The Academy for Systems Change
NOS co-director Liliana Gutiérrez Mariscal says, “I see the Academy as including a large network encompassing SoL, ECW, PI (Presencing Institute), the MIT Leadership Lab [with whose students NOS has partnered in various projects over the past five years]. It is this network of people who have come to similar conclusions, who teach you the deep pleasure of serving others. The Academy’s people, gatherings, teachings, relationships, and connections all reinforce this. My personal coach at the Academy has been Robert Hanig, and it’s nice to know I can just call him whenever I need his help.”
All too often, capacity building elsewhere can be episodic. This results in mere moments of clarity and feelings of commitment with little sustained growth and action.
Genuine capacity building must be ongoing. This is one reason the Academy Fellows develop a variety of different personal growth practices to support their work, like meditation, yoga, tai qi, or journaling. In this context, the personal coaching they receive from Academy Faculty can help make reflection a part of the normal work cycle.
“In my experience,” says NOS co-founder Alejandro Robles, “the sort of personal coaching Academy Fellows Liliana Gutiérrez Mariscal and Christian Liñán-Rivera received helps sustain their growth as leaders. The relationship between Fellows and Faculty has been so important for all of us in our ongoing development.”
For Gutiérrez, this has helped her see her personal development as part of the development of NOS as a whole. “It’s my training to go on to the next mountain the moment I’ve summited a project. If I can do that happily, humbly, and not become too exhausted, then I can be in service to others. Otherwise, I’m just in service of myself and my own emotions, and that does not necessarily have anything to do with our joint mission or purpose.”
The Anti-School
Gutiérrez emphasizes the importance of a multi-disciplinary, holistic nature of systems thinking that has roots in biology and ecology as well as engineering systems theory (like feedback controls in electrical engineering). This observation carries a subtler message about ourselves as well.
“The Academy is really a kind of anti-school,” says Gutiérrez. “There are no separate subjects or classes, no divisions—it’s kind of like going back to pre-school. We do indeed need to move beyond mere academic disciplines. We need to use all of ourselves.”