Volume 10, Number 4

Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change

F E A T U R E A RT I C L E S

Speaking Truth to Power:
Nurturing a Reflective
Culture at the U.S. DefenseIntelligence Agency
Adrian Wolfberg &Nancy M. Dixon

Educating the Next
Generation of Systems
Thinkers: An Interview
with Tracy Benson
Tracy Benson &C. Sherry Immediato

Climate Interactive:“Sims” for Improving Our
Thinking About Addressing
Climate Change
Andrew Jones &Elizabeth Sawin

Book Excerpt

Action Trumps Everything:
Act Your Way intoa New Way of Thinking

Charles F. Kiefer &Leonard A. Schlesinger,
with Paul B. Brown© istockphoto© thinkstock

Published by The Society for Organizational Learningreflections.solonline.org
ISSN 1524-1734

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p ublis h e r ’ s N o t e 1 0 . 4

Over the years, I’ve often
been asked to give
examples of learningorganizations. Sometimes,
people want to know if theirfavorite brand gets the SoL 		
seal of approval. Other times,
behind this request, I hear an
C. Sherry Immediato
additional question: Is it reallypossible to change our habits, practices, and culture?
In this issue, we share three examples where the tools
and methods associated with organizational learning
disciplines have had a significant impact beyond
their initial users.
Many organizations recognize breakdowns in collective intelligence and seek to address them; few facestakes as high as the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
In ”Speaking Truth to Power,” Adrian Wolfberg andNancy Dixon show how they used a capacity-building
initiative to research the nature of the communications
issues the agency was up against. By looking systematically at left-hand column cases from a cohort ofanalysts, they were able not only to coach the participants individually to improve their ability to shareknowledge, but also to develop a number of systemicinterventions to shift the DIA’s shared culture.
Is a school a learning organization by definition? 		
Not necessarily. In this issue, Tracy Benson from theWaters Foundation shares her experience in developing
schools as true learning systems. We first met in 1992
when a few inspired teachers and administrators
decided that educating the next generation meant
nurturing systems citizens. Now, thousands have been
influenced by the evolution of these early initiatives.
From my perspective, the commitment of educators toembody in their own work the principles and practices
they want to share with their students has made all thedifference. The question now is how to take this work
to scale – a challenge that Tracy reflects on with us!
While Climate Interactive has always had lofty aspirations, its recent successes on the world stage offer afabulous example of going to scale. Inspired to support
government representatives in thinking systemically
about their commitments to reducing greenhouse 		gas emissions, the Climate Interactive team produced
sophisticated simulations to play out the consequencesof such commitments. In the process, they realized that
all of us would benefit from a big-picture view of the
dynamics of climate change. Project managers Drew
Jones and Elizabeth Swain have succeeded in creating
an accurate and engaging free “sim” to educate an evenwider audience about the impact of policy on climate
goals and the choices before all of us.
Finally, the book excerpt from Action Trumps Everything:
Creating What You Want in an Uncertain World features
the work of my dear friend and colleague Charlie Kiefer
and graduate school advisor Len Schlesinger. While
their inspiration is academic research on the thinking
and habits of entrepreneurs, they have grounded theconclusions in a usable approach. My big takeaway is
the importance of making it affordable to fail. By intentionally framing low-risk experiments, you can either
rapidly build positive momentum or quickly learn,
refine, and try again.
With this issue, we complete 10 years of the publicationof Reflections, and we’re considering a variety of improvements as we go forward. As Janice Molloy assumes therole of managing editor, I’d like to welcome her and takethis opportunity to again thank founding editor Ed
Schein for his vision for this publication, as well as Karen
Ayas and Nina Kruschwitz who followed him. We know
from your notes that Reflections has made a difference
in your work and organizations. Please let us know if
you’d like to be part of the journal’s future as an editorialadvisor or contributor – we intend to continue thetradition of creating space for reflection.
With gratitude,

C. Sherry Immediato
Publisherp ublis h e r ’ s n o t e | immediat oe x e c u t ive di g es t 1 0 . 4

Speaking Truth to Power:
Nurturing a Reflective Culture at
the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency

Climate Interactive:“Sims” for Improving Our Thinking
About Addressing Climate Change

Adrian Wolfberg and Nancy M. Dixon

Andrew Jones and Elizabeth Sawin

As information moves upward through managementlevels, how does an organization ensure that what
reaches the top is accurate? The Defense Intelligence
Agency struggled with this question following the 2001
terrorist attacks against the United States. As a result,the Agency identified building and communicatingknowledge as a core objective in its 2003 strategic plan.
In this article, Adrian “Zeke” Wolfberg, director of the
DIA’s newly established Knowledge Lab, tells the storyof how the Lab set the stage for culture change at the
Agency using approaches such as Chris Argyris’s lefthand/right-hand column activity for recognizing
counterproductive conversational habits.

While real-time learning is the most durable feature 		of learning organizations, some issues require “practicefields” or simulations because the phenomena arecomplex, have long time lags, and have high-stakes
consequences. In 2009, at the international meetings
on climate change in Copenhagen, Climate Interactive
provided negotiators with just this kind of a practicefield to gauge the impact of different proposals. As
people began to experiment with the simulations, 		
it became clear that the audience of would-be users
was enormous – well beyond the small pool of offi-		cial country representatives. In this article, simulationarchitects Drew Jones and Elizabeth Sawin share the
Climate Interactive story and their key learnings increating a living microworld – freely available toanyone with internet access.

Educating the Next Generationof Systems Thinkers: An Interview
with Tracy Benson
Tracy Benson and Sherry Immediato
For 20 years, pockets of school systems across the 		
U.S. have been gaining traction in preparing students
to take on tomorrow’s complex challenges. Educatorsin these districts have found that the tools of systems
thinking and system dynamics give them a way toengage reluctant learners, boost academic achievement, and foster a generation of “systems citizens.” The
Waters Foundation, a private charitable foundation
founded in 1957 by Jim and Faith Waters, has been amoving force behind this effort. Today, the organization’s
Systems Thinking in Schools (STIS) Project is applying
lessons learned to scale up its efforts within local communities and around the world. In this interview with
Reflections publisher Sherry Immediato, STIS program
coordinator Tracy Benson shares the project’s learning
process, strategy for reaching new audiences, andplans for taking the work to scale.

Action Trumps Everything:
Act Your Way into a New Way of Thinking
Charles F. Kiefer and Leonard A. Schlesinger,
with Paul B. Brown
The premise behind Action Trumps Everything is simple:
Our most important learning is through experience.
In this compelling discussion, Charlie Kiefer (Peter
Senge’s original creative partner and Innovation Associates founder) and Len Schlesinger (president of theentrepreneurially centered Babson College) use serial
entrepreneurs as our teachers. In their book, they
document that those who successfully launch multiple
businesses are not huge risk takers or extraordinary
visionaries; rather, successful entrepreneurs focus on
the creative process. They experiment unceasingly.
They act their way into a new way of thinking, creatingin the face of uncertainty. The good news is, so canyou – by mastering what the authors call “CreAction.”iii

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fea t u r e 1 0 . 4

Speaking Truth to Power:
Nurturing a Reflective Culture at the
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency
A d r ian W o lfbe r g and N an c y M . D i xo n
As information moves upward through management levels, how does an organization ensure that what
reaches the top is accurate? The Defense Intelligence Agency struggled with this question following the 2001
terrorist attacks against the United States. As a result, the Agency identified building and communicatingknowledge as a core objective in its 2003 strategic plan. In this article, Adrian “Zeke” Wolfberg, director of
the DIA’s newly established Knowledge Lab, tells the story of how the Lab set the stage for culture change
at the Agency using approaches such as Chris Argyris’s left-hand/right-hand column activity for recognizing counterproductive conversational habits.

F

Introduction

Adrian Wolfberg

Nancy M. Dixon

ollowing the 2001 terrorist attacks against the World Trade Centerand the Pentagon, the intelligence community in Washington, D.C., wasbombarded with criticisms, the most serious of which focused on theapparent lack of coordination and communication among its various
agencies. In 2003, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) undertook its first
institutional attempt to address the communication issue by including it in
its strategic plan. As a long-time Agency analyst and recent graduate of the
National War College, I was recruited to lead this effort.

In approaching this challenge, I saw both a broader need and a fresh opportunity
for the Agency. From my perspective, people working at the DIA would have tolearn how to change their behavior before they could become more collaborative. This would require nothing less than a culture shift for theorganization, a shift away from its control-based environment
toward becoming a knowledge-based one.

Creation of the DIA Knowledge Lab
No one at the DIA disagreed that the organization needed to be more collaborative.
Still off balance from the harsh criticism directed at it from all sides following the terrorist
attacks, the Agency’s director and senior leaders initiated and actively supported my plan
to improve the DIA’s execution of its primary task – ensuring the security of the United States.

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I understood that effecting such a change wasgoing to be an exceedingly difficult job and thatsigns of progress would be slow to surface. The
DIA had no model for designing a collaborative
culture. It would have to learn new ways of thinking and behaving. It would have to learn how tolearn, a challenge that was included as an objective in our post-9/11 strategic plan. These shifts
would contribute to the overarching objectiveof creating a knowledge-based culture.

The DIA had no model for
designing a collaboration culture.
What would change rather dramatically was theprocess that we would use to get there. I knewthat no level of technology could fix the Agency’s
lack of collaboration. The problem was far too
complex and deeply rooted, and it was characterized by a combination of systemic issues: our lackof familiarity with the principles and behaviors
associated with working as a team; our countercollaborative nature, evident in our existingorganizational structure; and the individual natureof intelligence work that kept us isolated in our
respective silos of responsibility.
In 2004, the senior leadership of the DIA sanctioneda research project whose purpose was to identify
organizations that had succeeded in changing
their behavior to the extent that their cultures werealso changed. We wanted to understand how
those organizations learned and what specificfactors enabled them to do so.
Based on our extensive research, we identified
two critical success factors for our own culturechange initiative. The first was that the initiative
would have to be carried out with a small team of
employees whose only job for a specified periodof time (three months in our case) would be tolearn how to bring about change. The second
condition was that the team would report directly
to the headquarters level. Without this direct reporting line to the DIA’s top command, there waslittle chance that the initiative would be taken
seriously enough to eventually introduce its principles and learning to the broader organization.

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We also identified a third critical success factor,
although it was not apparent or suggested in our
research. We believed that in order to optimize ourchances of success, we would have to avoid the“zero-sum factor.” The zero-sum factor is present
to some extent in all systems, but it is particularly
engrained in government agencies. When something new is introduced in one part of a system,
it necessarily “disturbs” and impacts some otherpart of that system. Further, this disturbance andimpact is often negative or perceived as negative.
The result is a zero-sum game, in which gain or
positive change in one entity is achieved at theexpense of another.
To minimize the likelihood of a zero-sum outcome
for this project, we determined that the change
team would have no physical home, that it would
require little or no funding, and that no additional
management or oversight personnel would be
assigned to it. I would assume the management
oversight role as part of my job. The third critical
success factor, then, was that at no time during
the course of the project would we request
additional resources of any kind from any partof the Agency.
Once we identified the parameters within which
the project would operate, we created a smallorganizational capability that would be known as
the “DIA Knowledge Lab.” Its purpose was not totrain DIA employees. Its purpose was to create a
psychologically safe space that allowed employees to discover their own solutions to the mostfundamental social capital challenges, leading
to a new kind of organizational knowledge that
could be used to modify the Agency’s uncollaborative behavior.

