be tapped to improve a
project.
4) Personal Mastery Aspiration – an effort by a
Fellow to address “who they are in their work”.
Fellows in Action
Lynn Stoddard is preparing
comments on cultural change
to submit to an agency
reorganization group.
Mark Spalding is opening a neutral
third-party hosted dialogue among
corporate and environmental
stakeholders to address solutions
to the management failures of the
Marine Stewardship Council.
Angela Park plans to create a training on systems
thinking as part of her leadership program’s
curriculum, integrating the “ladder of inference” and
reflective listening.
Suggestions for Capstone Program
•
•
•
•
Clarify vision of what the program hopes to accomplish
Develop curriculum, framework, models, tools
Foster teambuilding among the participants
Use systems thinking to:
– integrate the interdisciplinary goals of the program
– analyze the roots causes of issues
– see the interconnections between issues
1) Post preparation materials on the WWW
2) Gather together in a workshop
3) Follow-up and expand on the WWW
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“A sustainability revolution requires each person to act as a learning
leader at some level, from family to community to nation to the
world. And it requires each of us to support leaders at all levels in
their learning by creating an environment that permits them to
admit uncertainty, conduct experiments, and acknowledge mistakes.”
Donella Meadows, 1992