by Bob Stilger
Tadaima! ただいま. That's what is said in Japan when one returns home. "I'm back, I've been out in the world and I am back." And that is exactly how I felt last week during a trip to Japan. I'm a little embarrassed--はずかし--to be writing about what is happening in another country and culture. So just let me be clear--my story is as a foreigner, a visitor, and I speak only from my outsider perspective.
My relationship with Japan started 40 years ago, when I escaped there during my senior year in college. My life and learning in Japan have been a central part of who I am. It is my spiritual home. But I've never been inclined to take my work there until recently.
Last November, at the Pegasus Systems Thinking in Action Conference, I was presenting on behalf of The Berkana Institute. I was amazed to see 25 or so people from Japan. Normally there are just several. I wondered, "What's happening?" and learned that the answer is "a lot." Over the last couple of years in Japan, there has been a tremendous surge of interest in and work with systems thinking, Presencing, World Café, Appreciative Inquiry, and a host of other processes. The people I met have not only embraced these methodologies, they have created a huge opening for new ways of thinking and being. And in Japan, when something begins, it moves quickly!
Conversations soon evolved into an invitation to give a workshop and to participate in an evening Dialogue Bar. The weekend workshop with 20 participants was a combination of my work on Resilient Communities, Enspirited Leadership, Art of Hosting 
sampler, and Art of Change sampler all rolled into one. We met in circle and Open Space and World Café. We walked in silent pairs and in dialogue pairs. We modeled with clay, and the clay was so loved that it became a part of the rest of the World Café sessions. We designed the second day together, and much of the hosting was done by the participants.
Monday night was the "Dialogue Bar." More than 100 people from all walks of life and all ages came. I presented an opening keynote, in which I shared a bit of my life story as well as some of my findings about Enspirited Leadership. But they really came for conversation. Lively, animated, intense conversation about what it takes for social innovation to make enough of a difference to make a difference.
What did I learn from this amazing experience? I learned that World Café is being used extensively in business in Japan these days. People seem comfortable with the World Café format; it is intimate, yet with some protections. It is well documented and not just some "flakey" way of doing things. Heck, the prime minister even has the book The World Café: Shaping Our Futures Through Conversations That Matter! And the hunger for conversations that matter is inspiring. People know things need to change. And they know they need to be part of that change.
Japanese know how to listen to each other with their whole bodies and to hear far beyond the words. They know how to be silent with each other. They know how to be respectful. They know how to find questions. AND, there is an expression in Japan, "The nail that sticks up is pounded down."
How does one continue to listen with one's whole being AND stick up, stand up, find courage and clarity to offer one's leadership in a time of immense change? This is the question that Japan is ready for and it has been cracking wide open for more than two years. This is why there were 25 people from Japan at the Systems Thinking in Action Conference this past November where there have been four or five in the past. And this is why I'll be back for some work in May and suspect I will be returning more frequently!
Bob Stilger has been engaged in community change work since the mid-1970s. In recent years, much of his work has been in places like South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, and Brazil, where new forms of engagement are being created. He has a PhD in Learning and Change in Human Systems from CIIS and was the co-president of The Berkana Institute from 2005-2009.
by Janice Molloy
Say that sales are dwindling in a key part of your product line--not an uncommon problem these days. You're under pressure to produce earnings for your parent company and need to boost your profitability, but how? You could continue to invest your dwindling dollars in innovative, high-quality products for your main customer base. Or you could take a niche product that appeals to a limited market but costs relatively little to produce and elevate it to a central role in your offerings. Would you consider this a game-changing strategy?
According to published reports, television network NBC did when executives decided to move Jay Leno, the long-time host of The Tonight Show, from his late-night slot to primetime programming five 
nights a week. Now, a mere four months later, they've done a 180, pushing Leno back to an 11:35 p.m. start time and causing turmoil among their stable of late-night talk show hosts.
The reason for the flip-flop? According to USA Today, "Leno's prime-time audience (about 5.6 million viewers overall) was 30% lower than the schedule it replaced among NBC's young-adult target audience." The lower viewership devastated local affiliates. Without a strong lead-in for their 11 o'clock news programs, they lost market share and advertising revenue.