The Knowledge Lab in Action
In early 2005, the DIA director formally established the Knowledge Lab. As the Lab’s founder,
I decided that its initial effort would focus on the
Agency’s knowledge-flow problem, which had
been revealed during an earlier initiative in which
I was also involved. That initiative was an in-depth
review of the DIA’s intelligence analysis performancein 2003 during the planning for Operation IRAQIFREEDOM. One of the key findings of that review
was the great difficulty the Agency had in moving
accurate knowledge up through the chain of command. Analysts were very sensitive to the numberof reviews that their assessments had to passthrough before they were accepted, and manyfound themselves adjusting their assessments toincrease their chances of successfully navigating
the many gates that were part of the DIA’s standard process.

One of the key findings was thegreat difficulty the Agency had in
moving accurate knowledge up
through the chain of command.
Communication Dynamics
Modifying deeply engrained behaviors such as thearduous process of moving knowledge up throughthe chain of command was a daunting task, and I
knew I would need additional help. Nancy Dixon,
an independent researcher and communication
expert, was recommended to me by academic
contacts. We discussed the project and its objectives and decided to work together. Based on the
behavioral challenges I identified, Nancy developed an intervention technique designed to engage
Agency employees in real-life experiences inwhich they would be able to clearly see what was
happening to work-related knowledge – and why– as it made its way up the chain of command.
We called this technique “Critical Discourse.”
Critical Discourse was based on the work of Chris
Argyris. Argyris found that employees at all organizational levels learn relatively quickly how they
are expected to act and interact in certain situations, and they do so because the behaviors areengrained in the culture of the organization. It’s
just how things are. Eventually, these patterns of
behavior become a natural part of an employee’s
day-to-day interactions, thus reinforcing theculture that spawned them.

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When employees encounteredpotentially embarrassing or
confrontational situations, they
instinctively took actions to save
face, regain control, and maximize
the impact of their particularpoint of view.
In the course of our project at the DIA, we saw
the same set of behaviors that Argyris predicted.
When employees encountered potentially embarrassing or confrontational situations, they instinctively took actions to save face, regain control, andmaximize the impact of their particular point ofview. And they did so by using the same conversational tactics that Argyris identified in his research:• Asserting their own views without revealing
the reasoning behind them
• Discouraging inquiry into their own reasoning• Minimizing or avoiding any inquiry into another person’s point of view• Asking leading questions to convince others
that their own point of view is the correct one

reflections.solonline.org•	Responding and acting on untested assumptions – usually negative – about the motives
behind the other person’s actions
When Nancy first conducted her Critical Discourse
seminars at the DIA in 2005, participation was on
a volunteer basis. The result was that in each seminar we had groups of people who didn’t knoweach other and who hadn’t worked together. The
significance of this is that, when they returnedto their respective positions, they had little if any
opportunity to put into practice the techniques
they had learned. After conducting the second
and third seminars, we realized that we had aflawed design and that to accurately assess thetrue benefits of the intervention technique, wewould have to test it with an intact team in which
participants would be fully committed to theprocess from beginning to end.
Nancy and I went back to the drawing board anddesigned a framework in which Critical Discourse
would be the key mechanism for learning new
behavior that would interrupt and change thedysfunctional internal dynamics that were currently
in play. We called this framework “Fresh Look.”

Fresh Look: Leveraging the Opportunity for ChangeWhile Nancy and I were refining the Critical Discourse intervention that we would use as the main vehicle
for shifting the organization’s counterproductive behavior, the Agency was simultaneously experimenting with other ways to improve interpersonal and interagency collaboration. Prior to 9/11, the Agency
relied almost exclusively on hardware and software technology as the way of bringing people and information
together. After 9/11, however, decision makers looked to policy in addition to technology as a means of encouraging greater collaboration. But policy and technology were not enough.
Because I strongly believe that human factors impact every situation, I was encouraged when I learned that 		
a few key Agency leaders were about to test a new approach for improving collaboration that would involve employees directly. The experiment focused on creating an environment in which employees’ workspaces would bephysically closer together than was the DIA’s accepted standard. By 2005, the DIA had completed a renovation of
the entire seventh floor in our main building, known as Building 6000, with the intent to let form follow function.
The renovated space had curved interior walls made of see-through glass instead of the original wood andsteel walls, many large meeting spaces, and no individual cubicles. It was a dramatic change, and DIA’s senior leadership wanted to kick off the completed renovation with a collaboration-related initiative. This was just the kind 		of opportunity I wanted for testing the Critical Discourse intervention that Nancy Dixon and I had been working
on. The Agency’s senior leaders agreed to sponsor a pilot project, which was to become known as “Fresh Look.”feat u r e | W o lfbe r g and D i x o n

5

The Fresh Look TeamThe Fresh Look team consisted of 12 employees
who were “contributed” by their supervisors. Most
were analysts, with the exception of one visualization technologist and one collection specialist.
None of them knew each other. There were two
criteria for being selected. One was that each person on the team needed to have sufficient expertise to contribute to resolving the issue. The otherwas that, in the eyes of their supervisors, these
individuals were not rigid in their thinking andwere open to new possibilities.

The Fresh Look team worked on a real-world
intelligence issue, the “content” of the experiment.
At the same time, the group participated in three
Critical Discourse workshops and received individual coaching on interpersonal skills, the “process”
component of the experiment. The Fresh Lookgroup, at first a collection of strangers, soon
became an intact team.
Nevertheless, at the beginning, no matter what
we as experiment facilitators said or promisedor safeguarded, the team maintained behavioral
patterns typical of a hierarchical, siloed organization. We wanted the team to be free from imposed
structure, to let knowledge creation drive structure,but instead we found that the embedded regimeof structure was driving knowledge creation.
At some point, we realized that the team wasin danger of failing to create new ground anddecided that we should apply the Critical Discourse
technique more deeply. By doing so, we could© istockPhoto

I personally presented the Fresh Look project
to each supervisor who would be contributing ateam member. I described it as a way to empower
employees, bring out the best in them, and shed
new light on old problems. Both supervisors andparticipants came to the project with the expectation that each team member’s unique knowledge
would be tapped and that members would havethe opportunity to explore new approaches, technology, and techniques that would benefit theirhome offices when they returned at the end of
the pilot.

help team members communicate and share information based on knowledge that they would
discover during the process and not be trapped in
the structure we were trying to overhaul. In a realway, Critical Discourse saved Fresh Look.

At the beginning, the team
maintained behavioral patterns
typical of a hierarchical, siloedorganization.
The Fresh Look team participated in Critical Discourse seminars as an ongoing part of their teamprogram. Each seminar required team members
to write up cases about communication problems
they experienced prior to or during their participation in Fresh Look. They highlighted interactions
that were preventing them and their coworkers
from sharing knowledge that was critical for theteam to succeed.
The process of gaining awareness of one’s own
negative patterns can be frustrating and embarrassing, an experience that some team members

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would have preferred not to participate in.
Through analysis of their cases, however, they
began to see the counterproductive impact of
their actions on others. They learned to recognize
damaging conversational tactics and began topoint them out to each other. As the Fresh Look

Ladder of InferenceThe “ladder of inference,” another tool pioneered bybusiness theorist Chris Argyris, illustrates how and why
we leap to knee-jerk conclusions in our encounterswith others – and gives guidance for climbing back down.
In a nutshell, from our observations, we unconsciously andinstantaneously select data, based on our cultural norms,
background, and other factors. We then add meaning, makeassumptions, and draw conclusions – often incomplete or
erroneous – about why other people are behaving the way
they are. Finally, we take action. From our interpretationsof the data, our actions make perfect sense to us, but they
may not correspond to the other person’s “reality.” Whentwo emotionally charged perspectives conflict, the situation
can easily spin out of control.

Decide what to doContexts
Assumptions
ValuesExplain/evaluate
what’s happening

Take
ActionName what’s happening

team members practiced their new skills, they
became more effective at listening carefully andcritically to what others said. They were better able
to understand what the speaker really meant by
his or her words, giving each other a chance tospeculate and question without the fear of retribution or ridicule for asking what they might
have otherwise thought was a “dumb question.”

The process of gaining awarenessof one’s own negative patterns
can be frustrating andembarrassing.
To help team members become aware of specificfactors that prevented them from engaging inconstructive, candid conversation, Nancy and I
instructed them to recreate a difficult or unsettling
workplace exchange, preferably one that took
place with a coworker from their respective homeoffices. The group used Chris Argyris’s left-hand/right-hand column activity. In this activity, eachparticipant divides a piece of paper into two columns. In the right-hand column, they transcribe
a dialogue as it occurred. In the left-hand column,
they document what they were thinking but notsaying during that conversation. They then compare the left-hand column (their internal dialogue)
with the right-hand column (their external dialogue)
and look for counterproductive or self-defeating
patterns.

Roger’s Case
Paraphrase the data

Select data

Available Data

Reprinted with permission from “Beyond Beer Diplomacy: Climbing Down theLadder of Inference” by Janice Molloy (Leverage Points Blog, July 30, 2009).

Below is the reconstructed case of a Fresh Lookteam member, whom we will call Roger. This caseis similar to the more than 150 cases that Nancy
collected at DIA over a three-year period. Roger’s
case includes a stage-setting introduction, theleft-hand/right-hand column dialogue, and abrief retrospective reflection.

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1. My Case: The Review Meeting
I walked into the room, ready to defend a year’s
worth of analysis that had led to some significant
findings – findings I hoped would get a fair hearing and maybe even lead to a change in government policy. I am an intelligence analyst who has
been studying the prospects for peace between
two longtime rival nations for well over a year. In
my written report, I argued that the leader of oneof the two countries had changed his mind andwas ready to make compromises on a contentious
issue on which his nation had historically held adeeply entrenched position. I argued that this new
willingness had come about because of changes
this leader had experienced at a deep personallevel that would lead to a reinterpretation of recent political events. I concluded that this leader
was seeing the world differently than he hada year ago and that he would make different
choices now.
The review process meant a face-to-face meeting
during which I was to defend my findings. When I
entered the room, I saw three very senior analysts
seated behind a long table, with a single chair forme facing what looked like a tribunal. A copy of

my report lay closed in front of each reviewer,
who had supposedly read it – I say supposedly,
because I’m skeptical that reviewers always readevery word of every report.
Senior analysts are supposed to make sure thatwhat moved through their part of the quality process was accurate and complete. I was there to get
the report past this step in the process so that it
could reach the policymakers who had only a slim
window of opportunity to bring about a historic
peace. But being junior to this imposing body, I
wanted to accomplish this without damage to myown career. I had heard enough stories to knowthat reviewers had the potential to stall my careerat DIA if I angered them and, as much as I wanted
this report to make a difference, I did not want itat the cost of my own future.
After a few pleasantries, one of the senior reviewers, August, who had himself followed these tworival countries over a period of 20 years and certainly thought he knew more about the situation
than this junior analyst sitting in front of him, raised
the first concern he had with my findings. Here’s
our exchange:

2. Roger’s Left-Hand/Right-Hand Columns
What I thought or felt but didn’t say

What August and I said

1.	There’s more than enough evidence to make theseassertions, not to mention the current course ofaction by the leadership.

