Leading and Learning for Sustainability- December 7-9 Workshop

(3BL Media / theCSRfeed) November 2, 2011 - We're inviting you to join Peter Senge in SoL's Leading and Learning for Sustainability Workshop, December 7-9, 2011. The workshop will be hosted by Drexel University and co-facilitated by Joe Laur (founder of SoL's Sustainability Consortium) and Sarah Severn (Nike), both long-time and highly experienced practitioners in the field of sustainability leadership and organizational learning.    Sustainability is not a problem to be solved. It is a future to be created. This workshop is for leaders and teams of all sorts who are passionate about developing sustainable strategies and practices in organizations, institutions, industries and communities across all three sectors (private, non-profit and government.) It is a synthesis of core organizational learning disciplines - systems thinking, mental model and collaborative inquiry, personal mastery and building shared vision - and the practical know-how developed within the SoL Sustainability Consortium, the Sustainable Foodlab and the SoL Education Partnership over the past decade, much of which is captured in Peter Senge's latest book The Necessary Revolution. The stories and practices described in the book are the foundation for this workshop.   As you know from your own experience, Leading and Learning for Sustainability is a very timely and relevant topic. In this interactive workshop, participants have the opportunity to work on concrete challenges around social and environmental sustainability. In particular, we encourage cross-sector teams to attend this workshop as it provides a safe, human-centered space that allows for the kind of reflective, collective focus in which breakthrough results are achieved. Leading and Learning for Sustainability guides participants through the process of seeing human beings and our environment as one - a connection between nature and social systems. The workshop addresses how to engage with the systems in place so that we c! an create a better world for our children, look closely at the profound and growing imbalances worldwide and explore how to build healthy systems for a healthy, sustainable society. The key competencies build in this workshop are:

• Excel at seeing systems: recognizing basic system phenomena such as limits to success, shifting the burden to the intervener and accidental adversaries.

• Collaborate across boundaries with ease: knowing how to get the whole system in the room and respecting different interests and perspectives of all the stakeholders, building social networks and realizing breakthrough innovations.

• Move easily from problem-solving to creating: Overcoming fear and anxiety as a motivation for action and act out of one's own aspiration and sense of possibility evoking inspiration and creativity throughout the system.

A practical goal of the session is that all participants advance their organization's sustainability strategy and implementation.  All participants are encouraged to attend with at least one other colleague. You'll leave the session with new questions, more colleagues and more clarity about practical next steps you can take to help the systems of which you are a part be a leader in the necessary revolution to create a sustainable future.    Teams of three or more participants will receive a 10% tuition discount.
  We invite you to share this information with your colleagues and with others in your wider networks for whom you think this program would make a real difference in their lives, their communities, their organizations and in the world. And, you may want to share this information specifically with people with whom you would like to attend this program as your time together can help create momentum for the change(s) you would like to bring about. These might be people on your team, key colleagues or stakeholders, community members or others with whom you'd like to collaborate around issues that really matter.
 
If you have questions or would like to register for Leading and Learning for Sustainability, please contact Jimmy Leppert at programs@solonline.org or at +1-617-300-9560.   View the complete workshop brochure and registration form here.   SoL is an intentional learning community composed of organizations, individuals, and over 30 local and topical SoL communities around the world. A not-for-profit, member-governed corporation, SoL is devoted to the interdependent development of people and their institutions in service of inspired performance and meaningful results. Peter Senge is the Founding Chair.