DC Plexus Fractal May Meeting
Tuesday June 9 6:30-9:00pm
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Conference Room A
4805 Edgemoor Lane - 2nd Floor Bethesda, Maryland 20814
(across from Red Line Metro Bethesda)
See Location/Directions
There is no fee to attend this evening and everyone is welcome!

How can we capture the value of complex change initiatives? What measurement approaches do and don’t work to tell us something meaningful about what’s really changing and why? How might a complexity "framework" change our thinking about research methodologies and evaluation design? Join us to share some innovative perspectives on this challenging yet critical topic!

Our session this month is part of the Plexus Institute collaborative inquiry taking place this summer to explore this topic. We are planning webinars, calls with guest authors and a variety of other activities culminating in a face-to-face "idea jam" in the DC are in September. Come learn how you can join the inquiry!

We also have an exciting Plexus Call coming up on Friday, June 5 from 1-2pm on a "Guided Tour to Complexity" 641-715-3300, access code 485743#

If you would like to be sure to be notified about Plexus Calls and other Plexus events and activities you can sign up for the email news at http://www.plexusinstitute.org .

Posted: June 3rd, 2009 under Meetings.
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DC Plexus Fractal May Meeting
Tuesday May 12  6:30-9:00pm
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Conference Room A
4805 Edgemoor Lane  - 2nd Floor  Bethesda, Maryland 20814
(across from Red Line Metro Bethesda)
See Location/Directions
There is no fee to attend this evening and everyone is welcome!

As change agents and leaders, sometimes we must be the focus of our own transformational change efforts. When we live in the flows of change and commit to leading “on the edge,” it is predictable that we’ll lose our balance and “go down” occasionally. The world shifts and the project we’ve invested so much to create disappears through no fault of ours. We focus so long and hard on bringing a vision to life that we breakdown before we think to stop and regenerate. Someone gets under our skin or derails/appears to derail something we care about and old survival patterns of flight, fight or freeze kick in despite our best intentions.

Join us on May 12th to explore a holist approach to recovering faster, increasing our resilience, and coming through disequilibrium or just plain old “funks” with more capability and resourcefulness when life throws us in the ditch. Meredith Kimbell will lead us through applying the Rapid Recovery Roadmap© in our personal situations. Then we’ll explore how we can best assist leaders (with or without titles) to recover quickly and stay/strengthen being at their best. As there is interest and time, we’ll think through how we can assist leaders to inspire and guide organizations that have hit hard times so they recover and grow through their trials. Meredith looks forward to putting forth some initial ideas and engaging all of us to enrich them with insights from complexity theory and our own experiences with disequilibrium and recovery.

Meredith Kimbell founded and is President of Corporate Adventure, in Reston, VA. She is a psychologist, business consultant and executive coach. Throughout her career, she has stayed intrigued with how people and organizations discover and consistently bring their best to life’s opportunities and challenges. She works with visionary leaders and leadership teams to define and implement powerful new strategies for contribution and success. Meredith has provided executive coaching and consulting services to leaders and teams nationally and internationally for professional service firms, high tech, manufacturing and construction companies, and nonprofits.

Meredith’s worldview changed when reading Dancing Wu Li Masters in 1980 and keeps evolving as she explores ways to integrate ideas from the human potential movement, mysticism, poetry, systems thinking and body/movement disciplines into assisting leaders to live most vitally and contribute powerfully. She graduated from Beloit College as a member of Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Psychology and completed graduate studies in Psychology at Western Michigan University. For more information about Corporate Adventure or Meredith, her website is www.corporateadventure.com .

Posted: April 22nd, 2009 under Meetings.
Comments: none

DC Plexus Fractal April Meeting
Tuesday April 14  6:30-9:00pm
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Conference Room A
4805 Edgemoor Lane  - 2nd Floor  Bethesda, Maryland 20814
(across from Red Line Metro Bethesda)
See Location/Directions
There is no fee to attend this  evening and everyone is welcome!