August: I don’t think you have enough evidence to go on to make suchbold statements in a product. There’s not going to be a peace agreement
tomorrow.

2. What August doesn’t understand is that the personal side of this conflict has changed – but he’s
not open to that idea.

Me: I know there won’t be an agreement tomorrow. I’m just saying this is aunique situation given the leadership calculations on both sides, and if talks
last long enough, the sides might be able to achieve peace through attrition.

3.	Here we go again. Why can’t he be proactive
instead of automatically assuming things will
go south?

August: I’ve seen this before. We should put a time cap on how long we thinkthese talks will last. Besides, the conflict usually heats up around this timeof year anyway.

4. At this point I don’t know what to say. He’s notgoing to see it my way, and if I argue more I mightmake myself look bad. I’ve got to pick my battles.

Me: All I’m saying is that I think the leadership calculations may havechanged. Talks wouldn’t have even lasted this long if their intentions weren’t
different now.

5. Now I’ve compromised my argument by saying“may have,” even though the evidence is clear,and he’s getting irritated. I’d better back off.

August: Well, we saw the same leadership in the same situation two years
ago shock the world, so don’t be so quick to take their word for it.

6.	He must think I’m an amateur.

Me: Well, I didn’t think I was just taking their word for it, but maybe I cantry to soften the language in the product so it sounds less certain.

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3. Roger’s Reflection
Coming out of this meeting, I felt disappointed
in myself that I had not summed up the evidence
in a more articulate manner. And I was afraid thatmy attempts to not argue with a highly respectedsenior analyst had actually backfired on me, andthat the other senior analysts now perceived meas lacking the ability to present my own position.
I walked away thinking, “There’s no way to win:
if you push, you insult them; if you don’t, they
think you’re incompetent!”
We discussed my case during the Critical Discourse
workshop, and my peers were able to help me see
my conversation with August in a way I had notthought about it before.
Reflection: My seniors define their role as“error detectors.”
New Learning: The senior analysts in this review
meeting felt accountable for the quality of theinformation being packaged, and primarily saw
their responsibility as identifying and pointing out
weaknesses and discrepancies in the reports I produced. August stated his criticisms as facts rather
than as issues that were open to discussion andinterpretation. For example, he told me, “You don’t
have enough evidence to go on to make such boldstatements in this product.” In criticizing me in thisway, August saw himself as schooling me, teaching me caution about what I took for evidence.
August saw himself as having been successful
because he was able to detect and point out
errors in my assessment.
Reflection: I might be as closed-minded as
my seniors are.

reflections.solonline.org

preexisting view that “it is difficult to challenge theassumptions of the old guard who are set in theirways.” After thinking about the incident, I realizedthat I was closed to the idea that August might
not be closed.
Reflection: I sometimes back down unnecessarily.
New Learning: When I heard August’s strongly
stated criticisms, I responded with tentative words
such as “they might be able” and “I’m just saying.”
As August continued to make critical comments
during the review meeting, I essentially gave up
and decided to cut my losses, thinking, “He’s getting irritated. I’d better back off.” My hesitancy andreluctance to push my view came from the assumption that August was closed to new thinking
and could not be influenced, no matter how persuasive the argument. I chose to pick my battles.
Reflection: My seniors are sometimes
condescending.
New Learning: I realized that August was 		
offended when I persisted because he made nasty
comments about my competence in order to win
his point. For example, August said, “Don’t be soquick to take their word for it.” That comment (1)implied that I did not do a thorough job of analysis but rather took the short cut of “taking theirword for it” and (2) chided me for doing so as
though it were a proven fact. August was putting
me down but in a way that maintained a facadeof civility. It refocused the review session fromthe content of the report to a personal attack,and I responded to the personal attack rather
than focusing on the content issues.
Reflection: Historical experiences

New Learning: I jumped to the conclusion that
August was closed-minded when I interpreted his
criticism as sounding to me as if he did not want
to be challenged. My thinking was, “What he doesn’t
understand is that the personal side of this conflicthas changed, but he’s not open to that idea.” I cameto this perception about August based on the toneof his remark. That perception resonated with my

New Learning: August used his past experience
to validate his opinions, saying, “I’ve seen this before” and “We saw the same leadership in the same
situation two years ago.” I interpreted these statements as August not wanting to be questioned. I
realize now that I did not give August a chance toexplain how he used his past experience to comefeat u r e | W o lfbe r g and D i x o n

to his conclusion. He might have been rightor wrong, but I really prevented myself fromdiscovering his logic.
Reflection: We were not asking questionsof each other.
New Learning: Neither August nor I asked questions. Although we stated our opinions and positions, we did not ask why we held those positions.
For example, when August said, “Don’t be so quick
to take their word for it,” I should have tried to findout what he had seen in the report that indicated
I was “taking their word for it.” There might havebeen some important evidence from which I could
have learned, but I didn’t ask the question and I
interpreted the “putdown” only as, “He must think
I’m an amateur,” reacting to the slam at my competence, not the potential substance of August’s
critique. Nor did August, when he claimed that I“did not have enough evidence to make such boldstatements,” ask me what support I might have
had for any specific “bold statement” in the report,
which might have led him to construct a more
informed opinion.

My Perspective as Fresh TeamDay-to-Day Sponsor
Seeing cases such as Roger’s, I quickly began
to understand the critical role that language andconversation play in everything we do. Earlier in
my career as an analyst, I had taken conversation
for granted, placing a higher value on thinking
and writing. Now my understanding had flipflopped. I began to see knowledge creation as asocial phenomenon with language as the medium
of exchange. If the language was “broken,” thenknowledge and learning would also be broken.
Recognizing this has led me to a new understanding of collaboration. It is the successful use andcorrect interpretation of words and conversationthat allow two or more minds to share and organize information using a common language.
Common language leads us to deeper understanding and the discovery of new knowledge.

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The conversation that Roger described illustrates
a problem that I call “speaking truth to power.” Oneof the ironies revealed in his case is that becauseof my own day-to-day choice of language, I also
often leave much knowledge undiscovered. One
way to minimize this is to view conversation as a“harvesting” of other minds, something from which
we can reap the benefits of a better understanding of what is meant and of a more accurate
engagement in conversation.

I began to see knowledge creation
as a social phenomenon with 		language as the medium of
exchange.
What We Have Learned So Far
Through the Fresh Look project, with the use of
Critical Discourse, the Defense Intelligence Agency
has embarked on a path of “learning how to learn”

reflections.solonline.org

and has laid the foundation for our shift toward a
culture of improvement. Chief among these learnings was an understanding of the social nature ofknowledge. We found that attending to the “people piece” was a critical success factor for creatinga learning organization at DIA. We could no longer
take for granted the most basic elements of conversation – teamwork, trust, a common vocabulary,shared goals and assumptions. Nor could weassume that we always had a psychologically safe
space in which to operate. If we are to realize andcapitalize on the full potential of cognitively diverse
teams, each of these elements of conversationneeds to be identified and explicitly addressed.
While testing targeted Knowledge Lab intervention techniques, we frequently discovered andbuilt upon unanticipated side benefits. For example, we discovered that, when introduced at the
beginning of a project, the use of Critical Discourse
combined with team goal-setting sessions accelerated and augmented the team-building process.

© thinkstockfeat u r e | W o lfbe r g and D i x o n

Knowledge Lab at Work
The Knowledge Lab gathers new practices fromdifferent sectors – government, academia, and business –and adapts them to their own needs.

Raise
Awareness

Some of theKnowledge Lab’s Practices

Test and Assessthrough Pilot Projects
Define Problem:
Create/Adapt New
Practices
Recognize Needs:
Listen to Customers and
Ask Questions

Social Network
Analysis

Smart
Mentoring
Fresh Look

Knowledgein Action

Fast
Learning

CriticalDiscourse

Full Spectrum
Analysis

Applying Critical Discourse as a routine part of ourteam meetings kept us aware that we all had room
for improvement and reminded us to think about
our left-hand columns as we were conversing.
Because we were all learning this new skill at thesame time, we also had the psychologically safe
space that we needed to reflect openly and candidlyon our own and others’ need for improvement.
Over the past six years, we have also incorporated
and tailored Fresh Look’s approach to resolving
existing and ongoing complex issues. We refer tothese ongoing efforts as “Full Spectrum Analysis,”which the DIA considers fundamental in how
we go about addressing conflicts and emerging
challenges.
We launched the Knowledge Lab in 2005 as ameans of engaging in purposeful targeted innovation. At that time, few people in the Agency
understood the relevance of our work to the intelligence mission. As the Knowledge Lab’s capabilities have matured, the internal demand forour services has risen. People within the DIA now
recognize that the intelligence mission requires
gathering and analyzing two kinds of knowledge:

traditional knowledge about threats to thesecurity of the country and subjective knowledge
about how we operate among ourselves. Employees now value the process of discovering how
DIA actually goes about doing its job and appreciate that the Fresh Look effort has provided themwith a set of entirely new tools. Gradually, the DIA
is coming to understand that what we can know
about the world is only as good as what weknow about ourselves.

Shaping the Future
The process of learning to be a knowledge-based
culture has been about our willingness to probe
and uncover the complexity of the DIA’s internalorganizational life. It has also been about creatinga new, shared language through which we canmore successfully communicate complex issues.
If we were to have any chance of becoming aknowledge-based culture, we had to create aninternal demand and appreciation for reflection,
particularly self-reflection. It is our ability to reflect
and our continued willingness to work at improving that ability that has set us on a path toward
becoming a collaborative, knowledge-basedorganization.

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Our ability to reflect and ourcontinued willingness to workat improving that ability has set
us on a path toward becoming
a collaborative, knowledgebased organization.

