DC Plexus Fractal June Meeting

Tuesday, June 8, 2010 6:30-8:30pm
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! Please feel free to share this invitation with others!

Join Phil Nelson, Ph.D. to co-create a positive vision of our desired global future for the upcoming decade of radical change.

This decade will be a season of wrenching transition as global resources and institutions collapse and we collaboratively find and create new and better resources and institutions.
Around 2015, these 3 forces will begin synergistically converging:
1) accelerating technology change and convergence, intimately connecting us and driving global integration and cultural evolution,
2) research on optimal human functioning, learning, resilience and happiness, and
3) triggered by these forces, the maturing human mind, heart, spirit and culture as an integrating force.

Consensus of several leading futurists is that we will enter the “Singularity” or Unity of the global brain/heart/spirit around 2045. In 2010–2020 we will build much of the global resources and collaborative structures to take us there. Cultural evolution (like biological evolution) differentiates into specializations and then reintegrates into a higher synergistic complexity (like single cells to multi-cell unity). The evolution of stronger bricks has required stronger mortar; similarly, the cultural “evolutionary 2-step” builds stronger individuals, and then bonds them with a stronger culture. So prepare to become “the best that you can be” for our next cultural evolutionary leap.

We may need many on-line, self-organizing, grass-roots, mid-level and top level creative teams to apply the myriads of coming breakthroughs and technologies to first solve our environmental problems and later to exploit the vast opportunities that these accelerating breakthroughs present.

What kind of individual and culture is needed to facilitate wise employment of these accelerating breakthroughs and opportunities? Join us in dialogue about the positive human possibilities that we can envision together to take us all through this next cultural evolution.

These 5 sources provide the backdrop for my presentation:
1. Ray Kurzweil’s, “The Singularity Is Near,”
2. Bill Halal’s TechCast http://www.techcast.org/ consider clicking on the “Strategic Breakthroughs” chart on the right plus one of the bubbles like “Information Technology” in the column on the right.
3. The field of “Spiral Dynamics” on cultural evolution,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_Dynamics
4. The Fourth Turning, by William Strauss and Neil Howe, and
5. “Positive Psychology” research on Happiness and optimal human functioning.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_psychology

Phil Nelson, Ph.D., is and organization development (OD) Consultant, management trainer, and certified Success Coach. As a long-term futurist, he is a member of TechCast’s 100 experts who use the wisdom of the informed crowd to predict the timing and market value of 60+ technologies. His background includes: Management trainer and internal OD consultant for over 15 years in the federal government, Graduate of West Point, airborne infantry, Army Captain, Member of Mensa, the high IQ society. Enjoys playing piano and tennis (not at the same time). At age 70, he is actively retired and follows Ray Kurzweil’s “Transcend” comprehensive book on healthy longevity.

Posted: June 1st, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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DC Plexus Fractal May Meeting

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 6:30-8:30pm
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! Please feel free to share this invitation with others!

In recent years complexity theory has captured the attention of many people interested in transdisciplinary research. The excitement surrounding the work at the Santa Fe Institute is an example. Current research on complexity can be thought of as the working out of ideas related to self-organizing systems, which were developed about 1960. Much more advanced technical means are now available, and the great accomplishment of the recent research has been the involvement of people from a wide range of disciplines in using modeling methods.  Research in reflexivity is less well known. Its origins can be traced back at least to 1974.  Several reflexive theories have been proposed, for example by Argyris and Schon, von Foerster, Lefebvre, and Soros. The literatures in second order cybernetics and constructivism are very close to reflexivity, but the term “reflexivity” may appeal to a wider audience (if it doesn’t scare them to death!)

One way to understand how the system sciences are developing is to look at the creation of new methods for conducting inquiry.

Join us for a lively exploration of the possibilities for our work of these different methods of inquiry and the relationship to complexity with someone who can talk with “civilians” <g> about these things!