The surprise is that this diminished audience wasn't a surprise; it was more or less a self-fulfilling prophesy. NBC fully expected The Jay Leno Show to attract a smaller audience than the scripted dramas it replaced. What executives were banking on was a higher profit margin. Even with the extravagant salaries that late-night hosts command, talk shows are much less expensive to produce than dramas. NBC gambled that the lower expenses would outweigh the reduced advertising revenue.
NBC also saw the move as solving another thorny problem: keeping the popular Jay Leno in the line-up. Five years ago, even as Leno was leading the late-night ratings battle, the network signed on comedian Conan O'Brien as heir apparent to The Tonight Show. The plan was for O'Brien to take over from Leno in 2009; in the meantime, O'Brien was prevented from going to a rival network. When the time came for O'Brien to move to The Tonight Show, NBC executives decided they didn't want to lose Leno to a competitor, either. The primetime show served as a way to keep Leno in the mix.
NBC achieved its goals: The Tonight Show was profitable for the network and it retained key talent, but its strategy still failed. There are many systems lessons to be learned from the late-night mess: about long-term value creation versus short-term profit, about seeing the whole system, including your partners and their needs, about true innovation. What strikes me most, though, is that it seems to be a prime example of operating from what Robert Fritz calls a "Reactive/Responsive" rather than a "Creative/Generative" orientation. NBC perceived main two predicaments: it didn't want profitability to fall and it didn't want to lose top-notch talent to competitors. Programming executives responded with quick fixes that appeared to address the problems in the short run but only compounded them.
But what if instead of trying to avoid things we don't want to happen, we articulate a vision of what we do want to achieve? Here's how Fritz describes the shift in emphasis: "The creative process is the opposite of problem solving. In problem solving, the focus is on situations we don't want. Our orientation is circumstantial and our actions are taken to get rid of what we don't want, not to create what we do want. Many people brag that they are dedicated problem solvers. They don't understand the reality that all of the problem solving in the world won't bring about what they want. If you got rid of all of your problems, you still won't have what you want. You will have spent a lot of time and energy, spinning your wheels, but not getting anywhere. And while problem solving has its place, if that's mostly what you do, you aren't going to go very far."
The good news for companies in the entertainment world is that they have a whole lot of creative folks chomping at the bit to, in Fritz's words, "imagine beyond the circumstances and reach something truly original." That would be a real game-changer.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
Peacock photo taken at the Melbourne Zoo by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos and used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation license.
By Janice Molloy
In this time of budgetary constraints and funding cutbacks, the news that the MacArthur Foundation is funding research on the development of systems thinking in middle school students is a heartening turn of events. According to a press release from Indiana University, professors Melissa Gresalfi and Kylie Peppler will be principal investigators on the three-year study called "Grinding New Lenses: A Design Project to Support a Systems View of the World." They are partnering with Nichole Pinkard, visiting professor at DePaul University, and Katie Salen, executive director of the Institute of Play, to create curricula to help sixth graders see and interpret the world with a "systems thinking disposition."
Peppler and Gresalfi are working on two projects. In the first, they will design teaching materials for sixth graders that integrate systems thinking in areas such as science, art, and literature. The researchers' focus is on providing students with technology to play and experiment with to create their own systems. Commented Peppler, "A lot of what's been out there about kids understanding systems 
has been playing simulations and then playing with the variables of those simulations. Instead of starting with somebody else's creation, they'll be creating their own simulations, in a sense."
During the final year of the grant, the researchers will try to understand how teachers use the curriculum modules they've introduced. The goal is to offer teachers new ways to promote systems thinking in the classroom. "Indiana's technology standards centrally focus on systems thinking and there just is not very much curriculum out there," Gresalfi said. "I'm very optimistic that we'll get some Indiana teachers at a minimum who are looking for something to use to address some of these standards."
According to the press release, some of the inspiration for the curriculum will come from the Quest to Learn School in New York City, which was created by Salen's Institute of Play. The combination middle school/high school describes itself as "designed to help students to bridge old and new literacies through learning about the world as a set of interconnected systems." The "Grinding New Lenses" project looks like a strong step toward advancing systems literacy more broadly.
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
Graphic source information
by Vicky Schubert
We huddle together in the tiny, darkened room, waiting with breathless anticipation for the characters we've created to appear on the giant screen at the front of the theater. How grand they'll be!