The Knowledge Lab project, which started out byaddressing the needs of a small group of frontline
employees, has steadily progressed through levelsof management to the highest levels of leadershipat the DIA. As our new way of learning has worked
its way up through the organization, the complexity of the issues that challenge us has also grown.

reflections.solonline.org

Successfully resolving these increasingly difficult
matters of security is critical to the future of the
DIA and to our reputation in the intelligence community. The way in which we choose to go about
resolving them, however, is important not only
to increasing our traditional knowledge base but
to maintaining and improving our organizational
health.
While our effort to transform the DIA culture has
had a positive impact, it has come at a cost. Sharing and dispersing what we have learned throughour long and bumpy journey has been the mostdifficult part of this project to date, and I believethat our greatest challenge going forward will bein institutionalizing what we have learned.
The journey continues. n

R esources
Argyris, C. (1990). Overcoming Organizational Defenses. Prentice-Hall.
Argyris, C. (1993). Knowledge for Action. Jossey-Bass.
Kean, T. H. and L. Hamilton (2004). The 9/11 Commission Report: Final Report of the National Commission
on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. U.S. Government Printing Office.

ab o u t t h e au t h o r s
Adrian “Zeke” Wolfberg created and led the Knowledge Laboratory at Defense Intelligence
Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, from 2005–2010. He continues to build upon the successesof the Knowledge Laboratory to focus on organizational performance improvement.
adrian.wolfberg@dia.mil
Nancy M. Dixon is an independent researcher and consultant. She was a professor of administrative
sciences at the George Washington University and is the author of eight books and over 60 articles
on organizational learning. nancydixon@commonknowledge.org

feat u r e | B ens o n and I mmediat ofea t u r e 1 0 . 4

Educating the Next Generationof Systems Thinkers:
An Interview with Tracy Benson
T r a c y B ens o n and C . S h e r r y I mmediato
For 20 years, pockets of school systems across the U.S. have been gaining traction in preparing students
to take on tomorrow’s complex challenges. Educators in these districts have found that the tools of systems
thinking and system dynamics give them a way to engage reluctant learners, boost academic achievement,
and foster a generation of “systems citizens.” The Waters Foundation, a private charitable foundation founded
in 1957 by Jim and Faith Waters, has been a moving force behind this effort. Today, the organization’s Systems
Thinking in Schools (STIS) Project is applying lessons learned to scale up its efforts within local communities
and around the world. In this interview with Reflections publisher Sherry Immediato, STIS program coordinator
Tracy Benson shares the project’s learning process, strategy for reaching new audiences, and plans for taking
the work to scale.

Sherry Immediato: When the Systems Thinking in Schools Project began morethan 20 years ago, what was the master plan? What expectations and timetable
did the Waters Foundation have for outcomes?

Tracy Benson

C. Sherry Immediato

Tracy Benson: The journey of this work differs from most educational grants, inthat the process has been free flowing, organic, and entrepreneurial. At first, wedidn’t know what we didn’t know. Despite this underdeveloped plan, we had full
support from the Waters Foundation for a long time to learn, develop, evolve, andsee what we could make happen. People including Mary Scheetz, Frank Draper,and Joan Yates were instrumental in developing and nurturing the application inschools of Peter Senge’s The Fifth Discipline and Jay Forrester and Gordon Brown’s
work on system dynamics.
The Waters Foundation grant money provided us with time for learning and collaboration. In pre-K–12, teachers don’t generally have time for learning. So having
the funding to adjust school schedules to free up teachers for allocated learning
time was important.

We recently created a timeline of the development of the Waters Foundation’s systems thinking program.
Looking back, we can identify different phases. The Exploration phase began in 1988 when Dr. Gordon
Brown, professor emeritus and retired Dean of Engineering from MIT, walked onto the campus of Orange
Grove Middle School in Tucson, Arizona. Gordon was convinced that systems thinking and system dynamics
could change the way students and teachers thought about learning. Following Gordon’s lead, the

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Waters Foundation launched its Systems Thinking
and Dynamic Modeling Partnerships in 1989.
Science teachers Frank Draper and Mark Swanson
began using computer simulations so their students could better understand the systems they
were studying. As teachers in other subjects saw
the potential of systems thinking and system
dynamics, the number and variety of systems
lessons grew. Later, the first Waters Foundation
grant focused on the Catalina Foothills School
District with two goals: to build teachers’ capacity
for enhancing student thinking and to provide
the staff with tools to improve the school’s 		
organization and culture.

This Experimentation phase 		
involved figuring out whether
systems thinking fit in all subject
areas, age groups, and school
settings.
During the second phase, the Waters Foundation
supported programs in 14 sites across the country
that involved teachers, administrators, and students.
Representatives from the sites met periodically,
visited each other’s schools, and shared resources
to learn together. This Experimentation phase involved figuring out whether systems thinking fit inall subject areas, age groups, and school settings,
including rural, urban, suburban, charter, private,public, and so on. The teams tested different waysof bringing a systems thinking approach about
in K–12 education.
The next phase was commonly referred to as theDevelopment and Dissemination phase. In 2004,
the 14 sites were consolidated into five project
centers responsible for professional development
and outreach in their local areas. Several years
later, the Systems Thinking in Schools Project was
founded with initiatives in three main geographicallocations: Tucson, AZ; Portland, OR; and St. Louis,

reflections.solonline.org

MO. During this time, the work of the STIS Project
also spread to international sites such as Singapore,
Holland, China, and India.

Learning Process
Immediato: If you didn’t have a master plan,
what kind of learning process did you follow?
Many organizations have this question, giventhat most of the issues that people care about
are likely to take a relatively organic path. 		
How do you know where the path is?
Benson: Jim Waters uses a term that we’ve embraced called “successive approximation,” where
we try something that we think is our best courseof action and then assess the results. We collect a
lot of information. We have indicators of success,and we match current reality to our desired outcomes and look for leverage to minimize the gap
between the two. As we progress, we continue toidentify gaps, and in that way we try to improve.
We consider “successive approximation” one of
our “habits of systems thinking” (Figure 1).
We are open to learning from failures. Jim andFaith Waters celebrate our failures as much as
our successes. It has been helpful to have funders
and supporters who accept that kind of learning
process. For instance, we learned that when an
administrator alone becomes enthusiastic about
this work and then goes back to a school or district and says, “This is what we are going to do,”that top-down approach hasn’t been too successful. The bottom-up approach, where a teacher
tries to introduce the tools without a supportive
leader, also has not gained traction in spreading
the work. So today we really operate from the
middle, with both top-down and bottom-up
approaches coming together.
Immediato: In addition to helping others build
capacity in systems thinking, have you explicitly
applied the disciplines of organizational learning– systems thinking, team learning, shared vision,
personal mastery, and mental models – in yourown work?

feat u r e | B ens o n and I mmediat o

We operate from the middle, withboth top-down and bottom-up
approaches coming together.

Benson: We use a whole cadre of tools, from thefive disciplines to the three-legged stool of corelearning capabilities to what we call the “backscreen and front screen.” We’ve also used specificsystems thinking and system dynamics tools in
looking at, for instance, the feedback loops that
we see in building aspiration among adults andstudents. We ask ourselves, if we are after some
reinforcing growth, what we can do to help fuelthat dynamic?
We often use stocks and flows. We have thinktank meetings where we look at the kind of accumulation we want to see grow, the things we want
to see drain, and the flows that are going to help
make that process happen.
People often ask, “How can you help us get
the results you’ve achieved?” We know throughexperience that you achieve results by providing
a foundation of a common language, the habitsof systems thinking as a framework, visual tools,
and practical experience, and you connect theseto people’s prior learning.
When we do a four- or five-day workshop forteachers, we ask participants to initially not eventhink about how they might introduce this workin their classrooms. The goal is for them to develop a system thinking capacity. We graduallydevelop the connections, saying, “Now whatmight this look like in your classroom?” At the sametime, we introduce the idea that this approach is
not just an instructional strategy; it’s a way to lookat your school, your community, and the cultureof your learning environment.

regular basis. They share their experiences, successes, and challenges in working with students
and adults. We create a reflective, transparent,
trusting, structured environment. The sites thathave been able to sustain the effort have used a
combination of these approaches.
The majority of our efforts in the early years wereat the school level, but we’re beginning to bring

Figure 1 Habits of a Systems Thinker
Seeks to understand thebig picture

Observes how elements
within systems changeover time, generating
patterns and trends

Recognizes that a system’s
structure generates its
behavior

Identifies the circularnature of complex cause
and effect relationships

Habits of a
Systems
Thinker

Changes perspectives toincrease understanding

Considers an issue fully
and resists the urge tocome to a quick
conclusion

Surfaces and tests
assumptions

Considers how mental
models affect current
reality and the future

Uses understanding ofsystem structure to identify
possible leverage actions

Considers both short andlong-term consequencesof actions

Finds where unintended
consequences emerge

Recognizes the impact oftime delays when exploringcause and effectrelationships

Checks results andchanges actions if
needed: “successive
approximation”©2010 Systems Thinking in Schools, Waters Foundation

We try to build this multiple capacity simultaneously and give ongoing support. Mainly, we create
collaborative structures where people meet on a

15

The Waters Foundation has identified 13 habits that systems thinkers
use to develop awareness of a situation; increase understanding; andplan and take effective action.
© 2010 Systems Thinking in Schools, Waters Foundation

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people together at the district level. For example,
Mary Scheetz, former principal and current St.
Louis STIS coordinator, is now a district-level assistant superintendent. In her district, she has beenable to fully integrate systems thinking habits andstrategies into instructional practice, district andschool leadership, and youth empowerment. Whendiverse communities of practice or professional
learning communities come together with a common language, common concepts, and dynamic
set of tools, people from multiple sites are better
able to learn together and talk about their challenges, often saying, “I have that same issue.
How can I help you and how can you help me?”reflections.solonline.org

Spreading the Word
Immediato: In 2005, the Office of the Pima
County School Superintendent formally embraced
the Systems Thinking in Schools Project as acommunitywide initiative. How have you spreadinterest throughout the schools in the GreaterTucson area?
Benson: Our main marketing strategies have been
word of mouth, high-quality professional development, and follow-up support. We talk about theinfection model in terms of spreading interest in
this work. How do we develop a “healthy germ,” soto speak, that is rich and worthwhile, and has energy
for creating positive “infection”? As we increase

Systems Thinking in Schools:
A Waters Foundation Project
Systems thinking is a worldview, a perspective of seeing and understanding
systems as wholes rather than as collections of parts. A whole is a web ofinterconnections that creates emerging patterns.
Fostering understandingof dynamic systems in acomplex world

MissionTo increase the capacity of educators to deliver student academic and lifetime
benefits through the effective application of systems thinking concepts, habits, andtools in classroom instruction and school improvement.
Systems Thinking
What is systems thinking? Some have described and defined systems thinking within
specific contexts such as business, education, and government. Others have focusedon the use of specific processes and tools as defining elements of systems thinking.
One common thread in defining systems thinking seems to be a focus on a holistic,“big picture” view of how systems function, seeing beyond the details of individual
trees to the forest as a whole.

Providing visual tools andlearning opportunities
that support educational
standards and 21st
century skills

Benefits of a Systems Thinking Learning Environment
In a student-centered systems thinking classroom, teachers are the facilitators of
thinking and learning. Children are immersed in practice fields rich in relevant problemsolving, interdisciplinary connections, thought-provoking dialogue, and opportunities
for in-depth analysis and synthesis. The Waters Foundation’s Systems Thinking in
Schools Project is focused on supporting teachers in their ability to create such
desirable learning environments for children.

feat u r e | B ens o n and I mmediat othe number of people with exposure to theseideas, and those people share and exchange thatdesirable germ with others, then maybe infection
will ensue. We look at the structures we need tohave in place to increase contact and impact.
Immediato: What draws the people who arebeing “infected”?
Benson: Within our own community right now,
people are responding to the outcomes we’ve
accomplished through systems thinking. Yesterday
I met with 14 high school principals. In the past,
we’ve had difficulty gaining entrée to high schools.

