Resources

November 7, 2019 Imagine—or maybe you have only to remember—the enormity of the shift that’s required when people uproot their lives and move into a totally new and different culture. You may have made such a shift yourself. Or you may have friends, colleagues, or relatives who are struggling to make a place in a new home that is far from what they’ve always known. For people who make the choice to move to a new place, the challenge of leaving what they knew and navigating the challenges before them can be overwhelming. For refugees, who make such a move out of desperation, fear, or coercion, those challenges are multiplied. Every action, every interaction carries potential for increasing tension. HSD can help explain the power of a “sense of place” and the challenge of recreating that in a new home. In this live virtual workshop, Glenda Eoyang talks about how assumptions about who you are in your world emerge from the dynamics of where you live, work, and play. She offers a path for understanding those assumptions, whether you are the immigrant, or you support others who have moved. Find ways to thrive in the uncertainty of living, working, and playing in new places.

October 3, 2019 You tell yourself that research or evaluation is not your job. “Research is complicated, and hard, and…well, scientific!” “Research is what other people do.” Research seems like a rigorous and demanding process that you don’t have time for. And yet, you need to find new ways to address your challenges, new ways to serve your clients and customers, new ways to support and train your employees. Often leaders want to move more deeply into understanding and creating more innovative and responsive approaches and responses to the challenges they face. But they find that traditional approaches to research and development are too expensive and time-consuming to be practical in today’s world. HSD offers a path to support innovation and creativity that is woven into day-to-day options for action across a system. In this Live Virtual Workshop, Glenda Eoyang, offers new perspectives for applying Adaptive Action in both formal and informal research. She makes meaning of the research process: from establishing a question, to testing a hypothesis, to putting results into action.

September 19, 2019 Since January of 2019, members of the HSD community have shared an energizing inquiry. We’ve called the project HSD 2051, and it focused on the question: What is the impact of human systems dynamics on the world in 2051? This six-month journey has engaged more than 60 people in multiple kinds of dialogues about a wide range of questions. The process, based on the Strategic Foresight approach of School of International Futures, has led to insights and highlights for each of us. On September 19, we will share our HSD 2051 Adaptive Action cycle with you. See how the patterns of HSD will continue to emerge across times, contexts, questions, and points of view. 

September 5, 2019 You solve problems every day. You help others solve problems every day. You know about multiple decision-making and problem-solving models you can use in different situations. You find, however, that it’s sometimes difficult to be sure which model to use as you deal with the complex challenges you face in today’s world. Sometimes you follow a decision-making model into a rabbit hole, only to get stuck in the confusing swirl of data, meaning making, and possible actions. Historically, most decision models come down to gathering data, analyzing data, making a choice, and acting. The differences from one model to the next have to do with how they collect data, what kind of data they collect, what questions they use to make sense of those data, and ways they move the decision to action. On the other hand, Human Systems Dynamics uses Adaptive Action, in all situations. This iterative cycle of observation, reflection, and action builds on previous learning in each iteration. Pattern Logic and Adaptive Action allow you to focus on the underlying dynamics that shape your challenge or opportunity to move beyond the surface  symptoms of any situation. In this month’s Live Virtual Workshop, Glenda Eoyang shares some of the insights and “tips and traps” she has learned through her rich and varied career using Adaptive Action and Pattern Logic.

July 25, 2019 As a consultant, you work with a variety of individuals, groups, and/or organizations. Each one is unique. What worked in one place may or may not be effective in another. You look for an approach you can rely on, only to find that your work calls for innovative responses at every turn.   Standing in inquiry, HSD-based consultants use principles, models, and methods of HSD to help clients leverage uncertainty across their systems. It is a unique approach that shifts the consultant from the “expert with the answers” to the co-learner/teacher who stands alongside, using inquiry to guide the interactions. In today’s Live Virtual Workshop, Glenda Eoyang, shares the HSD consulting process and approach. She will reveal how you engage others in their own iterative cycles of seeing, understanding influencing as they make sense of the complexity in their worlds.

June 20, 2019 Associates share how they are using HSD in their work, in their homes, or in their communities. Join us for this 90-minute session that highlights and celebrates the patterns of diverse applications and deep innovations that HSD Professionals are creating in the world.

June 6, 2019 You encounter new perspectives and opportunities every day that challenge what you were taught about the world. You find that strategies for taking action often don’t work as well as they used to. Every day new books and approaches describe your most current challenges. They paint broad pictures of things you might do, but they don’t offer new guidance about how to take more effective action.  HSD offers a distinctly different path for dealing with the complexity in your life, exploring deeply into the complexities you face, informing decisions about how to step into your next wise action. Complexity in the world has been studied through multiple scientific perspectives. Different disciplines can study the same phenomenon and describe it in different ways. Descriptions can help us see complex patterns in new ways. They cannot, however, inform wise action unless they also explain underlying dynamics of complexity that shape human action and interaction. In this month’s Live Virtual Workshop, Glenda Eoyang talks about particular concepts and perspectives she has used to inform and shape human systems dynamics. She shows you how to use HSD to embrace and leverage complexity to build adaptive capacity to face today’s intractable challenges.