VOLUME 5, NUMBER 1

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

FEATURE ARTICLE

Creating Desired Futuresin a Global SocietyPeter M. Senge

From the Managing
Director: The Power ofLearning Communities
C. Sherry Immediato

From the Editor
Karen Ayas

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4reflections.solonline.org

VOLUME 5, NUMBER 1

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

Published by The Society for Organizational Learning
4reflections.solonline.org

FEATURE

Creating Desired Futuresin a Global Economy

Underlying every significant issue that organizations

change, sustainability, the future of education, andand societies face is the question: How can we cre-leadership development. In June 2003, 335

ate desired results in an increasingly interdepen-

researchers, consultants and executives from busi-

dent world? That question has been the focus ofness, government, and civil society gathered atPeter Senge’s work for more than 20 years. It also

SoL’s first Global Forum, in Helsinki, Finland. This

is at the heart of the Society for Organizational

article was adapted from Peter’s remarks at that

Learning’s research in innovation, large-systems

forum. — Paul M. Cohen, Senior Editor

TPeter M. Senge

Senior Lecturer,
Massachusetts Instituteof Technology
Founding Chair, SoL

here’s nothing more elemental to the work of leaders than creating results. But it’s nolonger possible to create positive results in isolation. With organizations, economies,
and entire societies increasingly interconnected, our actions affect (and are affectedby) others, often literally a world away. It’s impossible, in today’s world, to think about how
to have an impact in our workplace without also asking ourselves a deeper question: What
does it means to live in a global society?
This question was brought home to me by Mieko Nishimizu, one of the most gifted
executives at the World Bank. Shortly after attending the SoL Executive Champions’Workshop in August 2002, she addressed business and political leaders observing the 50th
anniversary of Japan’s membership in the post-World War II Bretton Woods Agreements.
Speaking with candor unusual for such an affair, she described what it meant for her, after
growing up with many material benefits, to come to grips with poverty. For example, she
told of meeting an Indian woman who had to walk four hours each day to gather fresh water.
As they walked together, the woman told her, “This is not life. This is only keeping a body
alive.” For Mieko, such conditions – which are a reality for an increasing number of people
in most of the developing world1 – cannot be separated from the forces shaping an increasingly global society:
The future appears alien to us.
It differs from the past, most notably in that the earth itself is a relevant unit
with which to frame and measure that future. Discriminating issues that shape thefuture are all fundamentally global.

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Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy 1

Copyright © 2003, Peter M Senge. All Rights Reserved.

By Peter M. Senge

We belong to one inescapable network of mutuality – mutuality of ecosystems;
mutuality of freer movement of information, ideas, people, and goods and services;and mutuality of peace and security.
We are tied, indeed, in a single fabric of destiny on planet earth. Policies and2

actions that attempt to tear a nation from this cloth will inevitably fail.

The futureappears alien
to us.

Few of our institutions are prepared for a truly global society. Indeed, it appears that muchof the preparation nature has invested in us – our physiological, cognitive, psychological, andcultural evolution – is failing us. Our neuroanatomy is tuned to respond to sudden, dramatic changes in our environment: clap your hands loudly and watch it react. We focus on
immediate needs and problems, and are trapped by the illusion that what is most tangible ismost real. We’ve been conditioned for thousands of years to identify with our family, ourtribe, and our local social structures. A future that asks us to overcome this conditioning
and identify with all of humankind looks alien indeed.
On the other hand, in some ways we’ve long understood our place in the world. Early
in our history, we learned that if we depleted our topsoil or our local fishery, we paid aprice. Today, we call it sustainability (see sidebar, “Improving the Triple Bottom Line”).
However, we’ve never before lived in a world in which one’s actions, through global business, can have their primary consequence on the other side of the world. Nor have weever been so dependent on the actions of others. In the late 1980s a US emergency preparedness study estimated that the typical pound of food that an American consumed traveled anaverage of 1,500 miles, often from outside the US. In the years since, the developed economies’ reliance on the developing world for essential goods and services has only increased.
The challenges of living in such an alien, interconnected world are both practical anddeeply personal. Ultimately they lead us to reflect on who we are individually, who we arein our local networks of colleagues, and what we’re committed to. Such understanding isessential to being effective in our work as managers, teachers, parents, and citizens.

Creating Desired Results
Adam Kahane,3 a SoL member and gifted facilitator who specializes in cross-sector dialogue
and scenario building, says that three types of increasing complexity are at the root of organizations’ and societies’ toughest problems:• dynamic complexity: cause and effect distant in time and space• social complexity: diverse stakeholders with different agendas and worldviews• generative complexity: emergent realities wherein solutions from the past no longer fit.
In the face of such complexity, the very concept of “problem solving” can be an impediment. It can lead us to think of fixing something that is broken. It can lead to imposing
solutions from the past. And, it can lead to seeing reality as the adversary rather than theally. But, none of these arises necessarily if we see problem solving as part of a larger processof creating what we truly want.
Realizing desired results in a global society – or in any context – requires both learningand leadership, but above all it involves collective creating. In fact, I see learning, leading,and creating as three ways to talk about the same basic phenomenon. Effective leadership,
for instance, draws on the belief that we have positive choices and can overcome fear to bringabout a better future together. Learning – whether learning to manage a department, speak

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Improving the Triple Bottom Line
There’s little you can say with certainty about the futureof the global economy. But one thing is certain: it can’t
continue as it is. The planet’s resources, its natural
systems, and at least one-third of its population, living
in desperate poverty, simply won’t allow it.