But these principals were eager to learn, not because they have extra time or money but because
they are facing significant challenges as schoolleaders.
Many of their schools are in danger of underperformance, and the principals are struggling to findways to transform their schools’ cultures and support students in achieving academic success.
These principals can’t work any harder than they
already are. So the benefits of thinking systemically about programs and practices that may help
them get desirable results give them a reason forengaging in this kind of learning.

A systems thinking learning environment is motivatingand engaging for even the most reluctant learner. Teachersreport that the visual nature of the systems thinking tools
enables students to organize and express their thinking. The
tools help motivate those children who tend to be reluctant 		
to fully engage in learning activities.
Standards-based education and systems thinking approaches
can complement one another. The benefits of a systems thinking approach are not limited, though, to the achievement ofspecific, curricular learning standards. In a keynote address delivered to educators in July 2002, Dr. Barry Richmond, long-timefriend, mentor, and colleague of those involved with systems
thinking in schools, coined the term “systems citizen.” Systems
citizens view themselves as members of a global community.
They strive to understand the complexities of today’s worldly
systems and have the capability to face problems with aninformed capacity to make a positive difference.
Schools across the United States and throughout the world
are actively pursuing the advantages of integrating systems
thinking in classrooms and schools. The benefits of suchapproaches are both immediate to student learning and longlasting as a systems citizenry is developed. Building a systems
thinking capacity in learners of all ages is a worthy investmentin the future as educators prepare the young people of today
so they are ready to solve the problems of tomorrow.

Examples of Systems
Thinking Toolsy

Stockoutflow

inflowx
Behavior-overtime graphs

Stock/Flow maps andcomputer models

actioneventsbeliefpatterns

percepstructurestion

mental models

Iceberg
Ladderof inference
A

a.
f.

b.

e.
B
Causal loopsc.
d.

Connection circles© 2010 Systems Thinking in Schools, Waters Foundation

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We’re seeing the same thing with classroom
teachers. They ask, “How do I engage unmotivatedstudents who are not being successful?” One way
to increase engagement is by tapping into therelevance and purposefulness of what students
want and expect in the classroom. When students
can see connections between seemingly different
systems and represent those similarities with thevisual tools of systems thinking, interdisciplinary
learning and relevance emerge. For example,

When students can see connections
between seemingly different 		
systems, interdisciplinary learningand relevance emerge.
when reading about power struggles and violencein the book The Outsiders, students investigatedthe concept of escalation. They then applied the“Escalation” archetype to their study of World War
II in social studies. The students helped theirteachers see the connection and were excited
to facilitate this cross-curricular learning. As kids
become more engaged, their efficacy and levelof achievement grow, creating this wonderfulreinforcing loop in the classroom.

Results and Learnings
Immediato: What results are you getting fromthis work and what are you learning about thoseresults?
Benson: The clearest results are benefits to children. A number of educators have shown that systems thinking increases student engagement, thelevel of conversation in the classroom, students’ability to read and bring meaning to the texts thatthey read, and their ability to communicate theirunderstanding of learning across the curriculum.
Our demonstration sites tend to do well on standardized tests, but we don’t necessarily attributetest success to exposure to systems thinking,because student achievement is much more com-reflections.solonline.org

plex. But we also see students transferring theirlearning in school to relevant issues outside ofschool. For example, an eighth-grade student
named Jacob, who was challenged with kidneydisease, used the “Shifting the Burden” archetypeto advocate his case for a kidney transplant to his
medical team. His loops tell a compelling storyof the debilitating side effects of dialysis and thelong-term ramifications of this symptomatic fix.
Jacob not only successfully received his transplant,
but is now serving as a youth spokesperson andadvocate for those with juvenile kidney disease.
We have found that the benefits to children andadults are far more significant, profound, andlong-lasting than we even imagined. We hearfrom young adults who learned and used systems
thinking language, tools, and thinking skills intheir middle school studies about the impact that
this learning has had on them as adults, as people
in the workplace, and as parents. Our team senses
that we are making a difference in a lot of different
places. When he was in eighth grade, a student
named Andy explained how deeply listening
to others’ perspectives was important because,“Actually, you may even learn that you could bewrong in your thinking.” Andy later took thisimportant lesson to his government work involving U.S.–Chinese negotiations (see thisand other examples in …that School in Tucson,www.clexchange.org).
We’ve also learned something completely unexpected: that kindergarteners and first graders candraw loops and use some of the systems thinking
tools to clarify and communicate their thinking.
This behavior defies Piaget’s stages of development to a degree.
Immediato: So you’re finding that the tipping
point for the spread of this work isn’t because of
the money; it’s because of the outcomes?
Benson: Yes. Because of the growth and sustainability of the work in places like Tucson, our program
has become more self-funding. Outside funding
has actually decreased over time. Although our

feat u r e | B ens o n and I mmediat oresources have gone down, interest in our work
is going up.

Scaling Up
Immediato: The Waters Foundation has tried toscale up before, with mixed results. How is thepast informing you as you move forward?
Benson: The scaling-up issue is an exciting challenge. How does one do that, especially when it’s
not a program or a well-defined innovation but
rather the ways people think, talk, and relate to
one another and make decisions? So scaling up
that kind of innovation makes for a complex
conversation and complex planning.
We’ve learned that it is hard to talk people into
believing and investing time in learning without
seeing. So we have much better examples than in
the past. We have best practice models, lessons,and applications within a wide variety of contexts.
Our bank of student work in terms of loops, stocks
and flows, icebergs, and the ladder of inference
has really grown. There is something for everyone,
so people who are curious can say, “Now thatmakes sense to me. How can I get involved?”

It’s taken a long time, but we’ve significantly improved our ability to teach and develop capacityin adults and kids in a school setting. Previously,
most of the theories and tools around systems
thinking were written for a select audience ofusers and practitioners, mainly adults in businessor large organizations. We have done a pretty
good job of figuring out how to build capacitywith people who have no clue about what thisapproach involves.

Kindergarteners and first graders
can use systems thinking tools toclarify and communicate theirthinking.
Now is the perfect time for this work to spread
more broadly. We are ready to help people build
their capacity and figure out what works best in
the context of where they live and work. Our approach isn’t a set recipe for application, but rather
a flexible framework that effectively addresses theneeds of all kinds of students and school settings.
We have a process and a learning sequence that19

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help build that foundation of skill and capability.
People can learn from the schools that have overcome huge challenges using this approach.
We’re also branching outside of school boundaries
with a wider reach into the community. If you lookat the system of education and you ignore theearly childhood years, then you’re really off base.
We’ve been working with the United Way of
Tucson and Southern Arizona on a grant that isfunded by First Things First, Arizona’s early childhood initiative. Seven partner agencies provide
early childhood education services, and the goal is
to create an early childhood professional development and education system. As part of this grant
to improve teacher education and early childhood
services and learning environments for young
children in Southern Arizona, United Way leaders
Naomi Karp and LaVonne Douville invited Sheri
Marlin and me, on behalf of the Waters Foundation, to be systems thinking consultants.
The grant has enabled the United Way to develop
seven communities of practice around improving
early childhood teacher education, including thecommunity college, which provides instruction toreflections.solonline.org

aspiring early childhood educators; the Universityof Arizona, which is developing an early childhood
education master’s program; childcare centers;
and a professional association that focuses onhigh-quality early childhood professional development. Each community of practice is led by acoordinator who is a locally recognized expert
in early childhood teacher education.
The seven communities of practice have brought
together teachers, community leaders, researchers, and policymakers and have provided capacity-building workshops in three areas: systems
thinking, coaching, and DAP (Developmentally
Appropriate Practices). The idea was that if thecoordinators of these communities of practice
had skills in these three areas, they would be able
to see the interdependencies among the wide
variety of service providers and entities that support early childhood education. By doing so, itwould become possible to start solving deeply
entrenched problems that continue to depress
the quality of early childhood teacher education,lead to poor-quality early learning environments,
and negatively impact young children’s outcomes.

© thinkstockfeat u r e | B ens o n and I mmediat o

One outcome of this process is that representatives
from our local community college’s early education faculty are in conversation with the Universityof Arizona’s College of Education faculty. They arebuilding a formal pathway for early childhood
education graduates from the community college
to be shepherded into an early childhood education bachelor’s degree program at the university.
These programs have never collaborated this intentionally before. So that initiative is exciting.
We’re now in year two of this effort, and it’s 		
beginning to get lots of attention. A group in the
Phoenix area is intrigued by the model, so they
visited Tucson to learn about it. We’re going toNorth Carolina in May to share the model at the
Smart Start Conference.
In this second year, we’re working not just withthe community of practice coordinators but alsowith practitioners and taking systems thinking
deeper into the organizations. As these initiatives
grow and feed into one another, our goal is tohave an impact on the larger community. And as
the children affected by these programs grow andbecome leaders, they will make Tucson a better
place to live. That’s one of my passions.

As the children affected by these
programs become leaders, they will
make Tucson a better place to live.
Immediato: What do you think the Waters Foundation’s role will be going forward with the earlychildhood initiative?
Benson: We’re everything from capacity builders
to thought partners, and we are contributing to
the visioning process, too. As the group as a wholemoves forward and develops new plans, we’ve
become kind of a dream team. We push one
another, in a nice way. So formally, we’re service
providers. But we’ve become colleagues in theeffort to bring value to programs that serve
young children.

July 21–25, 2011 • TUCSON, ARIZONA • USA
www.campsnowball.org

Camp Snowball
Immediato: This summer, the Waters Foundation
is running a program called “Camp Snowball.”
Would you say something about how you see thisexperiment as flowing from the work that you
have been doing and where you hope it will lead?
Benson: Camp Snowball will be a five-day learning experience for school- and community-based
teams from around the world. Students and adults
will have the opportunity to learn side by side.
One of those five days will be a learning festivalthat will showcase best practices and innovative
examples of systems thinking and education forsustainability work.
The showcased work will be not only from Tucson
and other Waters Foundation sites but also fromSoL Education Partnership schools and programsfrom other countries. People will sign up for learning cohorts. If they are brand new to this work,
they will probably go into the systems thinking
level one cohort. If they have had training in thoseskills already, they will go into level two. We also
have a system dynamics computer modeling strand,
an education for sustainability strand, and a leadership strand.
People who try to learn and implement thiswork by themselves really struggle. Learning withand from others works best. So we’re encouraging

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people to attend in teams. Team members willseparate based on what strand is best for eachindividual, but they will have opportunities
throughout the week to share what they learn
with each other.

