Program Meetings Schedule
Programs currently
scheduled
In
case of weather emergencies, check the web index page for announcements.
About
Our Meetings
The
Learning Group was formed to promote shared learning by its members.
Our meetings are based on action learning. Many are presented by a
team of ODLG members. All use experiential methods in an informal,
inviting environment.
Programs
are selected based on their relevance to members learning needs, and
we seek to provide learning on current trends in organizational
development. We present one program meeting per month. In addition,
there may be occasional bonus programs that may be experimental in
design or address a particular constituency in the Group.
We
aim at a mix of cutting edge and perennially important topics, with new
and familiar presenters. All programs also provide options for follow up learning and
opportunities for networking.
Meetings
Format and Fees
Unless
otherwise indicated, meetings are from 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM.
The period from 5:30 to 6:00 is for networking and registration. We
use the period from 6:00 to 6:30 for ODLG business. The presentation
time is 6:30 to 8:30, and 8:30 to 9:00 is for follow up, evaluation
and special purposes.
Meetings
are free for members and $30 for non-members ($20 for non-member
students). Food (not quite a
meal, but more than just snacks) is served. Members of BACAPT,
CCC, ICFNE, IMCNE,
PCC and SPC
receive a $10 discount
on Learning Group meeting fees, and Learning Group member receive a
corresponding discount on program meetings by those organizations.
Meeting
Reservations
Confirmed reservations
and we have recently had to ration spaces since requests have exceeded
room capacity. Requests to attend, whether by members or nonmembers
should be sent to programs@learninggroup.org.
In the interest of fairness, we cannot accept RSVP's except for the
next coming meeting.
Reservations are
confirmed on a first come, first served basis. If spaces are filled,
we will establish a waiting list. However, we have in the past two
years developed large enough meeting space to accommodate our
growing membership and attendance and have not had a program sell
out in over a year.
Our Program
Calendar
Presencing
and Theory U
When:
Date to be scheduled,
5:30 PM to 9:00 PM (first 30 minutes networking)
Where:
Second Life (location details forthcoming)
RSVP: programs@learninggroup.org
(members only, limited to first 70 to apply)
We will be following up our September
2007 program meeting
with Otto Scharmer on "Learning from the Future As It
Emerges" with a
meeting on "Presencing and Theory U" in Second
Life. Second Life, created in 2003, is the premier virtual
community, currently inhabited by over 8,500,000 residents. It
offers a resource for linking geographically dispersed persons in a
way that permits social and emotional connection not available in
other means of communication. We hope to be using it for more
Learning Group programs and for other meetings.
Facilitating the program will be Linda
Kelley (SL: Delia
Lake) of Trans-Form,
who is also leading the ODLG Second Life orientations. A long-time
Learning Group member and presenter at our April
2000 “Cross-Cultural OD Interventions” and October
2002 “OD Meets the New Economy” programs, Linda demonstrated
Second Life at our July
2007 "Practicing OD" meeting and co-facilitated the
section on "Virtual OD" at our November
20 "Six Ways to Do OD" program. Linda’s interview in
our October
newsletter is an excellent reference on the potential of Second
Life for OD practice. Linda was a member of our former Steering
Committee and now serves on our Coordinating
Committee.
To
help members learn this new environment, we will providing
orientations to those RSVP beyond those given by Second Life and
assist them in enrolling, choosing an avatar, and navigating and
using this new community. Our orientations will be batches of ten,
and once we’ve completed seven of these we will schedule the
program.
Our orientation, which will last about one hour, will go
far beyond the official one and is a great opportunity for becoming
familiar with this new and important virtual world. Participants
will learn about navigating (including flying and teleporting),
tools, searching, using maps, communicating, customizing one’s
avatar, acquiring stuff, and available activities. They will also
receive written guides to prepare for the orientation and for future
use in visiting Second Life.
By
using phone conferencing, we will be able walk orientation participants through each
step from downloading the software to touring the virtual world. Our
orientation is much easier and fuller than the normal one and we are
requiring those attending the program meeting to go through it.
Members
should be especially interested in this meeting, as we are already
starting additional ODLG activity in Second Life. Coordinating
Committee meetings are being held in SL each Monday night. We
will soon be opening an ODLG SL Clubhouse, using it for ODLG SL open
houses, special interest group meetings, and ultimately for
member-generated ODLG meetings.
Nonmembers should find the customized training
provided by these orientations to be in itself worth the cost of joining.
Noting
our plans for virtual meetings, we are now offering membership
to those out of New England at $50 for twelve months (though such
members will of course the full spectrum of benefits).
Second Life is a platform for a virtual world owned and run
by Linden Lab. It is a
web-based, immersive technology that includes both visual and audio
components. Residents
build, own and maintain the content in Second Life. These residents
are avatars
with real people running them. They can work and play together with
others in collaborative ventures of their own choosing. Some people
use Second Life as a supplement to ordinary life connections,
meeting and working with people from locations distant from their
actual world locations. Others use it as a fantasy escape. It is an adult only (eighteen and above) site, so you are
likely to see a wide variety of “lifestyle” choices in your
explorations of this virtual world.