questions. The consortium applies the disciplines ofsystems thinking and organizational learning to better
understand how companies can be profitable while
nurturing local communities and natural systems –the so-called “triple bottom line.” Early on, consortium members, including BP, Shell, Ford, Nike, United
Technologies, Harley Davidson, and Visteon, decided
they needed a simple, operational definition ofsustainability. They came up with the following picturethat distinguishes present industrial systems fromnatural systems.11

How can leaders respond to this reality? What can
we do to shift from mere regulatory compliance andincremental process improvements to real innovation –to environmentally intelligent products and services,developed and marketed in responsible ways? The SoL
Sustainability Consortium, a learning community of organizations, has developed some practical answers to these

Figure 1 Why Industry Produces Waste
LIVING SYSTEMS FOLLOW CYCLESLIVINGSYSTEM
Regeneration

Decay

Nutrients
INDUSTRIAL-AGE SYSTEMS DO NOT FOLLOW CYCLES
Extraction

GOODS IN
PRODUCTION

Sales

GOODS
IN USE

Waste from
Production

Waste
from Use
Waste

A sustainableindustrial system
strives to transform
all sources of waste
and toxicity into
“technical” or“biological nutrients” that can bereused indefinitely
without harm toliving systems.12

Figure 2 How Industry Can Reduce Waste: A Cyclic Industrial System that Mimics Nature
Natural Nutrients
Technical Nutrients

NATURALRESOURCE

1

Extraction

GOODS IN
PRODUCTION
1

1
Sales

Waste from
Production

Regeneration
1 Resource Productivity
2 Clean Products
3 Remanufacture, Recycle, Compost

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While individual companies can reduce waste, like the
Xerox copier team, modern products containhuge amounts of toxic substances that no
single company can eliminate entirely. Many
believe that this toxic load is the prime sourceof the rising incidence of cancer and otherdiseases in industrialized countries, as wellas the destruction of ecological systems. To
address these problems, environmentalists
have advocated “materials pooling” – working
collaboratively and systematically across complex value chains to identify and eliminate
sources of waste and toxicity.13 But actuallybuilding such cross-organizational learning
communities requires trust, shared vision, andshared understanding of larger systems. This
is what members of the SoL Sustainability
Consortium are attempting to do today, withworking groups focused on reducing and,ideally, entirely eliminating toxins and waste
Discardin a broad array of industrial and consumer
products. But what they really are doing islearning to build sustainability-learning
communities.14

3
GOODS
IN USE
2

3
Waste
from Use

3
DiscardWaste
fromDiscard

Waste

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Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy 3

a language, or raise a child – is about creating new capacities to bring new outcomes into
reality, especially outcomes we genuinely care about. That is also the root definition of“create” – to bring into existence.
Creating is not a mystical state that we simply fall into; it is a discipline that can be understood and developed. Robert Fritz,4 a musician, filmmaker, organizational consultant (and inmany ways my mentor in the study of creating as a discipline), has articulated three principles that can help leaders of all sorts more effectively create
desired outcomes.

If your primary role
is to fix problems
rather than create
something new andmeaningful, it’s hard
to maintain a senseof purpose.

1. Creating is different from problem solving.

The fundamental difference between creating and problem solving is simple.
In problem solving we seek to make something we do not like go away. In
creating, we seek to make what we truly care about exist. Few distinctions are
more basic. Of course, most of us, in both professional and private life, spend
far more time problem solving and reacting to circumstances than focusing
our energies on creating what we really value. Indeed, we can get so caught
up in reacting to problems that it is easy to forget what we actually want.
Organizations must do both – resolve day-to-day problems and generate
new results. But if your primary role is to fix problems, individually or collectively, rather than create something new and meaningful, it’s hard to maintain a sense of
purpose. And without a deep sense of purpose, it’s difficult to harness the energy, passion,commitment, and perseverance needed to thrive in challenging times.
If you wonder which is primary in your work, simply ask yourself or your team, “Whatare we trying to accomplish today?” Usually teams will describe a set of problems they’retrying to manage. Then, ask what they could accomplish by eliminating those problems.
Typically, they’ll describe yet another set of problems that could then be tackled – forinstance, preventing a service breakdown if only they first could solve their interpersonal
conflicts. What often is forgotten is the more basic question: What are we trying to create?
Without a compelling answer to this question, it is hard to know why all the problem solving
actually matters. Problem solving becomes the busywork of organizations in which people
have forgotten their purpose and vision. Reconnecting with that purpose always starts withasking questions like: Why are we here? What are we trying to create that will make theworld a better place? And, who would miss us if we were gone? (By the way, if you are in abusiness, “our investors” is never an answer to the last question – investors will always findanother company where they can earn an adequate return on their capital.)

2. The creative process is animated by the gap
between vision and reality.
When we picture something we want to create, we’re imaging a vision of the future, which
also evokes the implicit difference from what currently exists. Every creative artist understands this principle. Fritz calls it “structural tension,” and says it can be resolved by taking
action to achieve our vision. Closing the gap between vision and reality is the essence of thecreative arts. Artists get no credit for brilliant ideas unless they can bring them into reality.
This “bringing of vision to reality” is also the essence of great social, political, or businessleadership.