Stuart Umpleby is a professor of management in the School of Business at The George Washington University and Director of the Research Program in Social and Organizational Learning. He has participated in conferences on cybernetics and systems science since the 1970s. In the late 1970s he moderated an email discussion of these fields using a computer conferencing system based at New Jersey Institute of Technology. In the 1980s he organized a series of meetings among systems scientists in the U.S. and Russia. He is a past president of the American Society for Cybernetics. From 1994 to 1997 he was the faculty facilitator of the Quality and Innovation Initiative in the GW School of Business and Public Management. He teaches courses in the philosophy of science, cross-cultural management, organizational behavior, cybernetics, and systems science. Other interests include process improvement methods, group facilitation methods, and the use of computer networks. Between 1981 and 1988 Umpleby was the American coordinator of a series of meetings between American and Russian scientists to discuss the foundations of cybernetics and systems theory. These meetings were supported by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the International Research and Exchanges Board of the American Council of Learned Societies.

Posted: May 3rd, 2010 under Uncategorized.
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Earth Day 40: The Complexity of Environmental and Political Systems

DC Plexus Fractal April Meeting
Tuesday, April 13, 2010 6:30-8:30pm
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! Please feel free to share this invitation with others!

Earth Day 40: What can we learn from the environmental movement 40 years after the first Earth Day about how complex adaptive environmental and political systems respond to new challenges?

Join Brent Blackwelder, President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth for a provocative exploration and discussion of how the environmental movement has helped protect and preserve the planet and reshape America’s political system and discourse.

We’ll examine two cases – one win and one loss – and see what sense we can make of the environmental movement’s use of complexity-inspired principles. And, we’ll explore how these lessons learned might apply to the intractable political problems you face in your work and organizations.

Brent Blackwelder is one of America’s leading environmentalists having founded the Environmental Policy Institute and the American Rivers Campaign. He served as the chair of the League of Conservation Voters which is the environmental community’s PAC throughout the 1980s, and has testified before Congress well over 100 times. Brent holds a PhD in Philosophy and a Masters degree in mathematics and was the Chairman of the math department of Philander Smith College. He was recognized by Vanity Fair and by the Washingtonian magazine as a steward of the planet. He’s also been An architect of significant legislation to protect natural resources and clean up pollution; active in campaigns that reformed foreign aid, saved forests, protected rivers, and advanced human rights.

Join us for a refreshing and lively consideration of the legacy of and challenges ahead of one of America’s most important social movements of the last 40 years.

Posted: April 6th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

DC Plexus Fractal March Meeting
Tuesday, March 9, 2010 6:30-8:30pm
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! Please feel free to share this invitation with others!

The evolution and sustainability of complex adaptive systems includes the natural and necessary processes of destruction and renewal. The ecocycle framework invites leaders to think about what they need to deliberately destroy or stop doing to facilitate the renewal of their work in health care.

Drawing from biological systems, the ecocycle also suggests a need for a “healthy” organization or system to have parts (or aspects) of the organization in every phase of the ecocycle. Diversity in the phases of ecocycle is crucial for the sustainability of a complex adaptive system.

Come join us for a juicy conversation about using the ecocycle framework in the context of organizational change initiatives. We will engage in several exercises that you can take away and try out in your own work.

Ecocycle ppt
Edgeware excerpt

Remember the Plexus Summit 2010 – Register Today
November 5-7, 2010, El Paso, Texas
Annual gathering of the Plexus Institute community

Join us for:

* Catalyzing input from scholars and practitioners
* Engaging conversations for collaborative sense-making
* Opportunities to share learning from each others’ work
* Self-organized groups to turn ideas into action

Sample Topics:
Diffusion of Innovation – what does it take to get new ideas spread and adopted?
Engagement – what does it take to get stakeholders, staff, collaborators engaged in ways that make it possible to create together?
Innovation – what does it take to bring diverse people and ideas together to create something new?

Posted: March 8th, 2010 under Meetings.
Comments: none

Unfortunately, snow-related closures in Montgomery County mean that we’re canceled too since the building won’t be open. Hope to see everyone March 9 at our next meeting.

In the meantime, you can join the conversation about the book, Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives in our online web space at http://plexusocnet.ning.com (to join go to http://plexusocnet.ning.com/?xgi=0wSlyZn first).