Virtual worlds are not futuristic: they have been used
by organizations for years and will increasingly become the
environment of choice for meetings and communication. Second Life is
increasingly being used by hundreds of organizations as diverse as IBM,
the City
of Boston, and PETA,
as well numerous educational
institutions. Conferences are being held in Second Life, and conferencing
services for this environment are available. OD practitioners in
particular need to learn about this resource in order to relevant to
clients and to be able to utilize the new and important format for
social networking, meetings and conferences, and conducting
business.
For a good short video introducing Second Life, see http://light.vpod.tv/?s=0.0.135897.
It is from a presentation made by Steve
Nelson of Clear
Ink at the TED
2007 conference.
To see the PowerPoint piece by Linda from her special
presentation on Second Life at our
September 19 meeting, see http://www.learninggroup.org/sep07secondlife.ppt.
Reflection
on Practice:
Moving Beyond Competence to Mastery
When:
September 25, 5:30 PM to 9:00 PM (first 30 minutes networking)
Location: BBN Technologies, 10
Moulton Street (off Concord Avenue), Cambridge
Directions: Click here!
Parking: Available at the location
Public Transportation: The location is about a ten minute
walk from Alewife
Station on the MBTA Red Line. There is also a stop there on MBTA
bus routes 74
(Harvard – Belmont) and 78
(Harvard – Arlmont).
Cost: Free for members; $30 for nonmembers ($20 for BACAPT,
CCC, ICFNE, IMCNE, PCC and SPC members and for nonmember students)
Request a reservation: programs@learninggroup.org
Giveaway: The
Sustainability Enterprise Fieldbook (cash value: $23.10).
Details and eligibility requirements: click
here!
Join
us for shared learning on perhaps the most important skill for OD
practitioners. In this program Grady
McGonagill will offer an intensive taste of the value of
systematic reflection on practice through a “model building”
approach. Grady will describe his own experience with model
building, offer a framework that others might use for similar
inquiry, and provide the opportunity for reflection and discussion
about the areas of your own practice that would benefit from
systematic reflection and how you might go about it.
The
approach is based on the assumption that professionals who rely on
intuition or reflect on their work only occasionally risk being
limited by habitual assumptions and practices that may not be fully
integrated or may even be internally inconsistent. They risk
developing to a level of acceptable competence but not beyond. How
can a practitioner move beyond competence to achieve professional
mastery? One path lies in building a model of your practice. This
involves identifying your vision for your work, your core practices,
and your beliefs and assumptions. It also involves getting clear on
your strengths and weaknesses, and how they align with your
practice. And it involves ongoing learning to keep your model
fresh and alive.
Model
building is challenging: it requires the courage to look at your
shadow as well as your strengths, a willingness to question habitual
assumptions, and the discipline to systematically review your
practices and underlying beliefs. However, if you commit to doing
this work, you can generate insight into what accounts for both your
successes and your failures, identify the limits of your current
model and opportunities for new areas of growth, and experience renewed
alignment of your work with what you most value.
Participants
in this session will gain increased awareness of the assumptions
underlying their practice. They will get insight into questions they
hold that practice. And they will a receive framework to support
future reflection into these and other areas of their work.
Grady
McGonagill has been an organizational consultant for twenty-five
years. He is Principal of McGonagill Associates, which
specializes in building capacity for learning and change, with a
focus on leadership development, building a culture of learning and
development, and individual coaching, and was formerly Director of
Learning for Generon Consulting. His clients have included a diverse
range of corporate, government and nonprofit organizations,
including American Symphony Orchestra League, Amnesty International,
Association of School Administrators, Boston Scientific, DuPont, Eli
Lilly, Fannie Mae, Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau
of Investigation, Institute for Sustainable Communities, Johnson
& Johnson, Kraft, National Association of State Board of
Education, National Audubon Society, New York State Board of
Regents, Open Software Foundation, and Oxfam.
Grady’s
workshops on leadership, coaching, conflict management, and
influence skills have been offered through a number of executive
programs. He holds a doctorate from Harvard University and a
master's degree from Stanford University. He is a contributor
to The
Fifth Discipline Fieldbook, edited by Peter Senge et al.,
and the author of "The Coach as Reflective Practitioner"
in Executive
Coaching, edited by Catherine Fitzgerald and Jennifer Garner
Berger. Grady has served as a mentor in our Mentoring
Program.
For
more on Grady’s work see http://www.reflectivepractitioner.com
and http://www.yourleadershipstyle.com.
In particular, his article “The
Coach as Reflective Practitioner” is a good pre-reading for
this program.
Getting
the Organizational Truth
When:
October
22, 2008
Location:
Tufts
Health Plan, 705
Mt. Auburn Street, Watertown
Cost: Free for members; $30 for nonmembers ($20 for BACAPT,
CCC, ICFNE, IMCNE, PCC and SPC members and for nonmember students)
Request a reservation: programs@learninggroup.org
Focus
groups, surveys and other forms of organizational assessment are
standard practice in OD – and have been the subjects of previous
Learning Group programs. But how can practitioners be sure that the
ideas and opinions expressed via such methods actually correspond to
the “organizational truth”? Using our “four presentations
repeated twice” format, this program will present learning on four
models or tools for ensuring that the data we collect represents
not what people say or think they should say but what is really
true.