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However, because this tension between
vision and reality can be uncomfortable, creative tension becomes emotional tension and
we often seek ways around it. One way tolessen the emotional tension is simply to
reduce our true vision, to give up our dreams
and aim for only “realistic goals.” While thismight reduce our discomfort, it also reduces
creative energy. The second way is even moretroubling: we do not tell the truth about current reality. Just as the dynamics of compromise – lowering our vision – are common inhuman affairs, so too are the dynamics ofdenial. But to the extent that we misrepresent
current reality, we lose the capacity to changethat reality. The energy of the creative process
is released not just by holding true to a vision,
but also by telling the truth about what is.

3. Understanding your constraints
frees you to create.
One thing that distinguishes the master fromthe novice is an appreciation of the constraints of his or her medium. Or, as Fritz put
it, “No painter paints on an infinite canvas.”
John Elter, a former vice president at Xerox,
used this principle to great effect. Early in a
multiyear, product-development process tocreate the company’s first fully digital copiers,
Elter took his team on a two-day wilderness
expedition in the New Mexico desert.5 On the way back, they happened to walk by a dump
– at the bottom of which they discovered a Xerox copier. It was a revelation. They returned
to work with a new vision for the product and their entire enterprise: “Zero to landfill, for
our children.”
Says Elter, “Most of the constraints engineering teams deal with are management claptrap.
All the managers make them up: The product has got to grow revenue by this amount. It’s
got to achieve these cost targets.” However, says Elter, after their epiphany in the desert, “We
discovered our real constraint – that nothing from this product should ever go into a landfill.” The product they designed was ultimately 94 percent re-manufacturable and 98 percent
recyclable, and met or exceeded all its sales targets. The team created a great product – perhaps saving the company from bankruptcy or takeover – by redefining the constraints they
worked against.
As Elter and his team showed, as we go forward, the constraints that can enable creativity
will come from appreciating the environmental and social realities of an increasingly interdependent world. Nature produces no waste. Why should business be different? But, by andreflections.solonline.org

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Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy 5

Feeling the Heat
Researchers John Sterman and Linda Booth Sweeney
wondered why, despite overwhelming scientific evidence,so many Americans are complacent about the threat ofglobal warming. Their study points up the trouble people
have seeing connections among related forces, andthus framing good solutions.15
Sterman and Booth Sweeney described the dynamics ofglobal warming to MBA students at Harvard, Stanford,

Figure 3 The CO2 Stabilization Task

Anthropogenic CO2Emissions (GtC/year)

Global emissions resulting from humanactivity (billion tons of carbon per year)
6
4
2

Atmospheric CO2 (ppmv)

0
1850

380

1900

1950

2000

Atmospheric C02
concentrations, parts per million

360
340
320
300
280
1850

1900

1950

2000

Average global surface
temperatures, C. The zero line is set to theaverage for the period 1961–1990)oTemperature Change, C(1961–1990 Average=0)

o

0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
-0.2
-0.4
-0.6
-0.8
1850

1900

6 Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy

1950

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2000

and MIT, using data from the 2001 report of the UN’s
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).16
The findings themselves are not in dispute. As shownin Figure 1, the flow of CO2 emissions resulting fromhuman activity increased steadily from 1850–1950,
and precipitously since 1950. As a result, the total
concentration of CO2 has increased some 30 percent
in the last 150 years – to the highest concentrationsof the last 420,000 years (see Figure 2). Average
global temperatures are trending in the same direction, as shown in Figure 3. IPCC concludes that “mostof the warming observed over the last 50 years is
attributable to human activities.”
Not shown is the rate at which CO2 is removed fromthe atmosphere – which happens, of course, whengreen plants consume CO2 and return oxygen. Thisis vital information for projecting future CO2 levels.
By best estimates today, the outflow of CO2, which
has declined due to deforestation, is about one-halfthe emissions. Therefore, emissions would have todecline by 50 percent just to stabilize the current
stock of CO2 in the atmosphere – well beyond what
the Kyoto protocols would accomplish, even if all
countries of the world adopted them. So, anything
less than a 50-percent decline in emissions will
result in a continuing rise in CO2 levels for many
years. Furthermore, the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere are long lasting – temperatures would continue
to rise for years even if the CO2 concentration leveled
off today. Yet, presented with two scenarios basedon these data, no more than 38 percent of thestudents correctly predicted what would happen.
The principles at work, say Sterman and Booth
Sweeney, are “as simple as filling a bathtub: humanity is injecting CO2 into the atmosphere at about twice
the rate it is drained out. Stabilizing the concentrationof CO2 requires substantial cuts in emissions.” Theauthors call for better science reporting, noting that“even the simplest systems concepts help.” They
conclude, “The sooner people understand these
dynamics, the sooner they will call for leaders who
reject do-nothing, wait-and-see policies and who
will turn down the tap – before the tub overflows.”

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Volume 5, Issue 1

large, we fail to see these
constraints because we failto see the interdependenceout of which they arise.

