A little over 20 years ago, international thought leader Peter Senge articulated five core learning capabilities for teams, organizations and societies:
- Personal Mastery that comes from having a creative vision to which you are deeply committed;
- A Shared Vision that wraps individual creativity and desire into a kind of a magic wand of aspiration;
- The capacity to know and share Mental Models of reality and possibilities;
- The ability to be influenced and to influence others through Dialogue;
- And, the facility to understand complexity that comes through Systems Thinking.
When we look at the profound range of threatening challenges and amazing possibilities facing people, organizations, societies and even the whole planet, we conclude that the need to practice these five disciplines--in all of their many manifestations--is even stronger now than it was when Peter first articulated them. Organizations and systems that are highly skilled at learning to learn are desperately needed in every domain of life. The Society for Organizational Learning, North America is dedicated both to responding to this challenge and to the even more subtle challenge of continuously learning as new problems and opportunities emerge from our thought and action.
With Peter Senge's help, the SoL NA Council has established a set of domains for the investment of resources and energy that will generate both deep learning and fulfilling work opportunities for members with high relevance to organizations and systems with a learning orientation. The strategic planning matrix is the foundation for the Society's meeting in Indianapolis, and it is a format we intend to use throughout 2013.
While this strategy matrix is still being refined, you can see a depiction of it in the Agenda below. These are some of the domains and themes where SoL members have existing expertise, focus and a desire to learn.
At the Incubator, a video featuring Peter will lay out the thinking about why each of the "basins of attraction" contained in this matrix presents an opportunity for SoL NA and the entities it seeks to serve.
This represents an exciting framework to support the purpose of SoL NA, which is: To advance the objectives and methods of organizational learning so that they have a significant and sustainable impact on leadership and management methods.