With tectonic shifts and global disruptions, the world is experiencing a profound crisis, and although its reach is global, the effects are differential, severely impacting the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
Even before COVID19, the world was not on track to meet the collective ambition of the 2030 Agenda, and the weaknesses in our economic and social systems are magnified through the pandemic. The pandemic could push hundreds of millions into unemployment and poverty while increasing the number at risk of acute hunger by more than 250 million.
Tackling poverty, inequality, and the climate crisis requires shifting mindsets to catalyse collective action with the potential to transform development trajectories.
JOIN THE DISCUSSIONYou are invited to join this discussion to share your thoughts and reflections.We look forward to your contributions and to starting this journey with you. |
Journaling Questions from Session 3: For some inspiration you might consider reflecting on the journaling questions from our 3rd dialogue session:
- When first joining the UN, what highest future potential did you sense back then for yourself and for the UN?
- Best collaboration experience: Name a story when you felt a UN collaborative effort/initiative operating at its highest.
- Enabling conditions: What enabled this collaborative effort to be so effective?
- What in your current work and life frustrates you the most?
- Helicopter view self: What are you currently trying to do?
- Footprint: What footprint do you want to leave behind
- If the UN were a living being that could speak, what would it say to you now?
- Over the past few weeks and months, what clarified for you what you need to let go of (personally, UN)?
- Over the past few weeks and months, what clarified for you that should have your highest attention moving forward (personally, UN)
- Imagine you ARE in the year 2030 and the decade of transformation that started in 2020 had been profoundly successful. Picture yourself in a concrete context of change that matters to you – and share a 2 or 3 point story that highlights the key turning points and breakthroughs that allowed you to getting there.
- Key insights: who are the key stakeholders that we need if connected with in different ways, could help us to shift the system similar to the 2030 scenario story example.
Dialogue Series:
Emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic, Otto Scharmer and the MIT Presencing Institute have led an impromptu global infrastructure for sensemaking, leaning into the current moment of disruption towards civilizational renewal. The GAIA journey stands for Global Activation of Intention and Action and has engaged thousands of people in an online learning journey, raising global awareness for collective action.
Our summer dialogue series will build on the GAIA experience. Each seminar session will include intellectual input and framing from thought leaders, mindfulness moments, action learning, deep listening in small circles along with shared group reflection within a global community.
The four seminars and the strategic session that will follow represent a learning journey that explores methods and innovative tools for deep system change, towards an institutional collaboration with MIT Presencing Institute to co-design and sustain a transformation architecture within the UN system.
We had an inspiring session on July 16th.
Otto, Mar, Kelvy and the 200 participants who joined from all across the globe all joined in learning about systems transformation and Theory U.
This revolves around a process of co-sensing and co-shaping emerging future possibilities. The process of how we get from 'here' our current reality to 'there' an emerging future inspired by our highest potential, will be explored in the dialogue series as it continues.
If you attended, what resonated for you? What were your answers to some of the deep questions we considered?
Do you feel the wall collapsing between system and self (see the vertical pillar in the centre of Kelvy's scribing, above)?
Make your contributions below and let's continue the discussion until we next meet on July 30th.
Over the course of the next sessions, we'll examine methods and tools for co-sensing, presencing and co-creating, building our global community and capacity as leaders to effect change in our contexts, collapsing the wall between system and self. As Otto said, “we don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”