ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT

Beadwork
Based on one of Barbara's experiences as a teambuilding facilitator for a diversity task force, this is a true story of a group overwhelmed by conflict. It reveals how they developed a deep connection with each other and how that connection served to help them achieve a high level of success in both their tasks and their relationships.

A Softstuff Application -- Building Work Teams in Technical Organizations
Giving special consideration to building teams and networks of teams in technical organizations, Barbara uses the metaphor of building a house. When we build a house we must find the right ground and design an appropriate structure. Then, when we infuse our essence, it makes a house more than a house. It turns it into a home.

Relieving Spiritual Poverty in Our Corporations
In this article, Barbara compares the physical poverty she witnessed in African refugee camps to the spiritual poverty she witnesses in corporate America. She suggests that the model used in physical emergency situations -- like refugee camps -- in international relief and development can also be applied to spiritual emergency situations in corporations.





















LEADERSHIP

A Sacred Responsibility
Barbara offers a new definition of leadership, suggesting that anyone who has the time, money, and resources to access this web page, for example, has a leadership responsibility in today's world -- given that most people in the world must devote themselves to securing their next meal. Further, Barbara reminds us that "global" goes far beyond geography; that it means "whole" and "universal". She offers and discusses three key questions that we can address as we look at our leadership through the lens of sacred responsibility.


Leadership: A Sacred Journey
We are experiencing two themes in today's world that appear to to be opposites. One is our global dilemma: an urgency for changing our ways or the possible demise of life on earth. The other theme is about what is being born, about changing our thinking, creating a more viable world, and our potential for evolution to an all-new way of being. Survival depends on our ability to gracefully transform our thinking in harmony with the world's transformation. Business leaders at the end of the twentieth century, are challenged to be open to taking unprecedented risks that, yes, serve their businesses but that also serve life -- if we are to have a world in which to do business in the future. This article is a summary of Parts I and III of the book Leadership in a Challenging World: A Sacred Journey published by Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997

Putting the Pieces Together Again
Even though the unknown technological consequences of "Y2K" or "The Millennium Bug" are still fifteen months away, we are already feeling the social and political effects. Many are working to solve the problem technically and others suggest we must quickly collaborate in contingency planning and emergency preparedness planning. Barbara suggests that, while all of these activities are critical and essential, they are also insufficient. We cannot get there from here. Thus, Barbara proposes, "Y2K" becomes a spiritual opportunity. In this article she offers a process or set of personal practices that she believes will give greater possibility for our collaborations to be as successful as they can be. Spiritually preparing for change and ambiguity -- represented by events like Y2K.

A Letter from Wy to Kay
Dear Kay --

Get this! This morning it occurred to me that my fantasy of the electric company's technological Y2K preparations is an incredible metaphor for my inner Y2K preparations. Simplistically, I imagine them taking at least six steps:
  1. ferreting out the inaccurate code in the software,
  2. replacing that old code with new and testing the new code,
  3. where they can't make the corrections in time, developing workarounds,
  4. creating back-up plans,
  5. anticipating the "unknowns" that might come into play,
  6. maintaining vigilance re what might come into the system from the outside.
Love,
Wyman



















VISION

The Seventh Story -- Extending Learning Organizations Far Beyond the Business
Using a nighttime dream -- something of a nightmare, in fact -- Barbara had, she puts forth a daytime dream -- a vision -- for how we might learn and create together such that we can effectively address systems issues at the global level -- and potentially transcend the unstable times represented in her nighttime dream.

Y2K - What’s the Vision?
Excerpts from an informal email dialogue between Barbara Shipka and Margaret Wheatley.

For some time we have been hearing about Y2K and that "bug". But what does it really mean and how should we face it? This is an extract from one conversation between two concerned people, Barbara Shipka and Meg Wheatley, which highlights one of the many dimensions of this fascinating challenge in which we are all caught.