#ISSS2016 Boulder

2946  Systems Literacy is a coordinated ongoing effort to create a greater awareness and understanding about “Systems” in society, schools and universities and engineering and to develop a comprehensive set of big ideas, supporting concepts and learning progressions. This Plenary is an invitation to join this initiative throughout the conference and beyond.

The presentation will describe the work completed in the past 12 months since this project began at last year’s ISSS Annual conference in Berlin 2015. The International Society for Systems Sciences is partnered with the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE) and the International Federation for Systems Research (IFSR) to develop Systems Literacy. In 2000 work began at the National Geographic to encourage geographic literacy. This work progressed with the support of U.S. Government agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA, Department of Energy, Department of Interior and many varied not for profit and educational organizations, to embrace projects on ocean literacy, earth science literacy, atmospheric literacy, climate literacy and energy literacy. These subject areas are a good foundation and models for exploring how Systems Literacy can be a path towards realizing sustainable futures.  The specific case of the Ocean Literacy project will be described as a model for Systems Literacy.  It was started in 2004 and has now influenced US Ocean Policy, the development of the recently published Next Generation Science Standards and now European Union sponsored projects on ocean literacy in Europe. A similar aspiration and challenge for Systems Literacy will be described. Connections to other conference plenaries and the themes of this conference will be made. Learning opportunities and ways to contribute will be outlined. A look forward to Plenary X will be made with the intent of building a richer picture of the Systems Literacy project development possibilities and plans by the Friday of the conference. 

2784  The workshop develops a network thinking lens then builds inter-organizational networking capacity with participants using Network Weaving principles and processes (Holley, 2010). Participants interact using Liberating Structures (Lipmanowicz & McCandless, 2014) to build relationships in the session and unleash collective intelligence to form inclusive networks of diverse stakeholders. An exercise makes the group’s structure visible first on butcher paper and then modeled in a free on-line network mapping tool (Kumu). An appreciation of the power of network thinking is developed. Techniques for building action-oriented, intentional, relationship-rich, and supportive networks can be applied to participant’s respective domain practices. Facilitated structures that achieve surprisingly good group engagement are easily adopted upon returning to participant home organizations. And we have fun!
This highly participatory workshop addresses the challenge of sustainability in human collectives working for change together by harnessing their diversity through intentional and systematic relationship building.  It uses information technology to make relationship structure visible (Kumu). It uses a “social technology of discourse” (Liberating Structures) to engage the active intelligence and diversity of every participant to build a social structure (Community of Practice) that can affect change through harnessing and coordinating their common intention.

Participants learn and take away:
1. A network thinking lens• Use a network thinking lens to engage differently in organizations • Use Network Weaving principles to begin to build out intentional networks for action• Holley, J. (2012). Network weaver handbook: A guide to transformational networks. Network Weaver Publishing
2. Use Liberating Structures to enable surprisingly good outcomes for groups• Learn the Liberating Structure called “1-2-4-all” to enhance the generative potential of any meeting• Learn the Liberating Structure “Social Network Webbing” so face-to-face groups visualize their networks• Capture the value diversity brings through full participation; encourage every voice• Lipmanowicz, H., & McCandless, K. (2014). The surprising power of liberating structures: Simple rules to unleash a culture of innovation.
3. Connect with people doing similar work, create Communities of Practice• Use Kumu to capture and model those relationships• Get support from like-minded network builders in the session when we return to our practices• https://kumu.ioParticipants discuss how and why building intentional networks based on strong, supportive relationships result in action. We’ll demonstrate Network Weaving concepts and methods applied to organizational networks. We’ll make networks visible by actually capturing and modeling the network of participants. Using Liberating Structures that hold both the individual and collective in the session enables participants to try them in their practices. Participants leave with new perspectives, increased skills in facilitating conversations, and accessible demonstrations of simple tools that support ongoing organizing.

The session is a micro-iteration of a participatory action research cycle. By observing, thinking, acting, and reflecting, the participants move together through cognitive and behavioral transformation about network thinking. The session uses a series of generative and participatory interactions (Liberating Structures) to engage people to learn and build a Community of Practice (CoP) for thinking from a network perspective and for building effective networks. The community structure is modeled in a tool (Kumu) that will allow participants to easily access each other after the session and use the tool to model their own native relationship and intentional networks.Impact? Effective large-scale collaborative relationship building and network thinking can be part of sustaining structures of intention and agency. Networks can address the challenge of systemic power imbalance; encourage peer relationships, valuing everyone’s unique contribution. Network thinking can empower everyone to step into leadership roles. Networks reach across a diversity of stakeholders drawing them near to each other in adaptive interaction. Promoting network thinking in a group of passionate change practitioners can lead to changes at scale.