2018-10-17

October 17 is the 62nd monthly meeting for Systems Thinking Ontario. The registration is on Eventbrite.

Dynamical Organizations Theory

Richard N. Knowles, a member of the American Society for Cybernetics , will share his work on the Process Enneagram at the next Systems Thinking Ontario. 

Dick’s talk “Dynamical Organizations Theory: Openness, Synthesis and Emergence represents a theory developed over 30 years as Knowles worked with various organizations within the DuPont Company. He was also a leadership consultant using these models to understand how people worked in large organizations, and why workers and managers behaved as they did.

Knowles’ model and methods are supported by the ideas of systems thinkers Ilya Prigogine, Jeffrey Goldstein, Per Bak and John Bennett. He was the Plant Manager of several large chemical plants for the DuPont Company. This Theory also applies consistently to all the groups he has worked with over the last 22 years of consulting around the world. The theory is practical and works in all cases, providing people are willing to talk together. He will share a case study of his work as the Plant Manager of the DuPont Company Plant in Belle, West Virginia where 1,200 people came together and made extraordinary performance improvements. This way of leading Knowles calls "Partner-Centered Leadership" or Self-Organizing Leadership.

See his 2017 article "Dynamical organizations theory", in the journal Emergence: https://journal.emergentpublications.com/article/dynamical-organizations-theory/

Richard is author of the the 2013 book The Process Enneagram(c): Essays on Theory and Practice (on Amazon.ca, on Google Books) and the 2002 The Leadership Dance, Pathways to Extraordinary Organizational Effectiveness (on Amazon.ca , on Google Books).

Venue:

Suggested pre-reading: 

Agenda

Post-meeting artifacts

Bloggers are encouraged to write about their learning and experiences at the meeting. Links will be added to this page.