Tools for Interacting with Large-Scale Systems for Change

The truth is simple: we need change in our world, and we need it soon. But how? Individual action seems too small and too sporadic to right some of the biggest wrongs facing us today.

In this 2.5 hour workshop, we’ll be meeting and working with an expert in system-level change, Georgia Rubenstein, Systems Change Coaching Lead at Forum for the Future. We’ll first come to better understand what systems are, how they work, and how we can use them to intervene for the benefit of all beings.

The challenges we face are complex and interconnected. They’re global in scale, with many root causes and contributing factors, supported by deep-rooted institutions and structures. But we can create change, if we’re smart about how and where we act. This workshop will explain what you can do.

We will break into groups as we learn about and experiment with a few different models for understanding systems, and exploring how we might be able to influence and impact them. While we may not be working to change some of the biggest and most impactful systems in the world, we can use a systems approach to help understand, work with, and live into complexity, as we choose to engage in ways that resonate with us the most deeply.

You’ll walk away with knowledge of things like snappy systems, the multi-level perspective, and the iceberg model, which may very well influence how you see your world from this point forward. This workshop is being held in concert with OIST Foundation.

Georgia Rubenstein, Systems Change Coaching Lead, Forum for the Future

Georgia leads Forum’s global system change coaching workstream, supporting organizations to build their capacity and capabilities to catalyze and sustain structural and transformative system change. She works with Forum colleagues and the broader field to discover ways to bring systemic mindsets and practices into the “everyday-ness” of how we work, and supports partners to do this in the ways that are most relevant for their needs and ambition.

Her recent work has included supporting the nonprofit organization FoodCorps’ launch of the multi-stakeholder reWorking Lunch initiative, aiming to provide healthy, sustainable meals to students around the US; and designing a systemic process and approach for the Growing our Future project, in support of a just transition to regenerative agriculture in the US. Georgia also led the initial development and launch of the School of System Change in North America and was on the facilitation and design team for the first two Basecamp Americas programs. She is currently re-entering work and will be co-facilitating Basecamp Americas again this summer, after embarking on the ultimate system changing project of bringing a human into the world in March 2020.

OIST Foundation

The mission of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Foundation, Inc. is to promote innovative global scientific breakthroughs through enhancing and strengthening science and technology research and related programs at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) and to empower Americans to support the sustainable development of Okinawa and deepen U.S.-Japan relations through OIST.