1. Use USBISP paradigm of systems thinking (Understand the System Before Identifying or Solving the Problem).
2. Can distinguish between and relate Systems Thinking (ST), Systems Mapping (SM) and Systems Leadership (SL).
3. Identify the elements (simple rules, agents, interaction effects, emergent property) of Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS).
4. Articulate how Systems Thinking (DSRP) is foundational to the “8 types of thinking.”
5. Articulate the relationship between a global list of human crises and the root crisis (a thinking crisis).
6. Articulate the 4 ways that DSRP is foundational to Emotional Intelligence (EQ) and Analytical Intelligence (IQ).
7. Articulate the mismatch between Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Adaptive (VUCA) and Linear, Anthropocentric, Mechanistic, and Ordered (LAMO) and why it’s important.
8. Recognize names and use cases of the top systems models and approaches (i.e., The 4 Waves of Systems Thinking).
9. Demonstrate ability to predict behavior/action from mental models and reverse-engineer behavior/action to mental models.
10. Using DSRP verbal and/or visual language, spontaneously reify mental models using pen and paper drawings or objects.
11. Decipher real-world scenarios using the Systems Thinking Iceberg model.
12. Decipher real-world scenarios using the Systems Thinking Loop model.
13. Decipher real-world scenarios using the Systems Thinking mental model = information + thinking (m=i+t) model.
14. Commit to memory the DSRP Thinking Structures and their Elements.
15. Using the DSRP Thinking Structures and their Elements to verbally express your thinking.

• Section 1 Welcome
  • Unit 1 Welcome to STMS 101
  • Section 2 The Root of Wicked Problems
  • Unit 2 The Root Crisis
  • Unit 3 The Thinker vs. The Doer
  • Unit 4 Wicked Problems
• Section 3 Systems Thinking
  • Unit 5 What is systems thinking?
  • Unit 6 Mental Models
  • Unit 7 Systems Thinking is a CAS
  • Unit 8 Inside a CAS
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 9 Democratizing Systems Thinking
• Section 4 Understanding DSRP
  • Unit 10 Intro to Simple Rules of Systems Thinking
    • Let's Map!
  • Unit 11 Making Distinctions
    • Let's Map! Distinctions
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 12 Deconstructing Part-Whole Systems
    • Let's Map! Systems
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 13 Relating Ideas
    • Let's Map! Relationships
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 14 Taking Perspectives
    • Let's Map! Perspectives
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 15 Mix and Match D,S,R, and P
  • Unit 16 Bringing It All Together
• Section 5 Tools for Systems Thinkers
  • Unit 17 Visual and Tactile Tools
  • Unit 18 Cognitive Grammar
    • Let's Map! Information and Structure
  • Unit 19 Cognitive Jigs
  • Unit 20 Creating New Cognitive Jigs
    • Let's Map! Cognitive Jigs
• Section 6 GE Case Study
  • Unit 21 Introduction to GE Case Study
  • Unit 22 Engineering and Epiphany
  • Unit 23 Contrasting the Engineer and Child Perspectives
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 24 Exploration of New Perspectives
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 25 The Creation of the GE Adventure Series
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 26 Impact of GE Healthcare's Adventure Series
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 27 Conclusion of GE Case Study
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 28 Course Feedback
    • Activity Completion
  • Unit 29 Course Wrap Up

• Section 1 Welcome
• Unit 1 Course Introduction
• Section 2 The Splat Map
• Unit 2 Start with a Splat
• Unit 3 Splat Map Challenge
• Activity Completion
• Section 3 Thinkquiry Your Map
• Unit 4 Intro to Thinkquiry
• Unit 5 Examine Your Distinctions
• Activity Completion
• Unit 6 Improve Your Systems
• Activity Completion
• Unit 7 Deepen Your Relationships
• Activity Completion
• Unit 8 Expand Your Perspective
• Activity Completion
• Section 4 Behind Every Good Map
• Unit 9 Mapping with Clarity and Purpose
• Activity Completion
• Section 5 The Ultimate Skills Challenge
• Unit 10 Bringing It All Together
• Unit 11 Challenge #1
• Activity Completion
• Unit 12 Challenge #2
• Activity Completion
• Unit 13 Challenge #3
• Activity Completion
• Section 6 Your Turn
• Unit 14 Map What You Care About
• Unit 15 Course Feedback
• Activity Completion
• Unit 16 Course Complete