Social Entrepreneurship: New models for transformational change

We’ve had some great conversations lately about disruptive innovation and taking ideas to scale.  This month, we’ll explore another framwork for transformational change: social entrepreneurship.

A social entrepreneur identifies and solves social problems on a large scale. Just as business entrepreneurs create and transform whole industries, social entrepreneurs act as the change agents for society, seizing opportunities others miss in order to improve systems, invent and disseminate new approaches and advance sustainable solutions that create social value. Unlike traditional business entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs primarily seek to generate "social value" rather than profits. And unlike the majority of non-profit organizations, their work is targeted not only towards immediate, small-scale effects, but sweeping, long-term change.  There have been some interesting developments emerging around the idea of social entrepreneurship including social venture funds and new hybrid ’social business’ models. Concepts emerging from the study of complexity may have significant application to understanding and developing these new enterprises.

"Social entrepreneurs identify resources where people only see problems. They view the villagers as the solution, not the passive beneficiary. They begin with the assumption of competence and unleash resources in the communities they’re serving."  David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas

Join us April 14 for a lively conversation about social entrepreneurship with our guest, Darin McKeever, a senior program officer on the policy and government affairs team of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he leads the foundation’s charitable sector work. Darin serves as an ambassador for the foundation within the charitable community - managing the foundation’s relationships and grants with associations, advocacy organizations, and research institutions with interests in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector as a whole. Darin also monitors policy developments affecting the sector for the foundation.

Prior to joining the foundation, Darin was the executive director and co-founder of Heads Up, a Washington, DC-based provider of academic and enrichment programs which help young people develop the skills, confidence, and relationships to succeed in school and to pursue lives that help further social change. For his efforts launching and leading the organization, Darin was awarded the Echoing Green and Stride Rite Community Service Fellowship. Darin is an alumnus of Harvard College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Social Studies. He recently received his MPA as a Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Fellow in Social Entrepreneurship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Posted: April 3rd, 2009 under Meetings.
Comments: none

DC Plexus Fractal March Meeting

Tuesday March 10  6:30-9:00pm
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Conference Room A
4805 Edgemoor Lane  - 2nd Floor  Bethesda, Maryland 20814
(across from Red Line Metro Bethesda)
See Location/Directions

There is no fee to attend this  evening and everyone is welcome!

[If Montgomery County schools are closed or close early for weather, our meeting will also be canceled]

Disruptive innovations improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect, typically by being lower priced or designed for a completely different set of consumers. These innovations are difficult to recognize, often take us by surprise, and are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market because they come from an unexpected direction. Even if a disruptive innovation is recognized, existing businesses are often reluctant to take advantage of it, since it would involve competing with the familiar, existing approach that is currently working for them.

Technology companies aren’t the only ones ‘disrupted’ by this type of innovation. Many organizations are slow to recognize innovative change that may be more than a simple linear extension of factors at play in the current environment.

Two new books by Clayton Christensen and his colleagues at Harvard provide insights about how his ideas about disruptive innovation (The Innovator’s Dilemma) may impact Education (Disrupting Class) and Health Care (The Innovator’s Prescription).

Join us Tuesday, March 10 for a conversation facilitated by Lisa Kimball about disruptive innovation and the effect it has on health care, education, and other domains. We’ll talk about how change agents can work with their organizations and their clients to help them understand and benefit from disruptive innovations of all kinds.

UPCOMING EVENTS

March 9 – Teleconference to launch Plexus Institute’s Organizational Consultants’ Network

March 27 – Taking Innovations to Scale – a day-long “idea jam” conference about scaling and diffusion of innovation

Posted: March 2nd, 2009 under Meetings.
Comments: none

T hose of us who use - or wish to use - complexity principles in our consulting have decided to develop a Community of Practice to learn from each other and enrich our consulting practices. Our hope is to be able to spend time together, whether on a conference call, in person or through consulting opportunities together. As a kickoff to this collective, we have scheduled a conference call to gauge our common interests and explore the possibilities.

