Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program

Introduction

The fellowship has exceeded all my expectations and affected me in ways I did not even anticipate. I feel smaller, but more important. More overwhelmed, but hopeful. Alone, but part of a system. Without a doubt, I also I feel more aware ….of everything — and more determined to effect change both in my personal life as well as part of my vision of connecting people around the common necessity of caring for our world.

~Agnieszka Rawa, Environmental Resources Management Inc. Washington, DC

The mission of the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program is to accelerate the shift to global sustainability by increasing the effectiveness of well-positioned sustainability leaders.  Fellows learn to address social, economic and environmental issues at their root causes while benefiting from a national and international network of talented and supportive colleagues. Being an effective leader for sustainability requires:

• Skillful learning within complex economic, social, and environmental systems
• Acting effectively in change processes involving multiple stakeholders with diverse goals and needs

To promote these abilities, Fellows receive training, coaching and practice in systems thinking, reflective conversation and visioning. Concurrently, they build learning partnerships with each other and Sustainability Institute (SI) staff that will support their continued use of these skills long after the end of their tenure as current Fellows.

This program honors Donella (Dana) Meadows in its focus on combining analytic clarity with reflection and vision. Donella rigorously analyzed the systems that produce poverty, pollution and unsustainable growth, and she described with humor and humility what needed to be done to create healthy functional alternatives. Her affection and brilliance were contagious. Her guiding message was quite simple:

We humans are smart enough to have created complex systems and amazing productivity; surely we are also smart enough to make sure that everyone shares our bounty, and surely we are smart enough to sustainably steward the natural world upon which we all depend.

The Fellows Program nurtures such qualities in a selected group over two-year cycles. Our approach focuses on learning in teams and applying new learnings to on-the-ground projects.
 
 

Program Description

The Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program honors and boosts the effectiveness of people whose approach to sustainability displays analytic clarity, systemic change and attention to spirit, values, and meaning. Eighteen to twenty participants convene for a series of four workshops, with on-going homework and personal coaching between sessions.

Making the shift to a sustainable society involves changing complex environmental, social, and economic systems. This is a challenge that requires strategic analysis and action coupled with excellent interpersonal and leadership skills. The success of people actively working to promote this change, whether they are from business, NGOs, or government, is dependent upon their ability to work effectively within networks of colleagues and a diversity of stakeholders.

Three qualities that Donella combined brilliantly were dedication to scientific rigor, deeply grounded optimism, and the ability to communicate well. Her system tools enabled her to see clearly the root causes of seemingly intractable problems — poverty, war, environmental degradation — and her deep affection for people and the earth gave her a unique power to reach others.  We believe that the world needs more people with this combination of skills.
 

Background

Dr. Donella H. Meadows (Ph.D. in biophysics, Harvard University), a Pew Scholar in Conservation and Environment and a MacArthur Fellow, was one of the most influential environmental thinkers of the twentieth century. After leaving Harvard she joined a team at MIT applying the relatively new tools of system dynamics to global problems. She became principal author of Limits to Growth (1972), which sold more than 9 million copies in 26 languages. She went on to write eight other books and a weekly syndicated column.

 

Sustainability Institute

Donella founded Sustainability Institute in 1996. SI’s mission is to foster transitions to sustainable systems at all levels of society, from local to global. SI conducts workshops, leadership development, consulting and research-action projects using stakeholder-based systems analysis in diverse issue areas. SI staff use data analysis, causal loop system mapping, stock and flow diagrams, scenario planning, and focused dialogue to help diverse groups design effective actions.

Examples include:

• Convening and guiding a group of over 70 business, public sector, and civil society leaders from around the globe who are working together to ensure the world’s agriculture and food supply meets all the needs of the present while increasing global capacity to meet the needs of the future. This is titled the Sustainable Food Lab.
• Shifting the climate conversation in the US from “wait-and-see” to “why we must act now to have an impact in the future” via SI’s Our Climate Ourselves program.
• Helping the U.S. Center for Disease Control use systems thinking and modeling to create a strategy for preventing the increase of diabetes at the national and state level.

 

Fellowship

The Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program builds on Donella’s legacy by training sustainability leaders in the methods and tools of systems thinking and whole person leadership. The core tools we use are systems thinking, reflective conversation and vision.

