Ottawa, Ontario in October 2007
From STS Roundtable
The Annual Meeting of the STS/RT, Inc. was held in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada October 17 through October 20, 2007.
During the annual meeting, we thanked George Gates, who completed his first term as Steward and chose not to run for another. George was instrumental in helping bring the Roundtable this far in its revival, and we all owe him a great deal of gratitude for his significant efforts on our behalf. Pete Sorenson was re-elected to another 2-year term as Steward, and Daniel Little of Metrex, Inc. was elected for his first 2-year term as Steward. Doug Gamble, Pam Posey, and Adrienne Seal continued as Stewards for another year. The Stewards were already hard at work defining their priorities and work agenda for the next year.
Social events included a Wednesday evening welcome reception that gave us an informal opportunity to reconnect with colleagues and to meet new ones, a marvelous dinner on Thursday, a walk in the rain on Friday, and various informal small group meals and outings. Meals and snacks during the meeting included far more food than we could consume, but were very nice. Some of us are still searching for the Chef’s secret recipe for banana-leek soup!
The meeting itself certainly lived up to its theme – from Inspiration to Integration! It opened with a terrific session led by Norm Halpern on “Sociotechnical Systems Theory, A Review and Overview of Current Practice”. Norm talked about the origins of STS theory and application, particularly through his own experiences with Shell Oil in Sarnia. Some of the basics covered included building variance matrices, looking at the whole system throughout the design phases and the changed relationships between management and non-management employees. This lead into a revealing discussion around the current role of STS practices, and it’s profile in today’s marketplace, particularly when measured against other “hip” technical systems. (6-sigma, lean, etc…)
On Thursday morning participants engaged in an inspirational exercise to help us get to know each other and ourselves at some level. This was accomplished through the use of visual and written materials that fostered discussion around two discovery questions. Betsy Merck, Carolyn Ordowich, and Bert Painter followed up with a provocative session on “Discovering the Contemporary Face of STS”. They provided some background research into the changing nature of the economy from transactions (commodities) to interactions (relationships). The classic transaction based economy focuses on capital assets, hoarding of resources, and (while I love this, I think we need to drop it to send to the broader audience!) building local empires. The new paradigm of the interaction economy understands the strength of sharing resources, using intellectual property to benefit many through creative collaboration. Once briefed, participants then engaged in structured small group discussions around how this new economy is affecting the practice of STS design principles. Betsy, Carolyn and Bert then led a group synthesis of what had been learned. Over the lunch break we invited interested parties to share some of their current projects in informal and somewhat impromptu presentations.
After lunch, Doug Austrom, Jeff Couture, Helen Maupin, and Pam Posey led a session called “The Intersection of Technology and Social Systems from 2000 and Beyond”. They provided background on three technologically driven initiatives often used to drive change in organizations (Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, and the Balanced Scorecard), and then led discussions about how these are related to STS. The community agreed that many of the current “hot topic” systems are predominately technical in scope and do not pay attention to the social system in the same ways STS does. This typically manifests in a prescriptive formula, which is not subject to change. Contrast this to the STS approach, which allows participants to completely design their own experience.
The second afternoon session was a fishbowl exercise led by Helen Maupin to explore and analyze how age might impact our assumptions about work. It was especially rewarding to see some of our new, younger members share their thinking with us. A key learning to emerge from this session was the importance of Work/Life balance in the “fishes” lives. By Thursday evening, we were ready for some fun, and we had a wonderful dinner at the Lord Elgin Hotel.
On Friday, Jean Fuller delivered a provocative session describing the long-term change efforts at Bell Helicopter – Mirabel. This session took concepts raised in the “Technology and Social Systems” session of the prior day, and explored them in depth within a large organization. Efforts focused on the similarities and differences between STS/PD and Lean initiatives. This resulted in Jean developing a synthesized approach that effectively married STS practices and LEAN principles by using “Management Processes” as a bridge.
After lunch we embarked on a walking meditation to answer the question of STS’ current identity and role. Some members walked the halls of the Lord Elgin, others took the opportunity for a cat-nap, while some intrepid souls chose to brave the monsoon-like rain in the streets of Ottawa.
Once we reconvened, woke up, and dried off, our new colleagues from Metrex, Inc. shared the story of their transition from “hitting the wall” to creating shared vision & values, and redefining who they are in the context of their business. The presentation covered a brief history of the company, how negligible profit growth and a lack of internal systems led to ‘hitting the wall’, and the subsequent design and reinvention of the company. After the presentation we broke into two groups to dialogue around two questions that were shared by the STS community and Metrex; “How do we achieve Intelligent Growth?” and “How do we define/deploy Structures & Systems?” One of the greatest learnings to come from this session was seeing the similarities between this company and our own community in the process of reinvention.
On Saturday morning, Bert Painter and Pete Sorenson gave us a report on the International Action Research Conference they attended in Oslo in September on behalf of the Roundtable. Bert presented the paper from the Discovery Project, as well as some of his own work; Pete also presented from his own work. They reported that the conference was a thought-provoking gathering of action researchers from around the world. In addition, members of the Discovery Team (Betsy, Carolyn, and Bert) led us through an update on the Discovery Project, explained clearly how to use the Caucus website, and taught us how to use the Discovery Framework on that site to catalog data for later analysis.
The meeting was well organized in terms of both content and process, and each session seemed to flow logically into the next. Each session was inspiring on its own; yet each lent itself well to a final integration of lessons and learning by the close of the meeting. This was an exciting event and a powerful experience for those attending.
