by Larry Dressler
A volcano erupts in Iceland. Tens of thousands of flights are cancelled, and millions of passengers stranded. This is the kind of surprise I call an "oy vey moment." Oy vey is a Yiddish term. I grew up hearing my grandparents use the expression frequently. It's an exclamation of dismay, frustration, or exasperation.
Oy vey moments have three defining characteristics. They are unexpected. They are unwanted. They are uncontrollable in that we have little ability to contain or influence them directly. Organizations have their own versions of volcanic events--a product failure, the loss of a key employee, an economic recession. We often label these events as distractions, disruptions, or disasters.
In the midst of unwanted surprises, leaders and change agents often lose their calm and clarity. We get stuck in fight-flight-freeze mode. Have you experienced any of these typical reactions in the face of an oy vey moment?
- Lost your sense of humor
- Became fixated on what wasn't working
- Gave up completely
- Felt annoyed and resentful
- Looked for someone to blame
- Pretended it wasn't happening
It's natural to feel frustrated and confused by unwanted surprises. It's just not all that useful. Being stuck in self-protection blocks our access to our creative resourcefulness and delays resolution of the problem.
It's in oy vey moments that Peter Senge's notion of personal mastery becomes particularly important. He defines personal mastery as the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively.
Here are four practical ways in which you can put personal mastery into practice in an oy vey moment:
- Check-in: In the moment of breakdown, notice what you are feeling physically and emotionally. Simply notice without judgment (e.g., I am feeling angry and frustrated).
- Name It: Try to name the underlying thought, judgment, or belief that you are holding onto very tightly in this moment (e.g., I need to travel to Europe this week for an important meeting).
- Pause: Take some deep and conscious breaths. Refrain from taking action.
- Shift: Ask yourself some questions aimed at shifting you into a more productive mental, emotional, and physical state. Some of these questions include:
- What is my real purpose and who am I here to serve?
- What beliefs can I let go of right now in order to serve my highest purpose?
- What are the hidden gift and opportunities in this moment?
How do you recognize that you are developing greater personal mastery in the way you deal with the volcanic eruptions in your organization? Where others see disruption and disaster, you will increasingly see opportunity for creativity and breakthrough.
Larry Dressler is the founder of Blue Wing Consulting, LLC, and author of the recently released book, Standing in the Fire: Leading High-Heat Meetings with Clarity, Calm, and Courage (Berrett-Koehler Publishers/ASTD, 2010).
Volcano photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/latzenhofer/ / CC BY-SA 2.0
By Chris Abbey
"Chris you have been selected to receive a 60-Day Warn Notice." In a matter of seconds, my perceptions of the world and myself had been seriously shaken. Everything seemed to close in around me.
Looking for guidance for moving forward, I turned to Meg Wheatley's book Finding Our Way: Leadership for an Uncertain Time. I was struck by her comment, "An organization's identity includes current interpretations of its history, present decisions and activities, and its sense of its future."
With the warn notice, my interpretation of history had narrowed considerably; I could only see myself in my current position. The "present decisions and actions" had severed my feelings of 
stability and my visions of the future. My sense of identity had large gaping holes in it. In the beginning, all I was looking for was what was missing.
Meg goes on to write, "Because identity is the sense-making capacity of an organization, every organizing effort--whether it be a startup of a team, a community project, or a nation--needs to begin by exploring and clarifying the intentions and desires of its members."
Over time, I noticed that my process of making sense of what had happened followed the grieving process. The seven-stage model of grief describes what I've been going through:
- Shock and denial
- Pain and guilt
- Anger and bargaining
- Depression, reflection, and loneliness
- The Upward Turn
- Reconstruction and working through
- Acceptance and hope
Within a short period of time, the wild emotional swings had subsided, and I had moved through to the fifth step. A new sense of identity started to surface--a changed identity, an identity that now incorporated the warn notice. This new self was uncomfortable--it felt as though my skin didn't quite fit--but I began to adjust to it.
At this point, I could commence exploring new activities in earnest, because a new impression of the future had also started to emerge--not a clear impression, just an impression. Before, I had gone through the motions of looking for a job, but really just to avoid dealing with the pain by keeping the mind and body busy. Now, I approached the task with purpose and direction.
My narrow recollection of my history expanded beyond my current employment to include the fullness of my life. I shifted my perspective on my present decisions and activities from what my employer was doing "to me" to what I was doing to find another job. My activities became part of a coherent plan to transition myself into a new future, a future, while still uncertain, in which I am in the driver's seat. Though still cycling through the seven steps of the grief model--you may find me anywhere in the model at any particular time--I am spending more and more time in step seven.
The activities include the usual: updating my resume, preparing for interviews, and searching the job listings. In addition, I'm using systems thinking perspectives to focus on relationships, including taking stock of my "system" or network, creating new network connections, and disturbing the system. I'll reflect on these efforts in part 2.
Chris Abbey is responsible for bringing about the education, engagement, and empowerment of employees in a global information technology organization, enabling them to continuously improve their products and services. His work involves coaching, mentoring, and training in various hard and soft skills, such as High Performance Work Teams, Lean, Systems Thinking, Theory of Constraints, and trust building. One of his current passions is in the use and building of communities of practice as a way to greatly increase sharing and collaboration in complex organizations.
Mirror photo by Ian Britton/freefoto.com
By Janice Molloy
For the past several months, we at Pegasus have been engaged in revisiting our organizational vision, mission, and core values. While we're all up to our eyeballs in tasks, making it challenging to carve out time for reflection, we agreed that going through this process now, together, would actually improve our effectiveness over the long run. By becoming clearer as a group about why we do what we do, what needs Pegasus could serve in the world, and how we're going to get there as a team, we will move forward with a stronger sense of direction and alignment.
We've gotten off to a good start--with a little help from our friends. A few weeks ago, systems change facilitator Tuesday Ryan-Hart led us through a day of visioning (capped off by dinner at our local Spanish restaurant, where we continued the conversation over many plates of tapas and some tasty sangria).
In addition to sparking lots of meaty conversation, both with the group as a whole and in smaller subsets, Tuesday engaged us in a physical modeling activity. In two teams, we used items from our offices--including a stuffed Kermit the frog, a plastic Hoberman 
sphere, a bottle of wine, a small globe, various plants, and assorted electronics--to create representations of Pegasus when it's working at its highest future potential. The two models, while very different visually, ended up with much overlap in themes. Some important "ahas" emerged from each that we're weaving into our vision statement.
One unexpected outcome of the session with Tuesday is that we realized our core values, as written, hold little meaning for those currently with the company. It's been stimulating to evaluate and refresh them, to bring them to life for today's workforce and today's challenges. We also continue to noodle with how we express our company's vision and mission. With changing technologies and major industry shifts for our core businesses, we want to craft something that reflects both immediate and timeless relevance, and that resonates with each member of our team and our other stakeholders.
As part of this process, we'll each articulate our personal purpose statements to feed into the organizational mission. Daniel Pink has an exercise in Drive for creating one sentence that summarizes your life's purpose; for example, "He raised four kids who became happy and healthy adults." Or "She invented a device that made people's lives easier." We're also using as inspiration the "six-word memoir" meme initiated by the online storytelling magazine SMITH.
At the end of the journey, we'll share our outcomes and reflections. In the meantime, here's a video that our president Mark Alpert showed to inspire our efforts. I hope it'll spark new ideas for you, too.
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.