The Fellowship trains people in the context of their current jobs to help accelerate a global shift to economic, social and environmental sustainability. Fellows are matched with coaches from Sustainability Institute to negotiate an explicit learning plan that includes homework and regular coaching sessions.  Additionally, each Fellow is part of a small peer coaching group that meets for the tenure of the Fellowship, and often beyond. Each Fellow is supported and coached in new stages of their ongoing work, grounded in systems analysis, reflective conversation, and vision.

Our screen for what we teach is what SI can offer that Fellows can’t get elsewhere, what combination of skills is needed for leaders in sustainability, and what builds on Donella’s legacy.

We design each workshop to respond to the current work of the Fellows, to needs emerging during coaching, to new insights from coaches, and to callings of the world at that time. The coaches actively seek their own continued leadership development and count among our primary teachers Donella Meadows, Peter Senge, Joanna Macy, John Sterman, Chris Argyris , Robert Fritz , Robert Gass, Rockwood Institute, The Vermont Leadership Initiative and the Legacy Center.

 

Fellows Network

At present our Fellows Network consists of 74 sustainability Fellows and practitioners from 16 countries, plus key partners who share SI’s and the Fellows’ aspirations. Our aim is to increase the ongoing impact that our Fellows make, both collectively and individually, to global sustainability. Read more about the Fellows Network here.

 

Themes

Donella Meadows wrote in her book Beyond the Limits, “A sustainability revolution requires each person to act as a learning leader at some level, from family to community to nation to the world.” Acting as a learning leader at any level is challenging because the issues that leaders address are complex and interrelated, exhibiting short- and long-term tradeoffs, and counter-intuitive dynamics. The human environments where leadership is needed are decidedly tricky. People differ in their goals, mindsets, and understandings of what is happening in their system. Building collaboration and ability to act effectively with high leverage is key to creating global sustainability.

Throughout her career, Donella studied, taught, and acted on a set of thinking, communicating, visioning, and conversational skills centered on a systems approach that addressed these challenges.

There are three central components to our approach to leadership development:

1. Tools and disciplines of systems thinking, reflective conversation, and vision;
2. Rigorous learning via action in real-world settings and reflection through professional coaching and peer support; and
3. Experimentation in sustainable living.

 

1. Tools and Disciplines

Central to our approach to leadership development is building the capacity of sustainability leaders to learn and act within the complex economic, ecological, and social systems they manage every day.

We use the “organizational learning” framework in which three tool sets support the capacity to learn: systems thinking, reflective conversation, and vision.
 

Systems Thinking

One of Donella Meadows’ greatest gifts to the world was her writing on the many lessons about complex systems that came from system dynamics models. To teach this tool set, we draw from the work of Dr. Meadows as well as her mentor, Prof. Jay Forrester of MIT, inventor of system dynamics. Fellows learn about and work on incorporating the principles of what it means to operate systemically.

Systems thinking practices and approaches that help in the work towards a sustainable world include:

• Focusing on fundamental versus symptomatic solutions
• Blaming the system, not the players in the system
• Understanding the dynamics of exponential growth and other phenomena through causal loop diagramming
• Recognizing archetypal behavior in systems
• Understanding the dynamics of accumulations in systems through stock-and-flow diagramming

Fellows receive instruction, practice opportunities and coaching in learning to see the world through a systems lens, being able to interpret systems diagrams, recognizing archetypal behaviors of systems, linking systems behavior to vision, drawing reinforcing and balancing causal diagrams, explaining the root cause of an issue and learning how to converse about a system and use a system diagram as an engagement tool.
 

Reflective Conversation

Effective leaders balance their ability to hold strong positions in a conversation with good listening skills. They need to be able to identify and step back from the ways of thinking or “mental models,” that lock rivals in conflict. These are skills that are critical for leading change in systems with diverse goals and stakeholders.

Reflective conversation has its roots in the field of “organizational  learning” and the work of researchers such as Chris Argyris and is the art of having productive and mutual conversation in which parties balance advocating for their perspective with inquiring into the other’s.

Fellows develop the skills to inquire into others’ underlying assumptions, observations and interpretations and to share their own.