First, we'll see the Noble One. With his classic good looks, intelligence, and eloquence, he'll embody all our hopes. He'll movingly remind us that we've emerged from our emotional adolescence to embrace a post-racial society. Cool as a cucumber, he'll take on the enormous challenges of our time, healing our differences and single-handedly delivering better education, better healthcare, a stable climate, and a world at peace.
As soon as he falters and we begin to feel like he's selling us out to the Wall Street moguls and special interests (forgetting that it was we who created him), we will send in the Righteous Gunslinger. Affable and sincere, he'll take no prisoners. He'll embody our outrage at being underestimated and he'll single-handedly return the People to power. We can see that he's flawed--not too flawed, mind you, just flawed enough to be one of us. He drives a truck. Yeah, that's a nice touch.
The projector whirrs into action, and we smile expectantly as the feature starts to roll. But what's this? In the chaotic barrage of images that fills the screen, we strain to follow the plot. Through bone-crushing Dolby sound we can barely discern our original heroes.
We're taken at breakneck speed from one scene to another. The camera manically pans urban streets and wild landscapes. We see utility grids, manufacturing plants, the blur of a stock market trading floor, and a crater-pocked battlefield. We hear undecipherable deals being hashed out in boardrooms and back rooms. Buildings are tumbling, bodies of the sick and dying lie in piles around us. Shouts of panic ring out in hundreds of different languages. Children run toward us with outstretched hands, and angry mobs point fingers of blame.
There's too much going on here! Who are the good guys? Who are the bad guys? What happened to our heroes?! Rewrite!
We turn off the projector. Someone hits the lights and, dumbstruck, we look around at our fellow projectionists. After a long silence one of us speaks up. "We need to create better heroes, folks. Things have gotten way too complicated for these guys to fix." Another long silence. "Maybe it's not about heroes," one small voice offers. "Let's just talk for a few minutes about what really matters to us. Maybe that's where we start."
Vicky Schubert is marketing director at Pegasus Communications.
by Colleen Ponto
I went to see the movie Avatar Sunday night with my husband--a rare event for me on two counts: (1) seeing a movie, and (2) being with my husband without our kids. According to my three children,
this was a "Mom, you have to see this movie" movie. So I went.
Even though I am not an appreciative fan of science fiction, violence, or special effects, Avatar may just be one of those transformational films, a film that shifts human consciousness. There were so many systems principles embedded in Avatar. Concepts such as "everything is interconnected," "every solution creates new problems," "nothing exists independent of its relationships," "waste = food," "there is no 'away,'" and "information (or feedback) is the fuel of life" were key messages of this film. And one final systems principle came to mind as I left the theater--"you can never direct a living system to change, you can only disturb it." Avatar certainly was a "disturbing" movie.
During the car ride home, I asked my husband lots of questions about James Cameron, the director of the film (since I am not a moviegoer, I know very little about anyone in the film industry)--about who he is, his character, his political views, etc. He didn't know. And then in yesterday's Seattle Times, I found the following quote from James Cameron, a statement he made at the Annual Golden Globes Awards that addressed some of my questions:
"Avatar asks us to see that everything is connected, all human beings to each other, and us to the Earth. And if you have to go four and a half light years to another made-up planet to appreciate this miracle of the world that we have right here, well, you know what, that's the wonder of cinema right there, that's the magic."
Another systems thinking educator has successfully landed on center stage. Bravo, James Cameron, Bravo!
Colleen Ponto, Ed.D., teaches at Seattle University, where she is a core faculty member of the Organization Systems Renewal Graduate Program, which specializes in helping adult learners to become designers and leaders of systemic organizational change. Colleen is also an independent educational and organizational consultant. One of her current passions is teaching systems thinking to learners of all ages.
By Janice Molloy
Was Russell Ackoff the "Einstein of Problem Solving"? An article published in "The Huffington Post" in the wake of Russ's death in November made this provocative proposition. If this analogy is 
appropriate, then Ackoff may yet have an enormous impact on the way we address longstanding organizational and social challenges.
One of the world's preeminent systems thinkers, Russ was Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and a pioneer in the field of operations research. Described by The Economist as "one of the most influential management gurus of the 20th century," he was the author of more than 25 provocative books and hundreds of influential articles. Click here for other details of his remarkable life.
