I have been
part of a team along with Dawn that has been planning a systems thinking
conference next month sponsored by our Puget Sound ESD. The conference is the brain child of Joshua
Halsey from the ESD who has been supported by many people to make this learning
opportunity come alive. I believe that
it will be a wonderful opportunity for teams to focus on system tools to
develop a deeper understanding of their current reality and the gap between
that reality and a preferred vision for the future. This deeper understanding and the tools will
assist the teams in developing short and long range plans to reduce the
gap. Each team will also be supported by
a systems coach to assist them in using the tools that will be introduced.
For a
variety of reasons we were not able to identify a building to take advantage of
this opportunity. We do, however, have a
team that will attend composed of department and building administrators,
building managers, PSE Association representatives, and classification representatives. The problem of practice they will focus on is
evaluation and what many in the Association currently see as something the
administrators do to meet the legal and contractual requirements, but is not
something that provides meaningful data for support and growth over time. For years they have been asking for us to
revisit this issue and each time we agree that it is a problem, but put forth
no solutions. This conference will
provide an opportunity for a collaborative review of current practice, for
creating a vision of a better process, and for planning how to move towards the
new vision.
I am excited
for this opportunity to support the team with this issue and for the experience
with the tools locally. I want to see
this conference with four teams grow because I believe that there
is leverage in these tools for teams wanting to change practice that sustains
over time. I’ll share more during the
conference that starts August 2nd.
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