theorywatch

One thing I haven’t mentioned in the blog (because I haven’t been doing very much blogging) is that for the past year I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of participating in the School of Community Medicine’s Faculty Academy which is a year-long interdisciplinary program headed by Dr. Dan Duffy that brings together faculty from the health and non-health-related disciplines on the Schusterman Center campus. This involves a weeklong summer immersion program along with incoming medical students and current students in our other health-related programs such as pharmacy and nursing, as well as monthly all-day meetings focused on particular participatory research-related topics about community health issues. Interested faculty are encouraged to involve themselves as deeply as they wish.

One of the several reasons I’ve enjoyed being a part of this (beyond getting to know some really smart people committed to working together on the overall health of Tulsa as a community) is that one of the texts being used is Otto Scharmer’s Theory U, which is an innovative new take on MIT’s classic “systems thinking” approach that I learned at Syracuse under the guidance of Bob Benjamin. Theory U attempts to put the soul back into the system, by considering all stakeholders and all externalities, not just the internal logic and feedback loops. Although I doubt that it represents a “silver bullet” that could be widely applied to transforming the norms of “corporate culture” in America, it is very, very well suited to what they’re trying to do here at OU-Tulsa.

Something to think about (as well as something to do!)….