Missing
the Connections
To redress the imbalances inour global society, whetherof income distribution, development of civil society, or
destruction of living systems, we must see the connections that permeate natural and social systems. But
for most of us, the noise of modern societies obscures those connections
and thus inhibits action – starting with our own thinking. For example,
recent research by MIT’s John Sterman shows why vague concerns about
global warming don’t necessarily translate into political action (see sidebar, “Feeling the Heat”).
Sterman was struck by a curious disconnect in public opinion: polls
show that while most Americans believe global warming is real, they feellittle sense of urgency to do anything about it. To test his hypothesis that “much of thiscomplacency arises from poor systems thinking skills,” Sterman and his colleague Linda
Booth Sweeney designed a thought experiment. They created two different scenarios, basedon the known stock of CO2 in the atmosphere and the flow of new CO2 emissions, and asked
graduate students from three elite universities to predict the likely outcome of each scenario.
Nearly two-thirds of these students failed to recognize the logically correct trend (which iscontinued global warming). Their poor performance was based not on a lack of technicalunderstanding, but on the failure to see the relationships between stocks (the current level ofCO2) and flows (the rate of new CO2 emissions). If the rate of new CO2 emissions is higher
than the rate at which CO2 is removed from the atmosphere, the overall level of CO2 willcontinue to increase, and with it, the likelihood of global warming.
If people are confused by such basic interrelationships, it is little wonder that it becomeseasy for politicians and citizens alike to pretend either that such problems do not exist or thatsomeone else will deal with them. Sterman, Booth Sweeney and a growing number of educators around the world believe these failings reflect a massive neglect of systems education.
An increasingly interdependent world means that systems thinking must become an educational priority. Ted Sizer, former dean of the Harvard School of Education and founder of
the Coalition of Essential Schools, writes, “It is not hyperbole to say that the growing gap
between the complexities we face and our capacity to come to a shared understanding ofthat complexity poses an unprecedented challenge to our future…. Even older students havelittle…understanding of the world’s undeniable complexity.”6
But the motivation for radical innovation in education will remain limited so long as theurgency of issues like global warming remains limited or absent. We are stuck in a “Catch© EMILY SPER

This is the naturalstate of the humanworld, separation
without separateness.

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Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy 7

22”: systemic imbalances fail to compel our attention because we simply do not see them inthe same way we see more immediate and local problems. And, we fail to see the systemic
issues because we define urgency by what is immediate. We are victims of a self-reinforcing
crisis of perception – a crisis of our own making. If it persists, we doom ourselves to continued passivity. Only catastrophe will compel action, which, given the growing social dividethat distributes problems like global warming unevenly between rich and poor, is likely to
manifest as social and political disruption – not unlike what we are already seeing aroundthe world.
My view is that nothing short of a profound shift in the Western, materialistic worldview
is likely to dislodge this crisis of perception. How can diverse people from around the worldcome to a fuller sense of the whole – that is, the social, economic, and ecologicalsystems we share? Perhaps that will begin when, together, we start to appreciate
the exquisite web of interconnectedness that enables life in the universe,
wherever we stand, and the role of our own consciousness in that web.

While mostAmericans believe
global warming isreal, they feel little
sense of urgency
to do anything
about it.

Making the Connections

In recent years, thought leaders from many scientific disciplines have begun toconstruct a picture of an interdependent universe far richer than almost any of
us might imagine, catalyzed initially by findings in quantum physics. In his 1951
book, Quantum Theory, physicist David Bohm proposed a hypothesis basedon the mathematics of quantum theory: if you separate an atomic particle andthe two elements of the particle go to opposite ends of the universe, then altering the spin of one element will change instantaneously the spin of the other. Bohm posed
this conceptual challenge because he believed that quantum theory revealed the “unbroken
wholeness of the universe,” contradicting our culture’s dominant Newtonian view of separation and causality arising from one thing acting on another.
Bohm’s supposition was later taken up by physicist J. S. Bell. Bell further developed thetheory and demonstrated empirically that Bohm was right: a change in spin of a single particle could be observed immediately, across a very large distance, in a separate particle previously connected to the first. Physicists call it “Bell’s Theorem” or the “Principle of
Non-Locality,” and its repeated empirical corroboration has been called “one of the mostshocking events in twentieth-century science.”7 Physicists are quick to caution that, while
non-locality operates at the subatomic scale, whether such interdependence exists at more
“macro” scales remains to be demonstrated – leaving many questions regarding the relevanceof this phenomenon for humans and the social world. An astonishing recent project, in adifferent context, suggests that new answers may be coming.
A team of engineers, physicists, and psychologists has been studying the output of 37
random-number generators in 17 countries, to see whether there is a level of connectedness
operating at the human level, and not just at the subatomic level of Bohm’s prediction. Thesemachines, used for scientific research, are isolated from every known form of human or
natural interference, such as electromagnetic or telecommunications waves. Yet, on themorning of September 11, 2001 the random-number generators behaved in very nonrandom
ways, inexplicably showing the influence of some non-ordinary disturbance, presumably
human in origin (see sidebar, “A Non-Random Occurrence”).

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Interestingly, pioneers like Bohm and Albert Einstein never had much doubt that the
implications of quantum theory extended into the domain of human awareness and social
harmony. “The most important thing going forward,” said Bohm in 1980, “is to break theboundaries between people so we can operate as a single intelligence. Bell’s theorem implies
that this is the natural state of the human world, separation without separateness. The task
is to find ways to break these boundaries, so we can be in our natural state.”8 Einstein,
Bohm’s colleague at Princeton, spoke of a similar aspiration:“The human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something
separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires, and to ouraffection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves fromthis prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

What does this mean practically? For Bohm, it meant dedicating much of the last 10 yearsof his life to understanding the potential of dialogue to foster deep personal and collective awareness of connectedness. Sadly, he did not live to see the growing evidence of its
application.

