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.
Comments: none

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.
Comments: none

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.
Comments: none

The Power of Social Networks: Creating, Mapping, Analyzing and Leveraging Your Organization’s Networks

July 9 2-3pm (Eastern US)

Join June Holley, one of the pioneers in the field of social network mapping, for an exploration of how this cutting edge domain is creating new possibilities for working with the networks in our organizations and communities.  Learn more about the purposeful development of social networks, the potential for using network mapping tools with groups and organizations, and how to evaluate social network strategies.

To learn more and register for this FREE webinar go to: http://tiny.cc/aVU6X

Posted: July 5th, 2009 under Meetings.
Comments: none

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.
Comments: none

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