In a tribute to Ackoff, sustainable development researcher and theorist Steven G. Brant proposes that he "transformed the world of problem solving just as Albert Einstein transformed the world of science." Brant makes the case that, just as Einstein's discoveries irrevocably refuted the mechanical view of the universe, Ackoff's contributions to the development of systems thinking as a management tool upended the traditional, analytical approach to improvement.
Brant goes on to urge us to apply a systems-level approach to the societal problems we currently face. He says, "There is no more critical thing 'we, the people' can do for the long-term health of our nation than to reorient how we approach solving our problems. . . . It is possible to solve the many crises America faces. It is possible to not just solve but dissolve our crises in education, health care, job creation, etc. But we won't do so if we keep trying to solve them the way we have... separately. We must solve them in the context of redesigning the larger sociological system in which they all reside."
You can read the complete blog post here. What do you think of Brant's contention that Ackoff is the "Einstein of Problem Solving"?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Janice Molloy
Daniel H. Pink's latest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us (Riverhead Books, 2009), couldn't come at a more apt time. As the outcry over exorbitant bonuses for Wall Street traders and executives rises yet again, Pink has turned to 
science to learn what truly compels people to perform their best. He found that a focus on financial rewards can lead to shortcuts, unethical behavior, and short-term thinking--the kind of attitudes and activities that contributed to the recent global financial crisis.
Research shows that "carrots and sticks" can still play a role in motivating performance of routine tasks that don't demand much creative thinking. But in a work environment that requires innovation, self-direction, and advanced problem-solving skills, external incentives actually undermine people's ability to come up with novel solutions to complex challenges. In addition, Pink notes, "In environments where extrinsic rewards are most salient, many people work only to the point that triggers the reward--and no further."
Pink has found that the key to personal and organizational success in today's context is drawing on people's higher instincts: our drive for "(1) Autonomy--the desire to direct our own lives; (2) Mastery--the urge to get better and better at something that matters; and (3) Purpose--the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves." A genuinely motivating work environment provides adequate and fair compensation; a congenial atmosphere; a sense of autonomy over what, when, how, and with whom people do their work; opportunities to develop mastery; and duties that relate to a larger purpose.
So what practices can, in Pink's words, "strengthen our companies, elevate our lives, and improve the world"? One example he offers is from the Australian software company Atlassian. Once a quarter, engineers are given 24 hours to work on any software problem they want, as long as it isn't part of their regular jobs. The company calls these "FedEx Days," because the goal is to deliver something overnight. The result: Employees have fixed countless long-term software glitches and developed numerous new products.
Google has a similar tradition, in that engineers spend one day a week working on projects that aren't necessarily in their job descriptions. The company reports that half of its new products got their start in the 20% time, including its popular Gmail and AdSense applications.
Online shoe retailer Zappos has injected autonomy into the traditionally rigid, routine work of the call-center employee. Unlike their peers in other businesses, Zappos' workers can use their own discretion in solving customers' problems. They aren't required to follow a script or limit their time with a buyer. As a result, the turnover rate at Zappos is exceptionally low, and its customer-service scores are comparable to those of high-end companies such as the Ritz-Carlton.
Clearly, as Pink reports, "Companies that offer autonomy, sometimes in radical doses, are outperforming their competitors." And that's the bottom line of Drive--by using what research can teach us about human motivation, we can create both more humane and more effective workplaces.
We can also create more ethical ones. When people are driven by intrinsic motivators, they are less likely to cut corners or pursue short-term gains at the expense of long-term value creation. So, how can we get our financial leaders to take these lessons to heart?
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
By Janice Molloy
"A New Year's resolution is something that goes in one year and out the other." --Anonymous
Have you resolved to make any changes in 2010? According to Richard Wiseman, a psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, most of us won't achieve the goals we set on January 1. He and his team found that only 12% of the 700 people they polled fulfilled their New Year's resolutions.
Maybe part of the challenge lies in the concept of "resolution." Flipping through Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, I was surprised to see that the first current definition of "resolve" is "a: break up, separate" and "b: to reduce by analysis (~the problem into simple elements)." Not until the fifth definition did I find "to reach a firm decision about (~to get more sleep)." Followers of the late Russ Ackoff know that phrases such as "reduce by analysis" are red flags, signaling a potentially non-systemic approach to problem solving.