A Non-Random Occurrence
Figure 4 Terrorist Attacks Context, Sept. 7–13, 2001

Since 1998, within the Global Consciousness
Project (a social version of J. S. Bell’s quantum
physics experiment), an interdisciplinary team ofscientists has been monitoring more than threedozen random-number generators around theworld to track possible effects from unexpectedsources.17 What they found on September 11,
2001 was unexpected indeed.
Something went amiss with the random-number
generators in the world, individually and collectively, atexactly the time of the terrorist attacks. Beginning a few
hours before and continuing for two days after the attack,the data showed unexpected deviations in the output
of individual devices, and an unprecedented correlation
among different devices across the network. The researchers estimate the probability of what was observed
at less than one in one thousand. They conclude thatreflections.solonline.org

Cumulative Deviation of Chisquare Attacks
Marked with Square—Days are GMT (EDT+4)
20
Cum Dev (Z^2-1)*E2

Random-number generators – devices used togenerate sequences of random numbers used inscientific and industrial research – must be insulated from external forces, such as electromagnetic radiation, telecommunication signals, andevery known form of human or physical interference, or they cannot perform their function.

15
10
5

Comparison Probability
Envelope P=0.05

0Sept 11

-5
0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Days (Resolution Seconds)“it is unlikely that (known) environmental factors
could cause the correlations we observe….” Barring
demonstration to the contrary, “we are obliged toconfront the possibility that the measured correlations may be directly associated with some (as yet
poorly understood) aspect of consciousness
attendant to global events.” 18

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Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy 9Kahane talks about one such application in South Africa in the early 1990s. With theapartheid regime coming to an end, people who had been killing one another were struggling
to form a democratic government. Says Kahane, “A popular joke at the time said that, facedwith the country’s daunting challenges, South Africans had two options: a practical option
and a miraculous option.” The practical option was that everyone would “go down on theirknees and pray for a band of angels to come down from heaven and fix
things for us.” The miraculous option was that people would “talk with one
another until we found a way forward together.”9 Fortunately, South
Africans opted for the miraculous option – talking with one another anddiscovering their interconnectedness to their common homeland, to their
future, and to one another.

Many businesses
are recognizing thattraditional, top-down
control becomes lessviable as interdependence grows.

Applying Wisdom of the Past

The challenges we face can seem overwhelming. But humans have innate
capacities, beyond our social conditioning, to develop a more holistic
awareness of our relationship to the world. The connection between human consciousness
and the material world has been a foundational idea in many of the oldest societies in history.
It is now reentering the mainstream of Western culture due, in part, to new scientific theories
that are more holistic. After all, science is the religion of this age, and the source to which
we look for the most authoritative interpretations of reality.
Business leaders, teachers, and other professionals also are drawing from the wisdom of
the past, and from their own experience, to create more inclusive and integrated ways ofliving and working. This encompasses diverse global movements, from holistic health, torestorative justice, to learner-centered learning in schools. Many businesses are recognizingthat traditional, top-down control becomes less viable as interdependence grows. Increasingly,
businesses are striving for fewer layers of management and encouraging more “self-organizing” – operating with minimum imposition from the top, and continually bringing change
from the periphery to the center. But we are at the very outset of this journey, and theimmense stresses on traditional institutions of all sorts are causing some institutions tobecome more hierarchical and rigid. While it is fashionable to claim the spread of democracy around the world as a victory of Western ideals, in fact, many experience the opposite:
the imposition of a new world order, driven predominantly by authoritarian institutions
unresponsive to broad constituencies whose lives they are altering. Yet, older notions of selforganizing and self-governing exist throughout the world – in native and indigenous cultures,for example – wherever human beings have tried to understand nature deeply enough to live
according to its guidelines.
Perhaps the scientific era is about to move to another phase – and the democratic era, as
well. I suggest that we don’t understand democracy well. Like Western reductionistic science,the present “Washington consensus” view of democracy is but one prototype, with greatstrengths but also great limitations. Most people in the US think of democracy as a kind of
bequest, like an old suit of clothes. But what if it is actually something we’re still learningand creating? What if, to create a more desirable global future, we must rediscover and more
effectively apply the lessons we claim to know so well?

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In his 1871 essay “Democratic Vistas,” Walt Whitman wrote:
We have frequently printed the word democracy. Yet I cannot too often repeatthat this is a word the real gist of which still sleeps quite un-awakened.... It is agreat word whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten because that history has
yet to be enacted. It is, in some sort, younger brother of another great, andoften used word, “nature,” whose history also waits unwritten.

Were he alive today, I believe Whitman would be writing not about American democracy,
but about global society, and its as-yet-unwritten links to nature. When executives in global
companies talk candidly, their real concern usually is not the cost of capital or return onsales; it is the social and political stability of the world they will leave behind.10 They,
too, see the future as an alien place. If it is to become more hospitable, it is up to us to create
it so.