And, join our book discussion group calls Feb 10, Feb 24, and Mar 10 at 1pm eastern by getting the call-in number and customized pin here – http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/JIAKP9K3CLVKHNPS

Posted: February 7th, 2010 under Uncategorized.
Comments: none

DC Plexus Fractal November Meeting
Tuesday, December 8, 2009 6:30-8:30pm
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! Please feel free to share this invitation with others!

Herbert Simon, in the “Sciences of the Artificial” (MIT Press, 1969) has defined “design” as the “transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones” (p. 55).  Business organizations have started to use the traditional tools and methods of designing products to design social systems, services, experiences (patient, student, saver, traveler).

In a recent article of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Tim Brown and Jocelyn Wyatt explain, “Designers have traditionally focused on enhancing the look and functionality of products.  Recently, they have begun using design tools to tackle more complex problems, such as finding ways to provide low-cost health care throughout the world.  Businesses were first to embrace this new approach – called Design Thinking – now nonprofits are beginning to adopt it too.”

Design thinking is, then, always linked to an improved future. Unlike critical thinking, which is a process of analysis and is associated with the ‘breaking down’ of ideas, design thinking is a creative process based around the ‘building up’ of ideas. There are no judgments in design thinking. This eliminates the fear of failure and encourages maximum input and participation. Wild ideas are welcome, since these often lead to the most creative solutions. Everyone is a designer, and design thinking is a way to apply design methodologies to any of life’s situations.

Come join us on December 8th to explore design thinking and how it fits in the complexity framework.  We’ll try some hands-on exercises to explore some of the tools of design thinking and talk about how it can apply to our own work.

From Business Week – Change By Design (web site)

From Stanford Social Innovation Review – Design Thinking for Social Innovation (pdf)

AND – when you get your new 2010 calendars don’t forget to put in the DC Fractal sessions on the 2nd Tuesdays starting January 12

Posted: November 30th, 2009 under Meetings.
Comments: none

DC Plexus Fractal November Meeting
Tuesday, November 10, 2009 6:30-8:30pm
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! Please feel free to share this invitation with others!

Those of us who engage in change efforts soon become aware that the methods that we employ successfully at one organiza­tion may be totally ineffective at another. If we are wise, we intuitively ‘adjust’ our approaches based on what we observe in each new setting; if we are not, then we spend a great deal of time discussing orga­nizational ‘resistance’. This month we will build on our ongoing discussions about the nature of change and the strategies of change agents by exploring an approach called Organizational Relationship Optimization (ORO), developed by DC Plexus member, Donna Witten. It is premised on the belief that the same emotional processes that decades of research have identified as determining how young chil­dren form deep bonds to their parents are also at play in group, organizational, and social relationships. Furthermore, these processes, described originally in individu­alistic terms, can and should be reframed from a social constructionist perspec­tive to describe the attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors—indeed, the cultures—of organizations.

Dr. Dona Witten has worked as an executive management consultant for over two decades in the commercial and public sectors. She provides a range of services including large scale organizational development, conflict resolution, leadership and organizational coaching, and especially Organizational Relationship Optimization (ORO) assessments and interventions. She is the author of a business development book, Enlightened Management: a Compassionate Guide to Working with People. Her consulting and practice, DJW Consultancy, LLC, is based in the Washington D.C. metro area. Read her article (pdf) on this topic from the OD PRACTITIONER Vol. 41 No. 4 2009.

SAVE THE DATE: DECEMBER 8 – Design Thinking: The Next Competitive Advantage?

Posted: November 3rd, 2009 under Uncategorized.
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A participant in the September Idea Jam, Kris Barney, shares this upcoming event. She writes, “The focus will be on Cultural Transformation Tools (CTT) which were developed by Richard Barrett. CTT is a way of measuring percieved values in organizations and plotting them in a model of seven levels of consciousness. Barrett’s organization, the Barrett Values Centre, has done a lot of research on how certain values correlate with the bottom line, which relates directly to how to measure the impact of nontraditional OD work. The event is being sponsored by two of my colleagues, Craig Coble and MaryJane Bullen of Coble Consulting.”

View the Leadership Forum brochure (pdf).

Thank you, Kris.

Posted: October 13th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
Comments: 1

DC Plexus Fractal May Meeting
Tuesday, October 13, 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
There is no fee to attend this evening and everyone is welcome! Please feel free to share this invitation with others!