Please join us in a phone conference call for the launch of
Plexus Institute’s Organizational Consultants’ Network

March 9, 2009 3:00 PM Eastern Time

For our first call, we’d like to discuss the following question:
All of us, to some extent, would say that we do our organizational consulting using the lens of complexity. What specifically does that mean for you and your own practice? For example, what do you do when you are planning or designing a process for a client, or how do you facilitate processes in a way that includes complexity science theory or practice?

Please RSVP to Susan Doherty at susan at plexusinstitute dot org to let us know of your interest. When we’ve heard from you, we’ll give you the call-in number and further information about the call. For more information about Plexus Institute, please explore www.plexusinstitute.org

We look forward to developing this community with you!
Lisa Kimball, President
Nedra Weinstein
Linda Barker

Posted: February 24th, 2009 under Meetings.
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Print the IDEA JAM flyer to rsvp by mail or fax. Or, pass it on!

(you may still register/rsvp online at plexusdc.org )

Posted: February 10th, 2009 under Meetings.
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Non-members (and Members after March 20, 2009 - see below to rsvp free before March 20) use the pull-down menu to select your option, then click the Pay Now button to proceed.

Or, become a Plexus member here first and rsvp free!

This event has concluded. Thanks to all that attended.

Posted: February 3rd, 2009 under RSVP.
Comments: none

Taking Great Ideas to Scale

We’re having an IDEA JAM! What’s the latest thinking about how, why and at what rate new ideas spread through cultures? What can the complexity framework offer to help us understand scaling and diffusion of innovation? What are the differences between technology transfer and viral change? What are the key ingredients of scalability? What design specs, principles or "simple rules" drive promising scale up strategies? What are some of your greatest learnings and greatest frustrations along the way in taking ideas to scale?

Join us to engage with a diverse network of participants using processes with liberating structures to explore our collective experience and insights about scaling innovation.

Friday, March 27, 2009 8:30am – 6:30 pm
Marriott Residence Inn, 7335 Wisconsin Avenue Bethesda, MD 20814 (MAP )

Registration:
Before March 20: FREE for Plexus Members, $35 Others.
After March 20: $50 everyone.

Posted: February 3rd, 2009 under Meetings.
Comments: none

Plexus Fractal Meeting - February 10, 2009

6:30-9:00pm
Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Conference Room A
4805 Edgemoor Lane  - 2nd Floor  Bethesda, Maryland 20814
(across from Red Line Metro Bethesda)
See Location/Directions under Categories

There is no fee to attend and everyone is welcome!

Dee Hock’s Chaordic Theory is the antithesis of Command & Control.  It is organic, dynamic, self-regulating, constantly evolving, and deals a great deal with "leadership from the edge."  Dee Hock is the Chairman Emeritus of Visa.  After his experience with transforming BankAmericard into Visa, he began to combine his own thinking with such theorists as Margaret Wheatley.  The result was Chaordic Theory and his "6 lenses" for creating Chaordic organizations.

Guest speaker, Robin Cook, will share some of Dee’s own materials along with more that he has developed.  Robin is a thought leader in organizational development/culture change/change management.  In 2000, Robin was hired by a dot-com startup, charged with creating the organization’s culture.  Robin participated in the first workshop on Chaordic process in San Francisco and became involved in the Chaordic Consulting Fractal.  In early 2008, Robin Joined Angarai International as the Organizational Development SME supporting a massive reorganization initiative for a major Department of Defense agency.

Chaordic Intro (ppt)

Posted: February 2nd, 2009 under Meetings, RSVP.
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DC Plexus Fractal January Meeting

Tuesday, January 13
6:15-8:45pm
Place: Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Conference Room A
4805 Edgemoor Lane  - 2nd Floor
Bethesda, Maryland 20814
(across from Red Line Metro Bethesda)

Nature’s Creative Power in You
(Simplifying Organization and Complexity Sciences through Neural Sciences)
Guest Speaker: Bill Smith

Bill has set up a Creative Power wiki, check it out here: http://sites.google.com/site/creativepowersite/

Posted: January 12th, 2009 under Meetings.
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