As the teams scale things up in
their own communities, the little
rivulets will turn into rivers, andthe flow will be hard to stop.
Toward the end, teams will create an implementation plan for their own context, based on bestpractices. They will leave with tools and resourcesthat they can easily use back home to engage
others, including activities, slide decks, videos, andinstructional modules. We’re designing follow-up
structures, such as a web-based platform, regional
face-to-face gatherings, conference calls, andaccess to an online learning community. Our

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goal is that as the teams scale things up in theirown communities, the little rivulets will turn intorivers, and the flow will be hard to stop.
Our vision is to build a critical mass that has thecapacity to shape the future of schools and communities, using the skills that they’re bringing to
the conference plus additional skills and capabilities that they’ll learn there. The ultimate vision is –and these are my words – to transform educationand make schools, in all different settings, muchbetter places for kids to be and to learn how tonavigate an unknown future.
I’m in schools almost every single day, and I see
how much work we have to do. I believe we haveto rethink how we’re “doing” school. Fortunately,
we have some amazing examples of what it canbe. So we want to grow the best practices thatwe’ve seen develop and evolve – and systems
thinking is a key part of this approach. n

ab o u t t h e au t h o r sTracy Benson, Ed.D., is the program coordinator of the Waters Foundation’s Systems Thinking in
Schools Project in Tucson, Arizona. She conducts training and coaching sessions, consults withschools and school districts, and facilitates system thinking professional learning experiences foreducators at the local, regional, national, and international levels. t.benson@waterfoundation.org
Sherry Immediato is a trustee and former president of the Society for Organizational Learning (SoL).
She is the founder and president of Heaven & Earth Incorporated, focusing on increasing performance, health, and well-being in complex systems. Sherry previously worked for Innovation
Associates. sherry@heaven-and-earth.com
Janice Molloy provided editorial support for this article.

feat u r e | J o nes and S awin

fea t u r e 1 0 . 4

Climate Interactive:“Sims” for Improving Our Thinking
About Addressing Climate Change
A nd r ew J o nes and E lizabe t h S awin
While real-time learning is the most durable feature of learning organizations, some issues require 		“practice fields” or simulations because the phenomena are complex, have long time lags, and have highstakes consequences. In 2009, at the international meetings on climate change in Copenhagen, Climate
Interactive provided negotiators with just this kind of a practice field to gauge the impact of different
proposals. As people began to experiment with the simulations, it became clear that the audience ofwould-be users was enormous – well beyond the small pool of official country representatives. In thisarticle, simulation architects Drew Jones and Elizabeth Sawin share the Climate Interactive story andtheir key learnings in creating a living microworld – freely available to anyone with internet access.

H

Andrew Jones

Elizabeth Sawin

ow strong does a UN climate agreement need to be to protect theworld’s climate? How could the world transform its energy systems
toward security and resilience? Given the urgent challenges ofclimate change, questions like these hold the keys to our future, andpolicymakers, businesses, and global citizens need ways to find timely and accurate answers. Climate Interactive is addressing this need by bringing together
a community of modelers, scientists, writers, designers, corporations, and foundations to create, share, and use credible models, accessible simulations, andother media to improve the way leaders and citizens around the world think
about climate and energy.

We’re building “sims” (short for simulations) that are easy for climate analysts,
communicators, and leaders to use and that provide immediate feedback, sousers can see the results of different scenarios on atmospheric carbon levels
and temperature. Our purpose is to get these sims and insights into the world
as accessible products that can be tweaked, enhanced, translated, distributed,
and used to create change around the world.

This work has changed policy, investments, and actions. One of our sims, C-ROADS, is being used directlyin the United Nations’ ongoing climate negotiations. The United States Department of State has used the
C-ROADS simulator to understand the climate impacts of various country-level proposals and to sharethat understanding with other parties to the UN. Deputy Special Envoy Jonathan Pershing presented the
C-ROADS analysis at UN meetings in Bonn and Copenhagen. And a team at Tsinghua University in Beijing
has translated the sim into Chinese for use by government leaders.

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Why Sims?
Responding to climate change requires all of us
to think carefully about the future within a broad,complex, and interdependent context. One of
the things we know about climate is that the economic, atmospheric, and social systems that drive
it defy most human intuition. And because theworst-case outcomes of climate change are so disastrous, we need ways to understand the impactsof possible courses of action without waiting for
those impacts to arrive. Simulation models are very
good at helping with each of these challenges.
Don’t such climate simulations already exist? Not
really, at least not simple, quick simulations that
use the best available science and serve as practical additions to real-time policy discussions. Most
existing energy and climate models are extremelycomplex, take too long to run, and can’t be usedby non-scientists.
Our approach is to do two things:
1. Create Simulations. With project partners, including Ventana Systems and MIT, we are building
a set of simulators with engaging interfaces andcompelling output displays. These sims allow
learners to deepen their understanding of climate
dynamics step by step, from the most rudimentary“carbon accounting” to progressively more complex explorations of strategic options for reducing
emissions and their likely effects. C-ROADS – an

C-ROADS
C-ROADS is a policymaker-oriented climate simulation that:• Uses MIT-based technology• Is designed for decision makers, not just scientists•	Runs in less than 0.1 seconds• Is scientifically reviewed (committee chaired by Dr. Bob
Watson, former head of the IPCC; committee members included Klaus Hasselmann and Stephen Schneider)•	Reproduces the response properties of state-of-the-art
three-dimensional climate models very well
• Is flexible and adaptable to current policy questions• Makes all equations available for use and open to scrutiny

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acronym for Climate Rapid Overview and Decision
Support – is our full-scale, system dynamics simulation. Designed for decision makers, it is easily
used by non-modelers and runs in less than 0.1
seconds on a laptop (Figure 1).
2. Enable a Broader Community to Create,
Extend, and Share Simulations. Climate Interactive has built a platform to enable simulation
use and sharing. We gather, document, post,
and promote various climate simulations, videos,
online learning tools, and role-playing policy
exercises for use by other modelers and leaders.
Taking these steps means that our work canbe adapted for use by corporate leaders, green
investors, UN negotiators, or high school scienceclasses in multiple languages and levels of scientific complexity. We hope to tap into the creativity
and collective intelligence of many people aroundthe world to improve our simulation interfaces
and extend their impact through videos, podcasts, essays, and other media.

A Common Platform
One vision of our work is that all of the parties
to climate decision making will be able to work
together based on a shared understanding of how
the physical parts of the climate system function.
More than enough areas of disagreement anddiverging interests exist on issues like historicalresponsibility for climate change and the fairest
ways to share the burden of reducing emissions,
so it is unfortunate when different ways of seeing
the physics of the climate lead to controversy andmisunderstanding as well. While we would neverclaim that C-ROADS is a perfect reflection of thereal climate system (we’d argue that no model
could be), the model is based on accepted climate
science, and the user can easily change all of the
inputs. If negotiating parties were to use a tool like
C-ROADS, we believe that they would at least startfrom a common understanding of the key physical dynamics and limits of the climate. We hopethat with people in a few key countries and many
analysts who support UN negotiating teams experimenting with C-ROADS, the simulation can

feat u r e | J o nes and S awin

help make climate negotiations more productive
and more effective over the long run.

Figure 1 C-ROADS Control Panel

Climate Scoreboard
Just as decision makers and negotiators needways to assess the proposals toward creating a
global climate treaty, advocacy groups and citizens
around the world also want to know how close
current proposals bring the world to climate goals.
With this need in mind, our team tracks the various
proposals under consideration in the climate
treaty process and reports our estimate of how
close current proposals come to realizing climate
goals via the Climate Scoreboard (Figure 2). We
scan UNFCCC submissions and news sources fromaround the world to collect a list of what we call“current proposals” – possible scenarios for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by UNFCCC parties.
We share our compilation and calculate the expected long-term impacts (in terms of GHG concentration, temperature increase, and sea-levelrise) if those proposals were to be fully implemented. We then share the results via our webpage, Twitter, and partnerships with NGOs. We
have also created an embeddable online widgetthat people can incorporate in their blogs andwebsites and that automatically updates when
proposals in the treaty process change.

The C-ROADS simulation is designed to help climate analysts
improve their understanding of how various proposals will impact
climate outcomes. Model users determine the path of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions at the country or regional level through2100. The model calculates the path of atmospheric CO2 and other
GHG concentrations, global mean surface temperature, and sea
level rise resulting from these emissions.

Figure 2 Climate Scoreboard

We believe that widely sharing the Climate
Scoreboard – along with the C-ROADS simulator– can contribute to progress in climate negotiations.
Without something like the Scoreboard to provide
a reality check, negotiations too easily focus on
the political challenge of dividing up the climatechange effort, without really asking if the proposed
effort is large enough in the first place.

What We’ve Learned
Our successes with C-ROADS and the Climate
Scoreboard have grown out of the past 10–15 yearsof work by Sustainability Institute, MIT/Sloan, theSociety for Organizational Learning, and Ventana
Systems to use system dynamics modeling andsystems thinking to create a more sustainable world.
These efforts have had an impact in commodity
systems, urban growth, agriculture, forestry,In the Climate Scoreboard, the yellow “business-as-usual” line 		represents the estimated global temperature increase in 2100 if
greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced. The blue “proposals”
line represents the estimated global temperature increase in 2100
if the current proposals were enacted. The shaded blue curve shows
the uncertainty in the climate system’s response to emissions.
C-ROADS is used to calculate the position of the blue line. When
proposals change, we update our analysis, and the position of theblue shifts. The green “goals” line represents the goal of limiting
the temperature increase to 1.5°–2.0°C

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diabetes, energy, and manufacturing. Several
key lessons have emerged from our more recent
climate and energy work, lessons that shed lighton what it takes to ensure that simulations andsystems diagrams lead to results, not just interesting insights.

Lesson #1: Iterate your simulation rapidly
to meet user needs.
We’ve learned to think like a software company,
not a scientist. Even though we are scientists, wehave found great value in testing our simulations
with real decision makers, hearing their disappointments, and quickly improving the sim. These beta
testers would point out the many gaps between
our simulation and how the real conversation was
being framed, measured, and captured (we heard“We don’t think about it that way” and “Thatdoesn’t help us” hundreds of times). We would
then stay up late adjusting our sim for a presentation the next day or week. Given that Tom
Fiddaman started this model in 1993 as his Ph.D.
thesis, we likely have created approximately
500 versions of the simulation over the years.

Lesson #2: Convert your simulation into
multiple forms to reach diverse audiences.
In past projects, we aimed toward a single modelwith a single interface that we used to engage
diverse users, learners, and leaders. At least partly
due to the diverse nature of our intended audience (e.g., government, business, nongovernmental organizations, citizens, youth), through open
source–style sharing, we and our partners haveadapted C-ROADS into approximately a dozen
forms, including:• A technical version created in modeling 		software for our own analysis• A freestanding version for climate analysts• A simplified online version for anyone in theworld via Forio Business Simulation – “C-Learn”• A shareable widget (the “Climate Scoreboard”)
and three other online tools that deliver core
insights• A simulation embedded in two “touch table”
science museum exhibits• An iPhone/iPad version – “Climate Pathways”• A “Mock UN” role-playing game now led
by 10 facilitators in the U.S. and Europe –“World Climate”
We have been surprised by the need for andpower of such liberal adaptation of the model –people truly require a sim that is customized tothe questions they have and the way they learn.
Negotiators and citizens may care about the same

feat u r e | J o nes and S awinquestion – do the current proposals add up toenough emissions reductions? – but they need
the information in quite different forms.

