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The authors Peter Senge, Hal Hamilton, and John Kania in this magazine article from Winter 2015 outline their belief that the deep changes necessary to accelerate progress against society's most intractable problems require a unique type of leader - the systems leader, the person who catalyzes collective leadership. They use Nelson Mandela as the supreme example of this, but state that they have met many systems leaders on a national, regional, and local level. Systems leaders have the ability to see the interconnection of all the moving parts of a problem, issue, or crisis and develop interventions designed to bring diverse views and standings together in supportive and structured ways to address differences. "The simple idea that you could bring together those who had suffered profound losses with those whose actions led to those losses, to face one another, tell their truths, forgive, and move on, was not only a profound gesture of civilization but also a cauldron for creating collective leadership. Indeed, the process would have been impossible without the leadership of people like Bishop Desmond Tutu and former President F. W. de Klerk."

Blog by Harold Jarche, April 30, 2012. This excerpt IMO justifies why women (and everyone else!) needs to know how to work in social networks to learn and to help others learn and apply their "capacity for action" in their workplaces and elsewhere. They can transform their workplaces through enriched learning practices. They may not have the HR title but they can still role model organizational learning on a small scale at least. Excerpt: "Individual learning in organizations is irrelevant, as work is almost never done by one person alone. Knowledge, Senge said, is the capacity for effective action (know how) and it is the only aspect of knowledge that really matters in business and life. Value is created by teams and mostly by networks of people. While learning may be generated in teams, this type of knowledge comes and goes. Learning really spreads through social networks." Excerpt: It shows that the company never gave any thought to organizational learning. ■Are employees narrating their work in a transparent environment? ■Does the daily routine support social learning? ■Is time made available for reflection and sharing stories? "Narrating their work in a transparent environment," "support social learning," and "reflection" are all linked to other resources.

Digest of ideas by Gwen Teatro, You Are Not the Boss of Me, reprinted 9/7/14, originally written in 2010. Very interesting look at the Fifty Discipline by Peter Senge. "There was a time when everyone was jumping onto The Learning Organization bandwagon. This usually happened when times were good, when organizations felt a little more ebullient...Budgets were cut....wisdom and decisions would only come from the few and learning for the many was a luxury no one could afford." Learning Organization components 1. Vision--shared--may start with one person, it must be embraced and shared by all. Can be simple, i.e., Zappo's Delivering Happiness 2. Team learning--in an age where shared leadership is or will become critical, the need to understand the dynamics and functional operation of teams is pretty great--how team members communicate with each other, how they manage conflict, and how they examine their successes...and their failures 3. Personal Mastery--taking the time to study and understand our reality and our purpose 4. Mental models--dangers of clinging to and operating from narrow perspectives--assumptions and biases in our thinking 5. Systems thinking--paying attention to the connections between and among a variety of elements that make up the whole.