Apply today - accepting applications for the fall 2010 cohort

Become an instrument of innovation, renewal, health and wholeness for the world through the OSR Master's Program.

The OSR Master's Program delivers an innovative curriculum that prepares adult learners to design and lead systemic organizational change.

Apply today!  Accepting applications for the fall of 2010.

For more info contact:  Paula Brekke, brekkep@seattleu.edu

David Baum to host 2009 OSR annual conference

Organizational psychologist. Fast change facilitator. Conflict mediator. Fire-eater.

David Baum brings to this year's OSR annual conference a breadth of experience guiding complex transformational change. Baum joins the conference design team as a key collaborator and host for the Saturday, June 20 event at Seattle University.

Reflecting on the conference theme, Designing life and work in an upended world, Baum observes, “Right now my clients are highly stressed. It’s very hard out there; I’ve never seen it so difficult. People’s fear about the future is restrictive and addictive.”

“Key questions are ‘How can people maintain their humanity and hope over fear during these times?’ 'How can we design proactive postures that move people away from being victims and into being active in creating their experience?'"

"It’s a big time; none of us can play small at this point.”

25 years guiding complex change

Baum is no stranger to facing fear having worked in two countries with horrendous genocide — Rawanda and Bosnia-Herzegovina. “I’ve seen the worst of what humanity can be."

Working with Women for Women International, David advised in entrepreneurship and leadership development in post-conflict Sarajevo. With church committees in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he led a conflict mediation effort and created strategies for minimizing inter-faith violence in neighborhoods.

Coordinating large system change with diverse teams, David helped Shell Oil implement a $260 million SAP conversion that far exceeded expectations.

At the Summit for America's Future during the Clinton administration, David worked with Colin Powell to unite governors, senators, and major city mayors in focusing on understanding and implementing best practices for youth.

Baum holds a doctorate in organizational psychology from Temple University and a second doctorate in divinity from Naropa University. He is one of the few people to teach at three of the top ten business schools (Wharton, Cambridge and the Richard Ivey School). And he worked his way through graduate school as a clown with Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey circus. David Baum biography

David has an intuitive understanding of human nature, which inspires great confidence and trust. He is thoughtful and sensitive, clear thinking, and his direct and honest advice helps me to make strategic plans for the way ahead. David has become both confidant and friend. I love his appreciation of nature and our shared sense of hope that we can make this a better world for all.” — Jane Goodall, environmental activist

Reserve your place beginning Monday, April 27

2009 OSR annual conference
Designing life and work in an upended world
Saturday, June 20 at Seattle University

Reservations for the 2009 conference begin Monday, April 27 at osr-nw.org/conference. Conference details, including morning and afternoon workshops, will be announced at that time. Sign up for free conference email updates.

2009 Northwest Leadership Summit features Peter Senge

Peter Senge, recently named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top 20 most influential business thinkers and author of The Fifth Discipline and The Necessary Revolution, plus a panel of Pacific Northwest executives will discuss how companies around the world are boldly leading the change from “business as usual” tactics toward transformative strategies that are essential for creating a flourishing economy and sustainable world. Sponsored by the Center for Leadership Formation at Seattle University.

2009 Northwest Leadership Summit
Tuesday, May 5th, 8:00 am–12:00 pm
Town Hall Seattle
Tickets: $125, includes continental breakfast
Seating is limited so reserve your tickets today!
Questions? Email EMBA@seattleu.edu or call 206-296-2529

Working collaboratively for sustainability

Seattle University is hosting a conference that strikes at the very heart of its mission: The role of social justice in sustainability. The cutting edge definition of sustainability is framed in terms of environmental health, economic development, and social justice. In interviews with sustainability officers in business, government, NGOs, and faith-based organizations, the conveners of this conference heard again and again that the most neglected part of sustainability is social justice. This conference is a step in remedying that neglect.

http://www.SUsustainability.org
Thu–Fri, Apr 2–3
Organized by Seattle University Albers Business Ethics Initiative & the Albers Entrepreneurship Center with generous support from The Genevieve Albers Endowment

Thriving in volatile times

Join a dynamic conversation to explore the rich resources and ideas that exist in the OSR community that can help us thrive in these volatile times.