Principles and practices of reflective conversation include:

• Reflecting on one’s own unique perspective on the world, or “mental model”
• Distinguishing between facts and interpretations with the “ladder of inference”
• Engaging others in work towards sustainability through inquiring into others’ perspective
• Sharing one’s own thinking and advocacy in ways that invite engagement and learning
• Using data rather than inference to unpack difficult topics
• Cultivating one’s openness to being wrong and using it as an asset for accelerating learning

 

Vision

The ability to see and describe one’s desired future is at the heart one’s ability to create it. Leaders with vision use the gap between their vision and the reality of how things are as a motivating force.

Drawing on the work of Donella Meadows, Robert Fritz, and others, we help fellows learn to shift from “problem solving” to a “creative orientation” in which they build their capacity to bring things into being. Vision is a discipline that we apply to all aspects of the work.

Participants learn to build and share powerful, heart-felt visions which help them communicate more effectively, engage others, facilitate new understanding and inspire hope and possibility.
Principles and practices of visioning include:

• Dedicating time to articulating one’s vision and intention to focus one’s efforts
• Treating vision as a discipline that can be learned, not an innate quality of a few leaders
• Experimenting with ways to share one’s vision with others as a tool of engagement

 

2. Rigorous Learning

We take “learning” to mean “building the capacity to take effective action.” And our approach to facilitating learning in sustainability leaders is to support them to engage in an iterative learning cycle built on action and reflection.

With the one-on-one coaching from a professional, leaders assess their results from their work relative to their most ambitious desired outcomes, identify the gaps and design strategies that would close those gaps.

For example, they may decide they need to collaborate more with colleagues, change their strategy for passing a certain law, or, more personally, speak more passionately and less analytically in public settings.

Supported and encouraged by their coach and peers, who are engaged in similar work, they design and implement experiments and actions in their real world setting (e.g., meet with another stakeholder, include new content in a speech, draw a system diagram, notice assumptions they make as they do their work or try a new approach with a colleague) from which they could learn what works and what does not. With their coach and peers, they observe the results and, again, compare them against their desired outcomes and continue with another iteration of action and reflection.

The goal of the process is to combine three elements: 1) ambitious, real-world risk-taking towards the highest goals the leader can envision for herself and the world; 2) nurturing, supportive, safe environment of encouragement and acknowledgment; and 3) rigorous use of the scientific method of experimentation, reflection, and conclusion.

 

3. Experimentation in Sustainable Living

The Leadership Workshops happen at Sustainability Institute, which is centered at Cobb Hill Cohousing.  Cobb Hill is a hands-on experiment in sustainable living where 23 families live in energy and water-efficient homes and share some properties including a common house with guest rooms, a commercial organic farm, and maple syrup production.  During workshops, Fellows stay with Cobb Hill families and learn about the joys and challenges of learning to live with lower environmental impact and with more sharing within a community.  Fellows also work in the community, stacking wood and doing chores during workshops. Overall, these leaders in sustainability get to witness another group’s latest innovations in sustainable living and integrate the practices that best suit them when they return home.

 

Outcomes and Evaluation

The goal of the Fellows Program is to enhance Fellows’ leadership skills and increase the effectiveness of their current work via systems thinking, reflective conversation and vision, thus making both the individual and their home organization more effective.

We have initiated this program to make the greatest possible difference in the world, and we want to do it as well as we can. We tailor each workshop and each homework assignment to respond to the needs of the Fellows and the current issues of the time. We conduct evaluations after each workshop, and talk personally with Fellows to elicit specific ways the Fellows Program can meet their needs as directly as possible.

We also collect statements from Fellows about what they are learning and how the Program is affecting their work. Please see our testimonials page for what they’ve had to say.
 

Supporters

Contributors to the Fellows Program include the James and Rebecca Morgan Family Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Flora Family Foundation, Oracle Corporate Giving, Weasel Fund, Vervane Foundation, New Road Map Foundation, Resero Corporation, Resource System Group, Seed Systems Inc., Stonyfield Farm, Inc, The Bay and Paul Foundations, Wilcox Family Fund, Yellow Wood Associates, Bragdon Law Office, Foundation for Global Community, Lemlson Foundation, Margo and Joe Osherenko Foundation, Peninsula Community Foundation, Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program and several individuals. In-kind contributors include Cobb Hill Cohousing, Cabot Cheese, Chelsea Green Publishing, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, Harpoon Brewer, Island Press and Sumner Mansion.
 

Application Process

To learn more about the next application round and to see the 2009-2010 application, click here.