1. Refine distinctions using card elements (i.e., title, summary text, webpage/map URL, image, video, other media, color, and attribute)
2. Question, refine, or redefine the way you label or identify things using the “Distinctions identity ⇄ other” (Dio) Thinking Structure.
3. Deepen meaning of existing cards by adding parts.
4. Re-organize and re-arrange cards to convey and clarify meaning.
5. Build robust subsystems using freehand layout.
6. Compress top-level systems to clarify meaning.
7. Use color to create systems across the map content.
8. As you consider the parts of your system (the various cards), be mindful of the gaps and look for overlaps.
9. Use relationship lines to connect ideas.
10. Differentiate relationship lines with directional arrows, color, and weight.
11. Improve map readability and clarify meaning by distinguishing/labelling relationship lines (aka, RDs).
12. Improve map readability and clarify meaning by adding parts to relationship line distinctions (aka, RDSs or “zooming into Rs”).
13. Use perspective to reframe, prioritize cards, or change the view of your map.
14. Use perspective to develop a set of stopping rules to close out an analysis.
15. Use a large-scale model as a Perspectival-point (Pp) to alter another set cards as a Perspectival-view (Pv).
16. Mix and match Distinctions, Systems, Relationships, and Perspectives in a fractal and recursive way to evolve your map.
17. Avoid reinventing the wheel by identifying cognitive jigs.
18. Use waypoints to help walk people through a nonlinear system in a linear order.
19. Utilize all of the non-cognitive features of Plectica and differentiate between cognitive architecture and non-cognitive features.
20. Collaboratively build, share, and evolve maps.

• Module 1 Welcome
  • Welcome to Systems Leadership 101
• Module 2 Flock Not Clock
  • Flock Not Clock
  • Simple Rules and Complex Adaptive Systems
  • All Organizations Are Complex Adaptive Systems
  • Understanding and Unlearning Inaccurate Mental Models
  • Vision, Mission, Capacity, and Learning
  • Check Your Understanding
  • Systems Leader Workbook
• Module 3 See Vision (V)
  • Introduction to Vision
  • See Vision
    • Case Study: My Fitness Pal
  • Check #1: Our Vision Depicts a Desired Future State
  • Check #2: Our Vision Is Intrinsically Motivating
  • Check #3: Our Vision Is Short and Simple
  • Check #4: Our Vision Is Measurable, Ideally Binary
  • Check #5: Our Vision Lives in Hearts and Minds
  • Final Words on Vision
  • Systems Leader Workbook
• Module 4 Do Mission (M)
  • Introduction to Mission
  • Different Definitions of Mission
  • Why Do I Need Mission?
  • Check #6: Our Mission Is Action(s) Done Repeatedly
  • Check #7: Our Mission Brings About Our Vision
  • Check #8: Our Mission Explains WHO Does WHAT for WHOM
  • Check #9: Our Mission Is Clear, Concise, and Easily Understood
  • Check #10: Our Mission Is Measurable
  • Check #11: Our Mission Lives in Hearts and Minds
  • Check #12: Mission Moments Are Sacrosanct
  • Final Words on Mission
  • Check Your Understanding
  • Systems Leader Workbook
• Module 5 Align Capacity (C)
  • Introduction to Capacity
  • Check #13: We Build Capacity to Do Our Mission
    • Measure What Matters
  • Check #14: We Build Capacity Through a System of Systems
  • Check #15: We Map Capacity In Order To Understand and Better Design These Systems
  • Check #16: We Use Learning to Expand Our Capacity
  • Check Your Understanding
  • Systems Leader Workbook
• Module 6 Love Learning (L)
  • Introduction to Learning
  • Check #17: We Harness the Power of Mental Models
    • Learning from The Pass
  • Check #18: We Train People to Think in Order to Learn
    • Thinking Drives Learning and Learning Drives the Organization
  • Check #19: We Constantly Evolve Our Mental Models
  • Check Your Understanding
  • Systems Leader Workbook
• Module 7 Leading a Culture Shift with VMCL
  • Introduction to Culture
  • Crisis of Disengagement
  • Check #20: We create a culture of vision, mission, capacity, and learning
    • Unlearning Culture
    • Culture Campaigns and Modeling Culture
    • Culture Building Graph
    • Inculcate VMCL Top-down and Bottom-up
  • Conclusion
    • Check Your Understanding
    • Systems Leader Workbook
    • Course Wrap up
    • Course Feedback

