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Pre-Conference Presentations
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Conference Content
Austin Ethics Conversation
Mural Town Square
The following articles are offered as useful preparatory reading and as key input resources to the deliberations and activities of the 2022 STS RT Annual Conference
Please pick and choose as you please–there are some real gems in this collection.
1. “Work Without Jobs” led by John Boudreau
In this virtual conversation, John will describe the premise behind his recently-published and best-selling book, Work Without Jobs, and describe the book’s framework for envisioning an operating system that “melts” traditional jobs into tasks/projects, traditional job holders into capabilities/skills and traditional educational degrees into qualifications. John plans an interactive session in which the STS participants offer reactions, ideas and insights about implications of this work operating system for future organization systems and designs, as well as the group’s current and past experiences with implementing ideas like the ones in the new book.
STS Design Implications for a Future Work Operating System
Based on the Book (2022) by Ravin Jesuthasan & John Boudreau
Presentation by Dr. John Boudreau; Author & Senior Research Scientist, Center for Effective Organizations, University of Southern California
2. “Action Research: A Critical Organization Design Tool” deliberation led by Stu Winby, Paul Tolchinsky, & Pete Sorenson
In the digitally driven era of designing organizations, we need powerful tools in our toolboxes to engage in the iterative, constant process of designing to meet elusive and emerging opportunities. Action research and action learning have long been powerful tools in the designer’s toolbox. But we need to kick up the rigor, discipline, imagination, and structure of the action research / action learning process to measure up to the future speed of change, issues, and complexity we must tackle.
Every organization design approach from classical (industrial) socio-technical systems (STS), to lean, 6 sigma, agile, site reliability engineering, knowledge-based STS, and platform-based STS has used some version of the action research / action learning models as a feed-forward, feed-back technique to support the ongoing knowledge creation and learning process and to figure out what really works. Remember the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) Cycle?
We have learned that our designs are a combination of deliberate, intentional, and purposeful choices and activity and emerging, spontaneous, and serendipitous choices and activity. Action research and action learning are valuable frameworks and methodologies to use for creating and capturing the learning and enlightening the imagination that supports each successive iteration of design.
The role of intentional reflection is a powerful element of the action research, action learning process. Whether it is by using the “after action review” process, “postmortem assessments,” or some other pause and learn method, we need to build reflection into our design process and liberate our imagination.
We will use examples from the STARLab Consortium (Stu Winby), Whole Scale, Fast Cycle Time Events and Processes (Paul Tolchinsky), and International Multi-Country Humanitarian Interventions (Pete Sorenson) to illustrate the concepts and point us toward the future.
Please join us in a two-hour online workshop where we explore how to use action research and action learning as critical tools for our organization design approach in our fast-moving world of designing organizations and ecosystems.
Action Research and Action Learning will be a strong thread running through our conference in Austin Texas from 27 through 30 September 2022
3. Work Crafting: Bottom-Up STS Work Design by “Thinking in 5T” led by Prof. Terri L. Griffith,
4. Mural – A Pre-Conference Learning Discussion
Workshop Overview
Effective online tools that help people connect, communicate and collaborate in real-time are increasingly becoming a necessity. This becomes especially critical when planning and executing a hybrid conference.
This webinar will give you a chance to hear from Mural experts, practice using the tool, and ask your questions ahead of the Austin STS RT Annual Conference. We’ve done the work for you to learn about the tool’s capabilities, pros and cons and practice applying it for your day-to-day use. By the end of the session, you will feel prepared to participate using Mural, apply the tool in your work, and network with people within our community!
This online workshop designed and facilitated by Jagoda Perich-Anderson, Stephen Anderson, and Irena Krstic will introduce you to Mural and demonstrate how it can be used to create, design, hold, and facilitate the space in which we, as humans, can design organizations.
Simply stated, Mural is an online / web-based whiteboard or flip chart. But it is much more than that. It is a shared co-creation and co-design space that supports both virtual and face-to-face and synchronous and asynchronous collaboration
Workshop Objectives:
- To introduce one of the top-rated virtual collaboration tools, Mural that enables real-time teamwork and deliberations
- To become familiar with using Mural and applying it to design thinking templates
- To discuss and practice how academics, practitioners, and researchers can use this tool
- To apply Mural to explore the question about how virtual tools can help build engagement & connection