On our blue planet, the dominant feature is ocean. It contains 97 percent of the Earth’s water and releases vapor into the atmosphere that returns as rain, sleet, and snow, ever replenishing the planet with freshwater. All life, including our own, is dependent on the ocean. Understanding the ocean is integral to comprehending this planet on which we live.

It would be hard to find a system more complex than the ocean! It’s not only important and fascinating in itself, but it can also be a rich example of a complex system that is inextricably intertwined with many other critical systems.

Join us for an exploratory conversation about the ocean, how our understanding of the ocean needs to be and can be transformed, and how thinking about the ocean can enhance our understanding of complex systems in general. How might understanding one complex ecosystem help us understand the dynamics of organizations and the challenges they face?

Our guest will be Peter Tuddenham who is a systems thinker and founder of Top of Form

The College of Exploration, a global learning network that works with partners around the world on innovative and exploratory learning programs about our environment, the earth, the ocean, technology, leadership, learning and creativity. The College of Exploration is Bottom of Form

organized as a collegium concerned with programs about our understanding of, and our relationships with and between, our inner and outer worlds. Partners have included National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, the National Geographic Society, NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration, the National Geographic Education Foundation.

Save the dates: Our next monthly fractal meetings will be November 10 and December 8

Posted: October 9th, 2009 under Meetings.
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Like Internet entrepreneurs and political strategists, organizational leaders can unleash decentralized, self-organized action to get results better-than-expected-or-imagined.

In this 90 minute webinar, the presenters will share their experience introducing a large array of self-organizing change methods — which they call Liberating Structures (LS) — to organizations looking for new ways for people to work together. LS generate novel patterns of interactions that can transform leaders and stimulate innovation and productivity organization-wide.

Organizations operate mostly top-down and this is reflected in the way “working together” is usually organized. Participation in meetings is restricted and often standardized; agendas and discussions are controlled by a few; meeting formats and designs tend to be nearly always the same (sometimes for decades), dominated by PowerPoint presentations followed by some form of managed discussion. Decisions thus made by a few then depend for their implementation on the “vast majority” that wasn’t included in the decision-making process.

Liberating Structures [LS] are twenty-five (and growing) easy-to-learn, adaptable methods that make it quick and simple for groups of people of any size to radically change how they interact and work together, and thus how they address issues, solve problems and develop opportunities. These methods are easy to learn, spread quickly peer-to-peer, and require minimal coaching. Liberating Structures have received the same positive response in a wide range of cultural environments in Latin America, Europe and the US. Some of the methods will be very familiar to many practitioners – such as Open Space and Appreciative Interviews. Others, like Positive Deviance and TRIZ, may be new to you.

The presenters will share their experience introducing LS in Latin America and, more recently, in Europe and the US. Organizational settings have included multi-national business, hospitals, government and non-profit organizations. Participants will have the opportunity to consider whether and how LS might be applied in organizations with which they work.

Henri Lipmanowicz recently retired from a distinguished career at Merck. He was president of the Merck Intercontinental and Japan Division, and a member of the Management Committee. He became interested in complexity when he recognized that many of the strategies that just seemed to “work” for him as a leader were well aligned with principles from the complexity framework. Henri is Chairman of Plexus Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to applying ideas from the new science of complexity to social and organizational problems.

Keith McCandless, principal of the Social Invention Group, is a highly regarded consultant with expertise in strategic planning, leadership, and organizational development. He has been instrumental in the growth of the Conversation Café movement, which began in Seattle and is spreading internationally as a means of stimulating wide-ranging communication about socially vital issues. Keith helps organizations move forward through uncertainty with innovative approaches including scenario planning, generative dialogue, Chaordic design, communities-of-practice, appreciative inquiry, open space technology, positive deviance, graphic facilitation, and rapid prototyping. Keith is a member of the Plexus Institute Advisory Council.

Thursday September 24, 2009 - 1:00-2:30pm eastern

REGISTRATION IS FREE

http://tinyurl.com/nxubrk

Read a Liberating Structures FAQ (pdf)

Posted: September 18th, 2009 under Uncategorized.
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