Six
Challenges for OD Practitioners
When:
November
2008
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for downtown location
Participants
will have their choice of small group sections on six issues that we
individually and collectively in OD practice: "Defining and
Explaining OD," "Finding Work in OD," "Globalization
and Virtual Worlds", "Internal
or External," "Measuring OD Interventions," and "OD and
Creativity". Following, there will be whole group discussion on
best ideas, lessons learned, commonalities, and ideas for follow-up.
Change
Management That Works: Building Stickability of New Initiatives and
Overcoming Organizational Resistance to Lead Change Efforts with
Lasting Results
When:
December
2008
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for downtown location
How
often have you been involved with a change effort that began with
acclaim, resolve and excitement, only to see it weaken, lose
support, and fade away? So often, new initiatives and change
efforts fail to achieve their aims. In part this is because
traditional change management focuses on overcoming the initial
resistance to a new approach but may not build the capability and
commitment to maintain new and improved practices consistently over
time.
Join
us for learning on how to make change efforts stickable. Those
attending will learn how to practitioners, whether internal or
external, can help organizations adopt and sustain new programs and
practices.
Leading
the program will be Rick
Lent, Principal of Brownfield
& Lent, which helps organizations and groups to align
efforts to create better results, share ideas more effectively to
build desired futures, and lead effective and lasting changes
through rapid cycles of learning, action, and reflection. A
long-time member, Rick co-facilitated “Culture Change” at our March
2004 “Communities of Practice” meeting and will again be
facilitating that section at our February
“Best Practices and New Ideas” program.
The
Funny Leader
When:
January
2009
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for downtown location
Join
us as we get serious about humor. Leaders and managers often realize
that humor is an important tool which may make leadership easier and
facilitate success. But many are still saddled with the idea that
they’re either genetically ‘not-funny’ or that humor is
inappropriate given the seriousness of the task or their position in
the organization. Participants will learn a variety of useful tools
and teaching techniques to help leaders be funnier while getting
more accomplished - and perhaps even having fun. Jonathan
Mirin, Co-Artistic Directory, Pit
Theatre Company, will lead this program using the unique fusion
of the performing arts and OD that he showed in presenting at our August
2007 "OD Meets the Arts" and January
2007 "Riding the Wave" programs.
Assessment
and Evaluation
When:
February
2009
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for suburban location
Join
is we explore topics of relevance to all organizations and consider
their connection to OD practice. Participants will have their choice
of two of four presentations on organizational assessment, team
assessment, program evaluation, and performance evaluation.
Following, we will have a whole group session to brainstorm on
common themes, best ideas, and how these areas relate to our work.
Organizational
Architecture
When:
March
2009
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for downtown location
Paul
Kampas
of Kampas
Research will lead this program on how organizational design is
the key to achieving vision and systems.
Best
Practices and New Ideas in Six Areas of OD
When:
April
Location: Tentatively
scheduled for suburban location
Join
us as we continue to explore advances in six OD practice areas.
Participants will have their choice of discussion groups on change
management, external consulting, leadership development,
organizational design, virtual teams and environments, and working
within the organization, followed by whole group discussion on
lessons learned and follow-up ideas.
Creating
and Maintaining
High-Value Relationships
When:
May
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for downtown location
In
whatever role we work and however experience we may be, a paramount
need is to have the relationships that enable to us to work with
success. Join with us as we share ideas on this important but
neglected topic with “Mr. Business Wisdom” and former Learning
Group presenter Harvy
Simkovits.
Cultivating
Leadership Presence
When:
June
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for suburban location
Carla
Kimball of Riverways
will lead this highly interactive and experiential program on
developing leadership at all levels. Participants will use small
group discussion to, define leadership presence, consider why it is
important, and identify, obstacles to its development. access their
own presence by experiencing it in within themselves, using simple
body-oriented exercises, and practice speaking together with
presence in small groups.
Four
Views of Leadership
When:
July
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for downtown location
Join
us as we examine the perhaps most important current organizational
issue, developing, promoting and exercising leadership. Participants will have their choice
of two of four presentations, followed by a whole group review and
discussion session.
Solution-Focused
Organizational Development
When:
August
Location:
Tentatively
scheduled for downtown location
Bob
Faw of Organizational
Growth Consulting, who led our September
2003 “Whole Scale Change” program, returns with new learning
on a Solution-Focus™ approach to creating positive change.
The
Coordinating Committee has approved other programs, which remain to
be scheduled, for the 2009 calendar and for future production as
available. These include programs on OD
interventions, on OD books, and on comparative
methods of problem solving.
We
welcome program proposals, program ideas, and program suggestions,
which may be sent to programs@learninggroup.com.
We also urge you to give your input on proposed programs on our
"ballot page".
Volunteers
are always needed to work on program production. If you would like
to be involved, write to programs@learninggroup.org.
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