Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows

Program

2003-2004

Sustainability InstituteHartland Four Corners,

Vermont

Our Mission:

To use the tools of systems thinking, system dynamics and organizational learning to further

a global transition to sustainability.

SI is a think-do tank dedicated to:

sustainable resource use, sustainable economics and sustainable community.

Publications• Research Reports

• Articles

• Opinion Columns

• Donella Meadows Archives

Action-Research• Sustainable Agriculture

• Renewable Energy

• Natural Resource

Commodities

Consulting • Systems Thinking Facilitation

• System Dynamics Modeling

• Collaborative Learning

Projects

Sustainability Institute works in a variety of ways to help integrate environmental and social goals into

global systems.

Leadership Training

• Donella Meadows Leadership

Fellows Program

• Sustainable Agriculture

Leadership Lab

Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program

Systems Thinking for Sustainability

To empower the next generation of environmental leaders with the tools of systems thinking…

....Honoring analytic clarity and attention to spirit, values, and meaning.

Donella (Dana) H. Meadows(1941-2001)

•Founder of Sustainability Institute, 1996•Systems Analyst, Teacher, Writer,

Journalist, Farmer•PhD (Biophysics), Harvard University•Professor, Dartmouth College•MacArthur Fellow•Pew Scholar•Leading Voice for Sustainability

"A sustainability revolution requires each person to act as a learning leader at some level, from family to community to nation to the world.”

Three qualities that Dana combined:

• dedication to scientific rigor and analysis • deeply grounded vision of a sustainable world • the ability to communicate well in writing

System tools enabled her to see clearly the root causes of seemingly intractable problems — poverty, war, environmental degradation.

Her deep affection for people and the earth gave her a unique power to reach others.

Dana’s guiding message was simple:

“We humans are smart enough to have created

complex systems and amazing productivity;

surely we are also smart enough to make sure

that everyone shares our bounty, and surely we

are smart enough to sustainably steward the

natural world upon which we all depend. “

Goal of the Fellows Program

(1) Building Fellows’ skills in systems thinking, organizational learning, mental models, and visioning

(2) Building Fellows’ understanding of systems principles

(3) Applying new skills to projects within Fellows’ work environment

(4) Building a Fellows’ community

To learn from Donella Meadows’ life example and increase the effectiveness of leaders applying systems thinking to social and environmental challenges by:

Selection Process and Criteria

130 Applicants —> Narrowed it down to 26Non-profit, government, business, philanthropy, universityInterviewed 26 —> Choose 17 —> 16 accepted

Criteria:

• Scientific rigor in their analysis of an issue

• Ability to work with multi-stakeholders on an issue

• Working on an issue that SI has expertise in• Placement within an organization or network so they can influence others

• Personal growth and mastery

Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows

Program

16 Fellows

2-year cycles

4 four-day workshops

Apply learnings to a current work project

Coaching , homework, and community building

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SI Staff and Fellows

16 Accomplished Environmental Leaders16 Accomplished Environmental Leaders13 women, 3 men

14 US States & 1 International (Brazil)Representing major cities, rural communities,

tribal lands, university towns

Areas of Fellows’ ImpactISSUES

– Urban Environment– Climate Change and

Energy– Sustainable

Community Development

– Biodiversity and Land Conservation

– Agriculture and Food Systems

– Pollution Prevention

STAKEHOLDERS– Activists • Legislators – Government Officials – Consumers • Farmers – Industry Executives– Citizen Boards

SECTORS– University – Philanthropy – Non-profit – Government– Business– Tribal

Outcomes of the Fellows Program

• Process Design andFacilitation Skills

• Systems Thinking Skills

• Powerful Relationships Among Fellows and

SI Staff

• Increased Personal Mastery

• Effectiveness of Fellows’ Organizations

Workshop 1Foundational

Skills

Workshop 2ProcessDesign

Workshop 3ProjectClinics

Workshop 4FellowsSupport

Practice with disciplines

Project Work Project Work

Skill Building & Systems Principles

Learning Projects

Fellows Teambuilding & Co-learning

The Fellowship Program Provides Both Practice And Application

reflective conversation

aspiration

strategicthinking

capacity to reflect on assumptions and patterns of behavior

capacity of individuals and teams to orient towards what they truly care about

capacity to understand and change complex systems

Core Capabilities of Learning in Complex Systems:

Skills Fellows Learn Include:

Strategic thinking– Systems thinking– Causal loop diagramming – Action to outcome mapping

Reflective Conversation– Collaborative learning – Inquiry based intervention– Organizational learning

Aspiration– Visioning – Networking and community building

What Are Systems Tools for?