In a recent post on his Idea Architects blog, Jeffrey Cufaude questioned our usual methods for trying to address enduring challenges. He wrote, "If you find yourself, either individually or organizationally, looking to re-solve the same issue repeatedly, you may need to direct your attention deeper. You likely need to think more systemically about why this same issue recurs. What beliefs, mindsets, policies, procedures, or practices help perpetuate the same behaviors or outcomes, the ones you want to change?"
With these perspectives in mind, I looked at one of my own longstanding resolutions: clearing out my email Inbox. By directing my attention deeper, can I "re-solve" the challenge once and for all? I turned to the systems thinking tool known as the "iceberg" for guidance.
Events, Patterns, Structure
Most change efforts focus on the event level. To address my overcrowded Inbox, I created a folder called "Old Inbox," moved 
my backlog of emails there, and mentally committed to emptying my current Inbox each day. Problem solved, right?
Not exactly. I have done the same thing several years in a row. Clearly, a pattern has emerged, in that my determination to behave differently hasn't stuck. As I recall from past years, for several days, I duly deleted emails as I dealt with them and filed those I needed for future reference. But, over time, the number of unsorted emails accumulated, until my clean Inbox was a distant memory.
Whenever we think we've addressed a problem only to have it recur again, we can be sure that it's a structural issue. As Jeffrey Cufaude suggested, I needed to look at the beliefs, mindsets, policies, procedures, and practices that have undercut my efforts time and again.
When I reflected on my email practices in greater detail--including the thoughts and feelings that influence my actions--I realized that I experience what productivity expert David Allen calls the "out-of-sight-out-of-mind syndrome." As shown in this loop, 
because of my fear of losing track of important items, I allow emails to accumulate in my Inbox. The growing number of emails reduces my ability to easily sort through them, which increases my stress and, in turn, my fear of misplacing something important.
Breaking the Vicious Cycle
The key, I decided, is to put systems in place to alleviate the fear and thus break the vicious cycle. The first thing I did was to experiment with a free, online to-do list (I use TeuxDeux; I'm sure there are others available). If an email includes a task I need to complete, I enter it on the list and move the email to a folder. Somehow, I feel more confident having the list online than in my planner.
Next, I followed a tip by David Allen. I created two folders that reside at the top of my email folder list: @Action and @Waiting For. Of course, I need to actively manage the content of these folders; otherwise, they'll become just as clogged as my Inbox used to be.
Will these actions be enough to change the underlying structure that influences my email habits? Time will tell, but so far, so good. Now about that exercise regimen . . .
Janice Molloy is content director of Pegasus Communications, managing editor of The Systems Thinker newsletter, and program director of the annual Systems Thinking in Action conference.
by David W. Packer
When we look back at the first decade of the 21st century, what lessons will we take with us? According to my 
favorite Nobel Prize-winning economist (and natural systems thinker), Paul Krugman, we must learn to learn from our mistakes. In his column entitled "The Big Zero" (The New York Times, 12/28/2009), he says:
"What was truly impressive about the decade past . . . was our unwillingness, as a nation, to learn from our mistakes.
Even as the dot-com bubble deflated, credulous bankers and investors began inflating a new bubble in housing. Even after famous, admired companies like Enron and WorldCom were revealed to have been Potemkin corporations with facades built out of creative accounting, analysts and investors believed banks' claims about their own financial strength and bought into the hype about investments they didn't understand. Even after triggering a global economic collapse, and having to be rescued at taxpayers' expense, bankers wasted no time going right back to the culture of giant bonuses and excessive leverage.
Then there are the politicians. Even now, it's hard to get Democrats, President Obama included, and to deliver a full-throated critique of the practices that got us into the mess we're in. And as for the Republicans: now that their policies of tax cuts and deregulation have led us into an economic quagmire, their prescription for recovery is--tax cuts and deregulation.
So let's bid a not at all fond farewell to the Big Zero--the decade in which we achieved nothing and learned nothing. Will the next decade be better? Stay tuned. Oh, and happy New Year."