Endnotes
1. Despite pledges by the G7 nations to cut the incidence of global poverty by half, the only region tosee significant decline is East Asia, with a 12-percent reduction since 1990. In Africa, South Asia,and Latin America the number of people living on less than $1 per day grew by about 80 million
from 1990–1998. Worldwide, the number of people living on less than $1 per day remained static
at about 2.7 billion throughout the 1990s, and the number living on less than $2 per day grew from
2.7 billion to 2.8 billion, according to Oxfam. http://www.oxfam.org/eng/pdfs/pp000721_G7_missing_
the_target.pdf.
2. For the full text of Mieko Nishimizu’s address, see “Looking Back, Leaping Forward,” Reflections,Vol. 4, No. 4. http://www.reflections.solonline.org.
3. Adam Kahane’s new book, The Victory of the Open Heart: Solving Tough Problems Through Talking
and Listening, will be available in 2004. His work in developing capacity for groups to function in
the midst of this complexity appears in “How to Change the World: Lessons for Entrepreneurs from
Activists,” Reflections, Vol. 2, No. 3. An earlier discussion of the first two types of complexity canbe found in G. Roth and P. Senge, “From Theory to Practice: Research Territory, Processes andStructure at an Organizational Learning Center,” Journal of Organizational Change Management,
Vol. 9, No. 1 (1996).
4. For more on the work of Robert Fritz, see http://www.robertfritz.com. See also “A Lesson From theArts,” Reflections, Vol. 2, No. 4. http://www.reflections.solonline.org. See also Your Life As Art(Newfane, VT: Newfane Press, 2002).
5. See John Elter, et al. “The LAKES Story,” Reflections, Vol. 1, No. 4. http://www.reflections.solonline.org.
6. T. Sizer, P. Senge, and L. Booth Sweeney. “Systems Schooling for School Systems,” working paper,
Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2003. See also, P. Senge, et al. Schools That Learn: A Fifth
Discipline Fieldbook for Educators, Parents, and Everyone Who Cares About Education (New York:
Doubleday/Currency, 2001).
7. D. Radin. The Conscious Universe (San Francisco: Harper, 1997): 278.
8. J. Jaworski. Personal communication, 1980. See also J. Jaworski. Synchronicity: The Inner Pathof Leadership (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1996).

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Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy 119. A. Kahane. The Victory of the Open Heart: Solving Tough Problems Through Talking and Listening(San Francisco, Forthcoming 2004).
10. SoL provides opportunities for executives to engage in this type of frank conversation. As a specificillustration, please refer to an invitation from a group of SoL executive members to the larger community called “the Marblehead letter.” For the full text of “the Marblehead letter,” see http://
www.solonline.org/repository/item?item_id=163561. The initial economic sponsors of the global
SoL network met in June 2001 to review the results of the first three years of organizing workand to provide input on SoL’s potential contribution to issues of importance for firms and societies.
The group, meeting in Marblehead, Massachusetts, identified a small set of issues fundamental tocreating positive futures in an interdependent world, and invites the SoL community into ongoing
dialogue on these topics:
The social divide: the ever-widening gap between those who participate in the increasinglyinterdependent global economy and those who do not.
Redefining growth: economic growth based on ever-increasing material use and discard isinconsistent with a finite world.
Variety and inclusiveness: developing inclusion as a core competence in increasingly
multicultural organizations.
Attracting talented people and realizing their potential: developing commitment in a worldof “free agents” and “volunteer” talent.
The role of the corporation: extending the traditional role of the corporation, especially the
global corporation, to be more commensurate with its impact.
The system seeing itself: the challenges of coordination and coherence in social systems.
11. P. Senge and G. Carstedt. “Innovating Our Way to the Next Industrial Revolution: Building Sustainable
Enterprises,” Sloan Management Review, Winter 2001, Volume 42, Number 2, pp. 24–38. http://
mit-smr.com/past/2001/smr4222.html.
12. W. McDonough and M. Braungart. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things (New York:North Point Press, 2002).
13. Ibid.
14. For more information on the Sustainability Consortium, see http://www.solonline.org/public_pages/
comm_SustainabilityConsortiumCore/
15. See Sterman, John D. and Booth Sweeney, Linda. “Cloudy Skies: Assessing Public Understandingof Global Warming,” System Dynamics Review, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2002. http://web.mit.edu/jsterman/
www/cloudy_skies.html. See also the presentation at SoL Research Greenhouse III in 2002, at http://
www.solonline.org/repository/download/Sterman_Greenhouse3.pdf_1.pdf?item_id=364437.
16. See http://www.ipcc.ch.
17. Radin, D. “Global Consciousness Project Analysis for September 11, 2001,” at http://noosphere.
princeton.edu.
18. R.D. Nelson, D. Radin, R. Shoup, and P.A. Bancel. “Correlations of Continuous Random Data withMajor World Events,” p. 10, article (currently in review) available at http://noosphere.princeton.edu.

12 Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy � Seng
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Reflections

Volume 5, Issue 1

FROM THE MANAGING DIRECTOR

The Power of Learning Communities
By C. Sherry Immediato
When someone unable to attend
SoL’s first Global Forum in Finland
asked me to share the highlights,
one I described was the overwhelming success of a co-created meetingthat allowed more than 300 participants to experience SoL as a tangible global community – an encoun(circa 1978)
ter previously virtual, and largely abC. Sherry Immediato
Managing Director and President, SoL
stract, for many people. I also menimmediato@solonline.org
tioned that in this process, we hadmanaged to recreate in microcosm a surprising number of the world’s struggles and misunderstandings.
For example, we have SoL communities in a numberof countries in the Middle East. Some individuals
were unable to participate due to visa difficulties, afirst hurdle to simply being together. One country’s
group decided at the last minute to stay home,puzzling and disappointing others who had planned
to use the neutral ground of Finland to further theirrelationship. Others from the Gulf States did reportthat the remarks of a few participants were something short of welcoming. There were examples of
our not always bridging the north/south and east/west divides particularly well. And of course those of
us from the U.S. did tend to take matters unilaterally
into our own hands on occasion, when other solutions
jointly reached might have been better. My questioner then asked whether I found this depressing, sincea gathering of people committed to vision, productive conversation, reflection, inclusivity, and learning
should be relatively free of the typical social, economic, and political conflicts the rest of humanity
experiences. If there was no hope for this group,
she implied, was there hope for any of us?
In fact, participants at the Helsinki meeting talked
about just this subject. It seemed to most that learning communities such as SoL are the ideal practicefields for us to confront the mental frameworks andbad habits that keep us stuck in short-term, selfinterested, and ultimately self-defeating patterns,
and to begin developing the capacity to think andact differently. What better company for such difficult tasks than a willing set of fellow learners?