•To move focus away from events and symptoms and toward system structure.

•To elicit and articulate mental models, then expand them– by accounting for feedback, time delays, non-linearity, and

other components of complex systems.

•To test and improve mental models via simulation.•To develop shared mental models within teams and communities.

•To understand where leverage points are and are not.

Better mental models lead to better decisions about how to lead the transition to sustainability.

Events

Patternsof Behavior

SystemicStructure

IncreasingLeverage

Mind-sets

The Iceberg – A Metaphor for the Level at Which We Address a System

Objectives for the First Workshop, June 23-27, 2003

• Build Fellows’ skills in systems thinking, mental models, and vision.

• Build Fellows’ understanding of systems principles.

• Prepare for applied projects within Fellows’ work environment.

• Build a Fellows’ community.

Uniting Strategic Thinking, Reflective Conversation and Aspiration for Effective

Change

understand current reality --

what’s happening and the underlying drivers

develop a shared vision of the future we are trying to

create

Adapted from the “U” Leadership Model

take action based on a strategic

understanding of the system

Strategic Thinking Reflective

Conversation

Reflective Conversatio

n

Aspiration

“The first Fellowship workshop was extremely valuable because it taught us a means of describing complex problems in such a way that reveals the underlying drivers.  When we are aware of what is causing a problem we can focus more of our productive energy on finding solutions and acting upon them, rather than addressing symptoms of the problem.”

—John FiskFood and Policy Consultant to the Kellogg Foundation

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“Systems thinking will be an extraordinary tool for me to analyze the issues and projects on which I work.  Connecting the daily living of the Cobb Hill community to the workshop was an ideal way to ground the experience and gave us such inspiration and optimism.”

—Angela Park Environmental Leadership

Program

Objectives for Workshop 2

(1)Introduce and practice next level of systems concepts and tools.

(2)Reflect on the goals and meaning of leadership for sustainability.

(3)Design projects for Fellows to apply the workshop learnings and disciplines within their home work environment.

Individual Projects can be one of the following:

1) New Work Initiative – a new multi-stakeholder forum to achieve an outcome in the system.

2) New Process Initiative – a new framework to engage colleagues in making an existing work effort more effective.

3) Specific Opportunity – a specific challenge where the learning tools could be tapped to improve a project.

4) Personal Mastery Aspiration – an effort by a Fellow to address “who they are in their work”.

Fellows in ActionMark Spalding is opening a neutral third-party hosted dialogue among corporate and environmental stakeholders to address solutions to the management failures of the Marine Stewardship Council.

Lynn Stoddard is preparing comments on cultural change to submit to an agency reorganization group.

Angela Park plans to create a training on systems thinking as part of her leadership program’s curriculum, integrating the “ladder of inference” and reflective listening. 

Suggestions for Capstone Program

• Clarify vision of what the program hopes to accomplish• Develop curriculum, framework, models, tools• Foster teambuilding among the participants• Use systems thinking to: – integrate the interdisciplinary goals of the program – analyze the roots causes of issues – see the interconnections between issues

1) Post preparation materials on the WWW2) Gather together in a workshop3) Follow-up and expand on the WWW

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““A sustainability revolution requires each person to act as a A sustainability revolution requires each person to act as a learning leader at some level, from family to community to learning leader at some level, from family to community to nation to the world. And it requires each of us to support nation to the world. And it requires each of us to support leaders at all levels in their learning by creating an leaders at all levels in their learning by creating an environment that permits them to admit uncertainty, conduct environment that permits them to admit uncertainty, conduct experiments, and acknowledge mistakes.”experiments, and acknowledge mistakes.”

Donella Meadows, 1992Donella Meadows, 1992