Thursday, April 9, 12–2 pm
Chardin Hall Room 138, Seattle University
Bring your lunch!

RSVP, please by April 3, 2009; email Posy Gering (OSR 14) or call 206-769-9465.

Teaching about living systems on the farm

by Linda Booth Sweeney

These days, children tend to learn about nature far from nature. In classrooms and labs, they try to understand the nutrient cycle and other living systems that compose our world. Farmers understand living systems. They exist to protect and help us all benefit from healthy living systems.

When children meet farmers and are immersed in the real work and cycles of life on a farm, farms can become classrooms where students can see and touch systems and come to understand interconnected and interdependent nature of all living things. When farmers become educators, they can share their understanding gained from experience, that nothing stands in isolation, that connections in nature, people, problems and events bind us all.

On a recent trip with a group of third graders to Gaining Ground, a non-profit farm in Concord, Massachusetts, I found myself spellbound by the outhouse. I couldn't take my eyes off it. The outhouse had been lovingly painted in a riot of colors, and carved in a gingerbread theme. It was at once whimsical and functional, and clearly a valued structure on the farm. The farmer, Verena Wieloch, talked about the structure to students, who had cautiously gathered around it, giggling, wincing, and pinching their noses in anticipation of foul odors.

“Is this where we go to the bathroom?” said a boy, squeamishly.

Verena smiled. She had a sweet secret to share: This was no ordinary bathroom. This was a composting toilet. “After you use the outhouse, the waste is composted, or broken down into a fertile soil that is full of rich nutrients, like nitrogen, for the soil. The farmers here put that compost on the herb and vegetable gardens.” Verena stopped before detailing what that meant: We then eat the herbs and veggies that grow in the compost from the outhouse. After digesting our food, we can return to the outhouse and the cycling of nutrients continues.

Yet Verena’s point that day was that in nature, there is no such thing as waste. One species’ waste is another’s food. This is the “waste = food” living system. At this farm, the outhouse-to-garden practice of turning our waste into food for herbs and vegetables reveals how if we understand living systems, we can work with them, rather than disrupt them. And how our farms can thrive when they mimic the ways of nature and in doing so, foster respect for land and nature, an essential element to understanding and meeting today’s environmental challenges.

Read the full article.

Join Linda Booth Sweeney for Remembering what we already know, a free, two-hour experiential and multi-sensory workshop. Sat, Apr 18. Learn more and register

What are you learning now? Part 4: applying the learning

OSR graduates responded to this question in our latest survey. Here is the fourth installment of the results.

“Application in reality is a whole different ball game than talking "change" at a conceptual level - especially in the high tech arena. However, at the core of effective change, remains the need for self-development and there remains a gap between understanding one's role in change and the actualization of the efforts.”

“Theoretical knowledge is rarely well received in the material world of work. Pragmatism reigns and 'woo woo' is disdained by upper management. Those of us working in the smaller corporate realms and for non-profits don't have the luxury of experimentation with newer (unknown) emerging modalities. Some of the new 'community building' thought streams are transparent mimicry of the historical intentional community movement and are ill suited to the work environment. I appreciate the wonderful potentials of Whole Systems work on behalf of organizations and wish the elite, rarified environments designed for the privileged few could be widely provided in the day-to-day life of a majority of working people.”

“My learning is coming from hands-on work with groups, although most of my work currently is with individuals.”

“It is ever-changing and it is important to practice and network. More people have been exposed to the principles; however it doesn't make it easier.”

"Right now I am dealing with bureaucratic systems. I am in the application stage and learning that change truly takes place on an individual level. I would like to be in a position to lead more change — and my path has to work from the outside in because I see how ineffective it is to work from the inside of many organizations."

Part 1: design, leadership, change
Part 2: complexity, connection, unique situations
Part 3: agility to spirituality