One thing seems certain – the shifts we are talking
about cannot be accomplished alone. We need the
support of communities in which our commitments
and lives are seen and held – especially when we findourselves losing heart.1 Remaining present to the mostchallenging situations, rather than ignoring or attacking them, requires reliance more on the energy ofclarity and courage than of adrenalin. These choices
and capabilities that Peter talks about crystallized forme many years ago. The following experience helps
explain why I see SoL as such a valuable resource for
us in dealing collectively with complexity we simply
cannot address alone.
In 1978, my public policy classmates and I madeour way into the world, full of youthful idealism,
confidence, and fearlessness. I had been an intern,
and was then an employee, of the City of Boston’s
Employment and Economic Policy Administration,
supporting a special project on business (and job)
retention and attraction.2 In this capacity, I had theopportunity to speak at length with many Boston
business leaders, as well as with the chronicallyunemployed.
I was not surprised by the deep suffering of thoseunable to make a living – in either an emotional or
economic sense – and I had probably accepted thateven with the best policy “safety nets” some would
not be reached. But I was unprepared to learn thatsome of our well-intended policies actually contributed to the problems these people experienced. The
reality sank in as I talked with people who came toour office to apply for training or other job assistance.
Too often, they were ineligible for programs because
they had participated in a previous program, though
the reason they needed to apply for a new programor service was because the previous one had failed insome way. The “fixes that backfire” system structure
became real for me when we were forced to turn awaysome of the people who needed us most. The recognition that, without significant personal and organizational change, I was destined to perpetuate thissystem was sobering indeed. Worse yet, those working with me seemed cloaked in resignation or denial
about this reality. And we were the good guys.

Copyright © 2003, Society for Organizational Learning. All Rights Reserved.

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The Power of Learning Communities 13

At the other end of the economic spectrum, my visceralsense of the dilemmas of those in positions of power
was a type of pain I had not anticipated. For example,
the chairman of one of the city’s largest banks unexpectedly invited himself to an interview I was conducting

SoL Global Forum with another corporate officer. He voiced his dismay
Espoo, Finland
about the city’s failure to work with, or even to acknowlJune 2002
edge, business leadership in Boston as a partner forchange. Here was a man who seemed to want to do
the right thing and certainly had a great deal vested in ahealthy local economy, who had every conceivable resourceat hand (including an office bigger than my apartment),
and who did not know what to do! I became confused
about who the good guys were, and began to question
whether there even were good guys and bad guys. This
was truly an alien world to me – one without sides and,suddenly, with more possibilities. My mind was blown
and my heart was broken open.
There were things about this time in my life that madelearning a little more likely. As someone new to the system,
it was possible to see it with fresh eyes. I also had enormous freedom in structuring my work – the result of wise,
amused, or exhausted supervisors. During the initial internship, I also had the counsel of Francis Bator, a great
political economist and fine man. Even so, I do not think
I would have had enough courage to continue to keep
an open mind and heart without the support of what
I would now call a learning community.

14 The Power of Learning Communities � Immediat
Immediato

A group of my classmates had remained in the Boston
area, and for many months, we met at least once aweek for beer and camaraderie, exchanging politicalgossip and venting about life in large, and usually bureaucratic, systems. But before long the talk turned to thelarger realities we were confronting in a variety
of jobs and policy areas. What would reallymake the city diverse and livable for all its
citizens? How might we ensure the protectionof children, usually by removal from theirhomes, while also encouraging the stability offamilies? Should optimal environmental policies be determined in part by economic conditions? What were we really trying to accomplish
in the face of disturbing symptoms of systemic
dysfunction? And what would we actually dowhen we went back to work in the morning?
Along with what most of us would now see as
fairly deep dialogue, we also had a space inwhich to laugh and cry about this world thatwas not what we expected, but about which
we cared deeply. This process helped me recognize that I cared more about the process ofcollective inquiry and change than its content,
leading me to learn the language and practiceof business and organizational behavior. More than 25
years later, a number of lasting friendships survive fromthis group, often around a shared commitment tocommunity service.
That early conversational container holding our dreams
and aspirations, our befuddlement and curiosity, and ourfrustrations and despair has been an important sourceof my deep commitment to develop the core idea of SoL– the power of learning communities as a tangible contribution to creating desired futures in a global society.
During the past two years, the founding SoL Council ofTrustees has been exploring the practical and conceptual
aspects of what it means to create and maintain crosssystem learning communities. We believe that threebasic processes intertwine to bring SoL to its full potential: applied learning (including an explicit research component), community development and maintenance, andongoing study in a few focal areas that link our diverse
activities. As a number of task groups are exploring what
it would mean to organize our community more explicitly
around these key processes, it has become increasingly
clear that while the implementation details may be