Lesson #3: Focus on delivering insights 		
that improve mental models.
We’ve also learned that there are times when weneed to think like a scientist, not a software company. For the past decade, our team has kept a listof the top 10 or so misunderstandings of climate
dynamics held by decision makers and citizens.
For example, as John Sterman and Linda Booth
Sweeney proved in a study, most people incorrectly believe that stabilizing emissions of CO2
would lead to a stabilization of the climate (infact, it would merely cause the climate to deteriorate less rapidly). Thus, we have designed all our
simulations with the goal of helping users improvetheir mental models or understanding of how
the system behaves over time.
Notice how this lesson contrasts with our Lesson#1: Here, we are advocating that change agents
who use simulations not just respond to user demands, but actively guide the conversation in the
direction of insights that will lead to actions that
improve system performance. We have found thatwhen we tilt the simulation too far toward ensuringthat users have certain insights, decision makers
see it as being merely an academic exercise. When

we too closely mirror decision makers’ current
thinking, we don’t leave enough room for discoveryof new policy options. Balancing Lessons #1 and#3 and navigating the trade-offs between themcontinues to be an area of learning and explorationfor our team, and is more of an art than a science.

Lesson #4: Make sure the simulation evolves
in step with developments in the real world.
C-ROADS will likely never become a finished product. As climate scientists improve our understanding of how the atmosphere, oceans, and biosphereinteract and how greenhouse gas emissions influence the planet, we continually improve and add
to the equations in the simulation. And, as theconversation within the international climate
treaty dialogue changes, our team finds itself adding new policy scenarios and building new model
structure to explore opportunities for transforming the energy system toward renewable energy.
C-ROADS and the Climate Scorecard have provento be effective tools in aiding policymakers andbuilding shared understanding of the magnitudeof the challenges we face and the relative effectiveness of different proposed interventions. By
sharing them more widely, we hope to help all of
us – from ordinary citizens to climate treaty negotiators – understand and accomplish the actions
that can help stabilize the climate system. n

ab o u t t h e au t h o r s
Andrew Jones is co-director of Climate Interactive. In 2008, he and a group of colleagues received the“ASysT Prize” for “a significant accomplishment achieved through the application of systems thinking
to a problem of U.S. national significance.” apjones@climateinteractive.org
Elizabeth Sawin, Ph.D., is co-director of Climate Interactive. She was one six scientists active in the
Copenhagen round of UN climate negotiations who were featured in the journal Nature in 2009.
esawin@climateinteractive.org

A cknowledgments
This work has been funded by Morgan Family Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, Foundation for Global
Communities, the Rockefeller Brothers Foundation, Zennström Philanthropies, Schlumberger Business Consulting,and others. The team that has created these tools also includes Bob Corell, Tom Fiddaman, Travis Franck, Stephanie
McCauley, Peter Senge, Lori Siegel, John Sterman, Phil Rice, and many others. The simulations described here areavailable at ClimateInteractive.org.

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Book Excerpt 10.4

Act Your Way into a New Way of Thinking
C h a r les F. Kiefe r and L e o na r d A . S c h lesin g e r , wi t h Paul B. B r o wn
The premise behind Action Trumps Everything is simple: Our most important learning is through experience. In thiscompelling discussion, Charlie Kiefer (Peter Senge’s original creative partner and Innovation Associates founder)and Len Schlesinger (president of the entrepreneurially centered Babson College) use serial entrepreneurs as our
teachers. In their book, they document that those who successfully launch multiple businesses are not huge risktakers or extraordinary visionaries; rather, successful entrepreneurs focus on the creative process. They experimentunceasingly. They act their way into a new way of thinking, creating in the face of uncertainty. The good news is,
so can you – by mastering what the authors call “CreAction.”

T

Charles Kiefer

Leonard Schlesinger

Paul Brown

oday’s economic
situation – recordhigh unemployment,
sluggish consumer
spending, and the fact thatmost of us feel like we are in
a rut, working progressively
harder just to stay in place –makes many of us uncomfortable, anxious, and often disheartened. We think, “Things
are not going to return to normal.
It’s going to be like this forever.”And yet, history is filled withcountless examples of dramatic
shifts away from situations thatwere very disheartening: The
American colonists took on
the British Empire and won;
we moved from an agrariansociety to an industrial one;and we would be hard pressedto find anyone today whoroutinely commutes by horse,
so we know that specific eventsand circumstances do change.

Adapted from Action
Trumps Everything:
Creating What You
Want in an Uncertain
World (Innovation
Associates, 2010)
By Charles F. Kiefer andLeonard A. Schlesinger,
with Paul B. Brown

www.actiontrumpseverything.com© 2010 by Charles F. Kieferand Leonard A. Schlesinger.
All rights reserved. No portion
may be copied, reproduced, ortransmitted in any form or by
any means without the written
permission of the authors.

What does not change, however, is the uncertainty
that is causing all these unusual conditions. And
uncertainty will not only remain but will also increase.
Entrepreneurs, we have discovered, are the best example we have of people who deal well in conditions of
uncertainty. That isn’t surprising. There are few things
more uncertain than starting a new venture.

feat u r e | Kiefe r and S c h lesin g e r , wi t h B r o wn

The Difference Between CreAction and theKind of Reasoning We Are Used To: Prediction
What we have found is that entrepreneurs employ
two kinds of reasoning – Prediction and what we have
dubbed CreAction – in dealing with the unknown.
Before we go any further, we want to stress thatneither way of thinking is superior to the other. Andin fact you need both if you are going to be as successful as possible. But while both approaches arevaluable, most of us are less familiar with CreAction,and thus by default we lapse into overuse of Prediction. That’s a key reason we want to stop here andlook at both in detail.

Prediction Reasoning
Prediction is the kind of thinking we have all been
trained to do since kindergarten. It is a pattern of
thinking and acting based on the assumption thatthe future is going to be similar to the present andthe immediate past. It involves inferring and extrapolating from what has come before and acting basedon what you think the future is going to be like.
Treating an uncertain world as if it werepredictable only gets you into trouble.
When we use Prediction in business (or businessclasses) or just in life in general, we begin with a goalin mind – we want to create a new and better widget
or a unique service or a new neighborhood recreation
center – with a given set of means. (“Here are theresources we have – the money, people, time, etc. –available to us to build that widget, create that service,or make that new building happen.”) Then with both
the goal and the resources identified, we set off toidentify the optimal – fastest, cheapest, most efficient,etc. – path to achieving our objective. The make-vs.buy decision in production, or choosing the target
with the highest potential return in marketing, or
creating a portfolio with the lowest risk in finance, 		or even hiring the best person to run the local rec
center are all examples of problems that call for theuse of Prediction. And, as we’ve said, this is the stuff
we are familiar with: deductive logic, rules of thumb,and mathematical models.
If you can’t predict the future – and it seems
increasingly you can’t – action trumps thinking.

CreAction
CreAction, however, does not necessarily begin witha specific goal. (You know you want to leave your job
and go off on your own, but you have absolutely noidea what company you want to start.) It is driven 		by desire and action, and is based on the means, 		or resources, we have at hand.

Entrepreneurs are the best
example we have of people who
deal well in conditions of
uncertainty.
When you go about making a list of those resources,
it looks like this:• Who am I?
• What do I know?
• What resources do I have at hand?
• Who do I know that I can collaborate or share
the risk with?
CreAction allows you to take smart steps into an
unknowable future in order to discover and/or inventthat future as you go. In other words, you are going 		to create the world going forward (hence the name).
Your goals emerge over time from your insights andaspirations, from the people that you partner with,and through what you learn by taking action.

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take action by walking over, saying hi, and seeing
what happens. One more quick example to make thepoint. You’re hungry and so head down to the supermarket to buy some potato chips. As you walk there,
you discover they have closed the road off for a paradethat you had forgotten about, and so you need todetour around the block. Halfway around you see yourfavorite pasta shop. Pasta, yum! And so you satisfy
your hunger not by having a snack of potato chips, 		
as you originally intended, but by having a lunch 		of pasta primavera.

How Do You See the Future?

© thinkstock

Let’s look at the way people who employ CreAction
use it in practice. But before we do, let’s make a pointthat is probably obvious. As we discuss the differences
between CreAction and Prediction, we will draw clear,bright lines. And that can make it sound as if you
would use one form of reasoning exclusively in one
situation, and the other when faced with somethingelse. The fact is people reciprocate between the twooften in solving the same problem.
For example, imagine you see an attractive someone
across the room. Based on the animated way they arechatting with friends, you predict they would be aninteresting person to get to know. You could stay in
the Prediction mode and spend a lot of time trying tofigure out the perfect opening line, or you could justThe fundamental difference between CreAction andPrediction boils down to the way you think about the
future. Prediction is based on the premise that to theextent that we can predict the future, we can control it.
That’s why both academics and businesspeople spend
enormous amounts of brainpower and resources developing predictive models, creating algorithms, andplanning scenarios. Those who employ CreAction takean entirely different mental posture: To the extent that
we can make the future through our actions, we don’t
need to predict it. Table 1, “Contrasting Prediction and
CreAction,” summarizes the fundamental differences
between Prediction thinkers and CreAction thinkers.
How do you see the future?

CreAction allows you to takesmart steps into an unknowable
future in order to discover and/or
invent that future as you go.
Scaling Some Very High Heights:
A Guide for Managers on the GroundHow do most large organizations innovate? Typically,
they will add simple product line extensions andmove into adjacent markets. That is, they will innovate
in predictable ways because they want to be able tofeat u r e | Kiefe r and S c h lesin g e r , wi t h B r o wn

TABLE 1 Contrasting Prediction and CreAction
Prediction

CreAction

View ofthe Future

The future is a continuation of the pastand can be reasonably predicted. Goals areachieved by extrapolating from the pastand positioning yourself to catch the wave.
Accuracy of prediction is paramount.

The future is contingent on human action. Unpredictability itself is seen as a resource. Goals are achieved bydoing the doable and continually transforming current
realities into new and unforeseen possibilities.

Basis forCommitment
and Action

Goals. Clarity of goals drives resource acquisition and management. What means do I
need to assemble to achieve these goals?

Means at hand. What effects can I create with themeans I have?

Think a lot. Act once the logic is fully inplace to achieve the end. The next step isbased on the previous thought.

Start acting as soon as you can, as soon as it’s logicalto take the next step. The next step is based on the
new reality, which results from your action.

Should. Do what you ought to do based on
what’s “best.” Goals determine sub-goals andactions. Thorough analysis precedes action.
Time and/or other resources are invested in
upfront information gathering.

Want (and can). Do what you want and are able to do,which is not necessarily “best.” Your desires, means, andthe actual commitments of others form the sub-goals.
Actions and interactions with others precede and drive
the process of CreAction. Creative energies focus onbuilding a venture with virtually no resources invested.

