Strategic Learning for Sustainability
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Strategic Learning for Sustainability
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The leaders of the 21st Century will be those companies who have learned to align their businesses with natural systems of organization. They will be those companies who have succeeded in making the shift in thinking, strategy and action from linear industrial modes of production to cyclical systems of organization.
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PURPOSE |
The purpose of the Strategic Learning for Sustainability (SLS) is to create a learning experience where industrial decision makers develop the conceptual framework, practical tools, organizational leverage and strategic alignment they need to make the shift in thinking that will allow them to build companies that will survive and thrive for the long term.
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STRUCTURE |
This is a one year long learning experience, where approximately 40 business people come together to learn with and from each other. The following learning structures combine to create a challenging and powerful experience:
Off - sites:
There will be four five-day off-sites over the course of the SLS,exploring the following content areas:
- Core competencies of the learning organization, processes for effective communication and collective thinking dialogue, mental models, personal mastery
- Life on a limited planet: scientific principles of sustainability systems dynamics archetypes of "limits to growth," "tragedy of the commons" and "success to the successful" explored from global, corporate and personal perspectives
- Designing for sustainability: integration of learning process and sustainability principles. Creating a strategic, sustainable design process for one's business product or service
- Reflection, theory building, application and integration community dialogue on next steps for the evolution of sustainable business and a sustainable economy
In between off-sites:
- Coaching: In between off-site weeks together, each participant will meet bimonthly by phone with a coach from the instructional staff. The opportunity here is for participants to gain support and challenge in making the shifts in their professional lives necessary to allow the sustainability work to succeed. Coaches work in a concrete fashion with live business cases that participants bring to coaching sessions from their present experience.
- Sustainable Business Project: Strategic teams will each choose a sustainable business project -- a concrete application of the principles and disciplines of the SLS to their respective business unit. For example a computer manufacturer might choose to assess and build printers with recycled resins. A logging company might evaluate their reforesting practices. A chemical company might look at which of their persistent, non-natural products could be replaced by biodegradable substances, etc. Each of these business projects would be undertaken using the skills of the learning organization gained by participants through the experience of the SLS.
- Study Groups: Study groups or 3-5 people will meet weekly to support and challenge each other in reflecting on course content, homework and coaching sessions. In addition, study groups will work together to design and implement a sustainable business project.
- Research for Capturing the Learning Process: A skilled researcher will participate in SLS with the task of interviewing participants before during and after their experience to capture individual and collective learning's about how to sustain learning communities in business. The knowledge thus captured will be disseminated throughout the organizations. In this way Strategic Learning for Sustainability lessons and achievements may be "seeded" throughout the company, spawning the healthy infrastructure for the development of a sustainable business
- Homework Assignments: Participants will receive monthly homework assignments of reading, reflection, study group discussion, and sustainable business project design.
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SAMPLE READING LIST |
Learning For Sustainability, Senge, Schley, Smith & Laur
Fifth Discipline and Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, Senge et. al.
Beyond the Limits, Meadows et. al.,
The Global Citizen, Meadows,
Web of Life, Capra,
Simplicity without Reduction, Robert, Educating a Nation, Robert
Ecology of Commerce, Hawken, Natural Capitalism, Hawken
Management for a Small Planet, Stead and Stead,
Beyond Growth, Daly
"The Sustainability Challenge," Schley and Laur
Green and Competitive, Porter
The Hannover Principles, McDonough et. al., Financing Change, Schmidheiny
Changing Course, Schmidheiny
"Beyond Greening," Hart
"Growth through Global Sustainability," Magretta.