1. Use Systems Leadership (VMCL) to design, align, and lead an adaptive learning organization.
2. Diagnose Plan, Command, Control, and Utilize (PCCU) organizational design thinking errors and differentiate PCCU from VMCL.
3. Use checks to analyze implicit-POSIWID (i.e., “The purpose of a system is what it does”) Vision of existing organization.
4. Use checks to design a new Vision.
5. Use checks to analyze implicit-Compex Adaptive System (CAS) Mission of existing organization.
6. Use checks to design new Mission.
7. Use checks to diagnose explicit Mission of existing organization.
8. Analyze system behavior to identify system structure failures (aka, “system structure determines behavior,” or SSDB).
9. Map Capacital Systems of all kinds (CapMap).
10. Map and evolve mental models of any complexity using the Systems Thinking Loop and DSRP.
11. Facilitate individual learning (a change in a mental model).
12. Differentiate and relate Individual and Organizational Learning, Culture, and Mental Models in real-world scenarios.
13. Demonstrate fractal use of VMCL across scale.
14. Reify cultural mental models (e.g., through chachkis, symbols, branding, practices, metaphors, incentives, and stories).
15. Strategically target and incentivize a committed minority to achieve change using Party Photos.
16. Develop a Case for Existence Map.
17. Build culture through shared mental models.
18. Strategically target and incentivize a committed minority to achieve change using an Incentives Inventory.
19. Model a scenario where a mental model is enculturated partially.
20. Facilitate organizational change with the Culture-Building Graph (CBG).

version 2.0 March 10, 2020

DAY 1: Applying ST, SM, and SL Across Contexts

8:00 to 9:00 am Breakfast and Welcome

9:00 to 10:30 am “Can Dos” Self-Assessment

10:30 to 10:45 am Break

10:45am to 12:00pm Languaging Structure

12:00 to 1:00 pm Lunch 

1:00 to 1:50 pm Structuring Thinking by Embodying Presentation

1:50 to 2:00 pm Break

2:00 to 5:15 pm Challenge #1: Systems Thinking

5:15 to 5:30 pm Wrap-up and Reflection

Paella Dinner at 450 East Miller Road, Ithaca NY

DAY 2: Applying ST, SM, and SL to Your Context

8:00 to 9:00 am Breakfast and Recap

9:00 to 10:30 am Relevancy and Universality

10:30 to 10:45 am Break

10:45am to 12:00pm Scoping Your Systems Mapping Challenge

12:00 to 1:30 pm Lunch and Walking Tour

1:30 to 5:15 pm Systems Mapping Best Practices and Challenge #2 (Stone Lab)

5:15 to 5:30 pm Wrap-up and Reflection

5:30 to 8:30 pm Dinner and Cocktails at Taverna Banfi

DAY 3: Help Others in Your World Apply ST, SM, and SL

8:00 to 9:00 am Breakfast and Recap

9:00 to 10:30 am Enculturating ST, SM, and SL

10:30 to 10:45 am Break

10:45am to 12:00pm Challenge #3: Systems Leadership (Part 1)

12:00 to 1:00 pm Lunch

1:00 to 3:00 pm Challenge #3: Systems Leadership (Part 2)

3:00 to 4:00 pm Closing Remarks and Pinning Ceremony

1. Apply all of the White Belt Can Dos to your personal and/or professional life.
2. Apply all of the Yellow Belt Can Dos to your personal and/or professional life.
3. Apply all of the Green Belt Can Dos to your personal and/or professional life.
4. Facilitate and motivate the application of Systems Thinking (ST) with your colleagues or in your organization or context.
5. Facilitate and motivate the application of Systems Mapping (SM) with your colleagues or in your organization or context.
6. Facilitate and motivate the application of Systems Leadership (SL) with your colleagues or in your organization or context.
7. Strategize and plan implementation of ST with your colleagues or in your organization or context.
8. Strategize and plan implementation of SM with your colleagues or in your organization or context.
9. Strategize and plan implementation of SL with your colleagues or in your organization or context.
10. Clearly communicate and present through different forms (i.e., spontaneous vs. planned; different audiences with different problems; different delivery formats and lengths; and using an array of mediums) to your colleagues or in your organization or context.

version 2.0 March 10, 2020

TOP SECRET 

1. Demonstrate mastery in all prerequisite Belt Can Dos.
2. Navigate and utilize Black Belt Resource Library.
3. Engage and create community in Slack communication channel.
4. Make an “original and significant contribution” to Systems Thinking (ST), Systems
5. Mapping (SM), and Systems Leadership (SL) as judged by panel of Black Belts.
6. Mentor five people from novice to Blue Belt.
7. Demonstrate mastery in a real world consulting scenario from contact to conclusion.
8. Deliver a three-day training in ST, SM, and SL supervised by an existing Black Belt.
9. Develop a Systems Leadership (VMCL) implementation plan for how you will utilize your Black Belt to make the world a better place.
10. Demonstrate mastery in a live question and answer exam with a panel of Black Belts.
11. Complete three “mastery challenges” as identified by panel of Black Belts that focus on candidates perceived weakness areas.

version 2.0 March 10, 2020