Attitude
TowardInvestment
and Risk

Expected return. Calculate upside potential
and pursue the (risk-adjusted) best opportunity. Risk management involves the careful
avoidance of failure.

Affordable loss. Calculate downside potential andinvest no more than you want or can afford to lose. Risk
management involves keeping failures small and having them happen early, and then learning from themfor future success. Each stakeholder invests only what
he or she can afford to or is willing to lose.

Dealingwith theUnexpected

Bring plan back on track.

Redesign plan and even, sometimes, your desiresin order to profit from surprises.

Attitude
TowardOthersCompetition. Constrain task relationships
with customers and suppliers to what is necessary. The likelihood of delivering on yourtargets dictates whom to bring on board.

Partnership. Build your market together with customers, suppliers, and even prospective competitors. The
people who come on board help determine the goals
and shape of the venture and its market.

Underlying
Logic

To the extent we can predict the future,
we can control it.

To the extent we can create the future, we do notneed to predict it.

Developed by Sarasvathy, Schlesinger, Kiefer, and Brown

predict unpredictable things and, at the very least,
avoid making mistakes. But research tells us that they
are not generally thrilled with the success of these
simple efforts. The conclusion? Results from innovatively thinking “outside the box” are still widely
unsatisfactory among established companies.

Unknowability
Large organizations face futures of varying knowability. At one end of the spectrum are companies
that have “pretty predictable” futures; the tools they
currently have give them competitive advantage overcompanies that don’t have the same tools. At the

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 1 0 , N umbe r 4other end, companies are facing situations that arecompletely unknowable. Yet, they still apply the same
Prediction tools despite the undeniable fact that insuch settings not only are these tools ineffective, they
carry greater cost in at least two ways. First, applying
the wrong tool – Prediction – to a situation wastes
both time and resources. Second, applying Prediction’s standards of success to CreAction just doesn’t
make sense.

Results from innovatively thinking“outside the box” are still widely
unsatisfactory among establishedcompanies.
Here’s an example of the disconnect that can result
from using a traditional Prediction tool – return on
investment requirement. Let’s suppose that new products at MegaGalactic must produce a 15% return on
investment (ROI) and generate at least $25 million in
additional revenue. Here’s the reasoning. “CreActionis unpredictable; we’d better require a 25% ROI and 		
at least $50 million in sales. Hmmm, now that I think
about it, I’m not sure that even that’s enough. Let’s
add a safety margin and make sure it exceeds 30%.”
Eventually, you get to the point where the hurdle
rate is so high that the new product – no matter
how promising – is never going to be approved.
The takeaway? A thought process that is logical, rational, and a smart thing to do in a predictable universe
gets unconsciously and habitually carried over andapplied to an area where things are unpredictable.
Not surprisingly, the results are far from ideal.

What Do You Do?
One path to introducing CreAction into large organizations is to keep it completely self-contained. In otherreflections.solonline.org

words, you sequester your efforts to deal with, or
capitalize on, the “unknowable.” You can do that bycreating a wholly separate organization withdifferent rules, processes, design, etc.
It is a good approach as far as it goes. You set up alittle unit on the side and completely protect it fromthe parent. But this has, of course, its own problems.
Just to rattle off a few:
• How do you reintegrate the ideas/products/
services the unit develops back into the parent
company?
• Who is going to run this unit? (Obviously, someone steeped in Prediction won’t be a good fit, andeven the most creative corporate citizens areunconsciously wedded to Prediction.)• How will the performance of the entity be evaluated? (See our earlier discussion about unrealistic
hurdle rates.)
Closely related to the sequestered concept is limiting
the employment of CreAction to certain specific activities, such as pilot projects. But neither approach is areal, permanent solution because the parent company
itself needs to operate, at least some of the time, inthe face of unknowability. You may be able to relegate certain aspects of the business landscape to a
separate unit, but not all of it. Reality is not thatconvenient.

A Learning Option
So what do you need to do to make an organization
hospitable to CreAction? People talk all the time about
how changing an organizational culture is difficult,but embedding CreAction makes that look like a walkin the park. You aren’t just changing the culture, butalso the company’s systems, processes, procedures,
goals – the whole shebang. You can’t just “order up”
this kind of thinking to permeate the entire organization (even if such an order were a good idea, which 		it probably is not).

feat u r e | Kiefe r and S c h lesin g e r , wi t h B r o wn

we don’t think you would like the end result verymuch. First, experience and research has shown thattrying to change things like culture or decision-making
processes with a process like this is labored at best,and often flat out fails. While the analogy is clichéd bythis point, it is also true: organizations, like the human
body, tend to reject foreign bodies inserted into them.
And, as we have seen, CreAction is about as foreign 		
as you can get when it comes to the way establishedcompanies do business.
Second, the process we outlined above could takemonths, or maybe years.

© thinkstockWell, if that won’t work, what will? The way we classically think about organization change would argue
that the way to introduce anything new is to:
1. Determine where you want to be – in this case, 		a company that uses CreAction when appropriate.
2. Determine how close the company is to the goal.
(Answer: “Not very.”)
3.	Chart a course between where you want to be 		(a company that uses CreAction) and where you
are now (one that does not).
4.	Put in place rewards systems, support, and trainingthat would allow that change to happen.
5. Add metrics that will chart the progress toward
the goal, and identify when things are getting
off course.
6. Do remedial work as necessary until you achieve
your objective.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It should. It’s perfect
Prediction. You could go this route, but quite frankly,

CreAction is about as foreign
as you can get when it comes tothe way established companies
do business.
Third, by going down this path, you run the risk ofundermining the Prediction skills within your organization. That would be a huge mistake. Even though
the universe grows seemingly more unpredictable 		by the minute, there is – and always will be – a huge
number of things that are predictable, and you don’t
want to weaken or eliminate a superior skill (Prediction) that the organization has, one that is effective
under the right circumstances.
It is clear to us that the historical approach is not
the way to go here. If you want to introduce CreAction
successfully, you are going to need to take a different
approach, a CreActive one!

Not Top-down but Bottom-up
Fortunately, we believe there is a way to introduce
CreAction without replacing any of the existing structures or procedures that work well in predictable

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r efle c t i o ns | v o lume 1 0 , N umbe r 4

situations. It’s possible, because experience has shownthat everyone is capable of entrepreneurial thought;
every one of us has the ability to operate in situationsof uncertainty.
So, the secret is not to introduce CreAction from the
top of the organization down – i.e., with the CEO (orsuperintendent or minister) saying, “From this day forward, we will add CreAction to the way the company
addresses problems and opportunities.” Rather, it is
to have it become part of the organization from thebottom up, with individual employees using this alternative form of thinking as the situation warrants.

There is a way to introduce
CreAction without replacing
any of the existing structures 		or procedures that work well		in predictable situations.
Let’s pause a moment to underscore both points. First,
CreAction doesn’t replace Prediction; it’s an additional
tool. Second, introducing it in the manner we suggest
doesn’t require an organization to change its existing
systems. Rather, the change process begins with
employees asking themselves, when confronted witha problem, “Does it make sense to use CreAction inthis case?”
Alone, you can’t convince your company to create 		a new structure, but you can perhaps persuade it toattack a problem from an unusual angle. (“Hey, can wethink about it a different way, boss?”) That you can do,
especially if what you follow up with is a way to savethe company money or operate more efficiently. You
can’t change the fact that there are cubicles and an
existing culture and ways of doing things. But “smart
is smart,” and we’re talking about you offering up an

reflections.solonline.org

additional way of viewing problems. You’ll never getin real trouble for doing that, especially if you do it
gently by saying, “Can we think about this differently?”
This is the first kind of learning that has to take place
to introduce CreAction into the organization.
The second kind is an organizational learning. Afterthe idea of CreAction has started to take hold, youneed to come up with an answer to the question,“How do we build this capacity within our firm in a
way that is consistent with our strategy?” There is no“one size fits all” recipe for this. We’re dealing withsomething that is essentially a creative act, and consequently each organization has to handle it in its own
unique way. If the company looks to adopt somebody
else’s version, it’s because it’s leaning right back into
predictive thinking: “If I imitate them somehow, it will
be good for me.” Imitation will probably not be very
successful. Despite what they teach you in businessschool, no two organizations are exactly the same.

The Why, When, and Whereof CreAction in Organizations
Why? Success with “out of the box” innovationis spotty at best. This is an alternative thathas worked well for people who must deal
with uncertainty every day: entrepreneurs.
(Nothing is more uncertain than trying tocreate something that has never existed
before.)When? In situations when predictive
methods just don’t make a lot of sense
Where? Product/service innovation, businessmodel innovation, and perhaps, ultimately,across the entire organization

feat u r e | Kiefe r and S c h lesin g e r , wi t h B r o wn

So how do you induce organizational learning about
CreAction? The task is actually simpler than you might
think. Encourage people to:
1.	Regain their natural capacity for CreAction. This iseasy. As we have seen throughout, this is the way
we figured things out before we went to school.
2. Employ the use of CreAction in settings that areinhospitable to Prediction. This looks easy as well.
It requires four things:• Learn to recognize when a particular setting
has a high degree of essential unknowability,
and thus the use of CreAction is appropriate(and Prediction is not).
• As an alternative to “more study,” develop a compelling next step with acceptably low affordable
loss. (The easiest way to do that? Ask what will
get you furthest in the shortest time, with theleast resources at risk.)

We’re dealing with somethingthat is essentially a creative act,
and consequently each organization has to handle it in its own
unique way.
• Develop the capacity to enroll whatever sponsors, enablers, and approvers may be required.
(It is especially important to develop the ability
to describe CreAction to those who are unfamiliar with it, and explain why it is an appropriate
approach.)• Develop the personal desire and commitment
to do the three steps above. n

ab o u t t h e au t h o r sCharles F. Kiefer is president of Innovation Associates. The firm helped pioneer the body of concepts andmethods now called organizational learning. Today, Charlie helps global companies leverage the humanside of their enterprise primarily by working with executives and their teams to improve the quality of
their thought. CFK@InnovationAssociates.com
Leonard A. Schlesinger, president of Babson College, was previously vice chairman and chief operating
officer of Limited Brands. His academic career includes 20 years at Harvard Business School. Len is the author
or co-author of nine books, including The Value Profit Chain (Free Press) and The Real Heroes of Business . . .
and Not a CEO among Them (Doubleday). lschlesinger@babson.edu
Paul B. Brown is a long-time contributor to The New York Times and a former writer and editor for Business
Week, Financial World, Forbes, and Inc. He is the author or co-author of numerous bestsellers, including
Customers for Life (Doubleday). Paul is a contributing editor to the MIT Sloan Management Review and
The Conference Board Review. PaulBBrown@aol.com

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Reflections
The SoL Journal

on Knowledge, Learning, and Change
Volume 10, Number 4

E ditorial T ea mManaging Editor
Janice Molloy
Contributing Editor
Deborah E. Wallace, Ed.D.
Publisher
Claire Sherry Immediato

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