Reflections

Volume 5 Issue 2

unique to SoL, the core processes are intrinsic tosustained collective reflection and action.
While they might be generic, these processes are notautomatic. They require structure. In the case I described,
our group understood itself as more of a personal support network than a collaborative work group. We certainly
were engaged in applied learning, but as solo practitioners we were without any thought or mechanism tocompile our experiments and insights. As a consequence,
our capacity to develop was fragmented, and we had
no way to share what we learned beyond the group. By
contrast, groups can create amazing results when they
rally around a few key focal areas for a short period oftime. But Don Tabone, a specialist in crisis intervention,notes that relationships that are tenuous prior to an event
usually fall apart after a burst of activity – there is nocommunity, and no more learning together without
another crisis.
The implications of trying to hold together these three
key elements – community, focused inquiry, and application – are significant for our capacity to create something together. Deep dialogue, engaging projects, or
provocative research are not sufficient individually toachieve the results we want, and we should not assume
that one will somehow organically cause the emergenceof the others. I think this has been the single biggest
experiential learning within the SoL community.3 Oneof the most significant contributions SoL can make isto advance our understanding of the dynamics of large-

scale learning communities. For example, as we go
forward, I imagine that an important part of SoL’s
agenda will be the exploration of the minimal structures and tools that make it possible for us to increase
collective intelligence and wisdom.
SoL is a playing field that many of us share, and I trust
it will make practical contributions in areas such as
innovation, sustainability, collective leadership development, and large-system change. Am I discouraged that,as a community, we mirror the stresses and strains in
the world around us? Quite the contrary – and it’s not
because I enjoy the occasional good argument. Communities such as SoL, as places of respite from lessfriendly circumstances, can adopt a culture of superficial harmony to offer simple relief to the battle weary
and lonely. This tendency teaches us little about how
to function well in the realities of daily life. Rather, I amquite encouraged that we care to take on work important enough that all of our energies surface – “the good,the bad and the ugly.” If SoL provides a safe space towork productively with all of these energies – in part
because we can agree on a larger purpose of creatingorganizations and communities worthy of the commitment of their members, we will have made an essential
contribution to organizational learning. Best of all, we
will have developed, in this practice field, our capacity
to participate fully in our families, organizations, governments, and societies to create together the future we
desire.

Endnotes
1. A number of SoL members participate in ongoing learning circles. Their experience has influenced my language
in describing the quality of learning community we are seeking to create. Special thanks go to Beth Jandernoa
for sharing her experience as a member of the Circle of Seven. This circle and others are described in Glennifer
Gillspie’s “Ringing Out into the World: The Transforming Power of Women’s Circles” in Fabric of the Future: Women
Visionaries of Today Illuminate the Path to Tomorrow, M.J. Ryan, ed., (York Beach, Maine: Conari Press, 1998).
2. In the 1970s, most urban centers in the northeastern United States lost population and jobs at a rapid rate in
the relocation of business to the “sunbelt” – areas with lower tax rates and labor costs. The area left behind bythese fleeing businesses has been referred to as the “rust belt.” While Boston had the benefit of a strong hightechnology and financial services base that remained relatively stable, it still suffered significant loss of jobs forcity residents. As a result, business and job retention was an urgent priority.
3. The reasoning behind SoL’s design is described by Peter Senge and C. Otto Scharmer in “Community Action
Research,” published in Handbook of Action Research, Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury, eds., (Thousand
Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2001). This chapter is available in the SoL Knowledge Repository at http://
www.solonline.org. In this chapter, Peter and Otto describe the importance of research, practice, and capacity
building as interconnected activities present within SoL. I see these as essential to the applied learning process,but not sufficient to achieve the focus or ongoing community development that learning communities require.

reflections.solonline.org

Immediato

The Power of Learning Communities 15

FROM THE EDITOR

From the Editor
By Karen Ayas
Whether we turn to the scientific evidence or

If we can build into our days the reflective

the daily news, there is no escape from econ-

space to be in touch with ourselves and dwellomic, ecological, or social imbalances in theon the questions that matter, we may findworld. There is increasing concern about thesemore answers than we think. It is our hopeproblems, but we continue to pretend thatthat Reflections will serve as a medium for suchsomeone else should deal with them.

reflection, foster dialogue, and increase thePeter Senge reminds us of the responsibility
Karen Ayas

Editor-in-Chief, Reflections
Research Fellow,
Erasmus University
Partner, The Ripples Groupkaren@ripplesgroup.com

collective awareness of our connectedness.

we have as citizens of a global society. The

I hope that you will create space for yourself

complexity of the challenges we face in ourand for others to reflect on the questions Peter

increasingly interdependent world is undeniable.

raises: What does it mean to live in a global

As I read and reflect on the article, I am strucksociety? What will it take to see the urgency

by both our blindness to our own power as in-of what is not local and truly begin to think

dividuals, and the potential impact of our seem-

and act in global terms? What is it that we

ingly small actions, to create more connected,

can individually commit to?

compassionate ways of living, working, andbeing.

I also hope that with Reflections’ new format –one provocative feature article each month –Creating a positive global future starts with

we can deeply focus on both very practical anda deep personal commitment to consider who

personal challenges, and that you will all engage

we are in our personal and professional lives,in the exploration of critical issues facing the

how we see ourselves and our relationships

institutions and social structures that arewith one another and the world we live in, andshaping our global future.

what we truly care about. The capacity to createis inherent in us all, not only in the creative
artist. The painter has the blank canvas – thespace for creativity. We, too, need space forcreativity – amid the noise of daily life – to be
more effective as leaders and to create what
we genuinely desire.

Copyright © 2003, Society for Organizational Learning. All Rights Reserved.

16 Creating
From theDesired
Editor �Futures
Ayas in a Global Economy

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Reflections

Volume 5 Issue 2

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

Editorial Team
Editors-in-Chief
Karen Ayas and Peter M. Senge
Senior Editor
Paul M. Cohen
Publisher
C. Sherry Immediato
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Creating Desired Futures in a Global Economy 17