Pegasus's Leverage Points Blog is committed to the idea of learning as the most important thing we should, ah . . . learn. How can we, as people steeped in the principles of systems, use our knowledge and skills to help ensure that the next decade becomes known for the progress we make rather than the opportunities we squander?
David W. Packer is founding partner of the Systems Thinking Collaborative, a veteran of the MIT System Dynamics Group and of Digital Equipment Corporation, and on a variety of boards. He and spouse Ginny have parented five and are now grandparents to twelve. And he is a Red Sox fan, among other things.
Fireworks photo source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:200508-DSCN0280.JPG
By Vicky Schubert
As you read the many "decade in review" lists that have popped up like mushrooms across the media, do you see what I see? The theme that jumps out from story after story is that complexity and interdependence have rightly come to dominate our understanding of life on earth.
From the tsunami in Southeast Asia to Hurricane Katrina; from extremist aggression and war in Iraq and Afghanistan to internecine conflict in Rwanda, Darfur, Burma, Georgia, and beyond; from global climate change to the spread of the H1N1 virus; from financial meltdown to the reshaping of world markets--we are growing more adept at recognizing the extensive systems that link our actions and experiences with those of others, both near and far. There is no denying that complexity is here to stay all around our shrinking planet and in the problems we encounter at work every day.
Here's a little perspective on complex challenges from three great systems thinkers, lost over the past 10 years, whose wisdom will be with us forever. They encourage us to increase our potential for effective action by broadening the ways in which we see and learn.
From Barry Richmond
"The easiest problems to solve are 'local' both in space and time. If you tip over a glass of milk, there really is no need to cry. The spill will confine itself to a relatively small area. And, spilled milk doesn't stain. So, you simply fetch something absorbent, plop it down, soak up and then discard the errant booty. No traces. No remorse. No problem.
Now consider spilling either radioactive waste, 'the beans,' or 'your heart out.' Each of these 'spills' will have far broader and long-lasting consequences than spilled milk. And, in each case, the consequences ramify far from their point of origin in both space and time. They affect not just the 'spiller' and the immediate area. The impact no longer is 'local.' Indeed, applying local solutions to far-reaching spills usually only serves to make things worse both locally and distally.
As our personal relationships, technologies, jobs, institutions and communities continue to grow increasingly complex and interdependent, the occurrence of 'spills' will increase. At the same time, the chances of any spill remaining 'local' diminish. Almost any 'fix' that we implement reverberates through a web of interconnections, producing a wave of counter-reactions that are widely distributed in both space and time. Only by increasing our appreciation for the growing 'systemicness' of our reality, can we begin to function as responsible web-mates, and can our social institutions (from families, to corporations, to governments) achieve some modicum of effectiveness and stability. As interdependency increases, we must learn to learn in a new way."
From Russ Ackoff
"The only problems that have simple solutions are simple problems. The only managers that have simple problems have simple minds. Problems that arise in organizations are almost always the product of interactions of parts, never the action of a single part. Complex problems do not have simple solutions."
And . . .
"All of our problems arise out of doing the wrong thing righter. The more efficient you are at doing the wrong thing, the wronger you become. It is much better to do the right thing wronger than the wrong thing righter. If you do the right thing wrong and correct it, you get better."
From Donella Meadows
"For those who stake their identity on the role of omniscient conqueror, the uncertainty exposed by systems thinking is hard to take. If you can't understand, predict, and control, what is there to do? Systems thinking leads to a conclusion [that becomes] obvious as soon as we stop being blinded by the illusion of control. It says that there is plenty to do, of a different sort of 'doing.' The future can't be predicted, but it can be envisioned and brought lovingly into being. Systems can't be controlled, but they can be designed and redesigned. We can't surge forward with certainty into a world of no surprises, but we can expect surprises and learn from them and even profit from them. We can't impose our will upon a system. We can listen to what the system tells us, and discover how its properties and our values can work together to bring forth something much better than could ever be produced by our will alone. We can't control systems or figure them out. But we can dance with them."
Learning to learn in new ways, doing the right thing, dancing with systems--aren't these bracing ideas to reach for when we find ourselves wishing things were simpler and knowing that they can't be?
Vicky Schubert is marketing director at Pegasus Communications.