SoL France est une association à but non lucratif créée en janvier 1999, membre du réseau SoL International, issu du MIT à Boston.
Apprendre ensemble, learning ou apprenance est une philosophie de l'organisation alliant humanisme et pragmatisme, et une démarche, voire un espace d'échanges, focalisés sur les 5 disciplines de Peter Senge. Les histoires apprenantes sont l'exemple même de la vitalité de cette démarche en permettant l'émergence de l'intelligence collective.

English version

You will find here the English version for this website : SolFrance


New Articles :
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Smoothing the Sociocultural Revolution, article d’Alain de Vulpian

For several years now the Club des Vigilants and SoL France have carried out field researches and reflections on the desirable and probable emergence of a new socio-economy. This work brought the two networks into close collaboration, and led them to organize a colloquium on the subject at the  Paris Chamber of Commerce last April. Working groups were set up. In the monograph below Alain de Vulpian resumes the position we have currently reached in our reflections, and considers different paths of development that could follow.

- Empathy Socioperception Anticipation, article by Andrew Carey adapted from Alain de Vulpian

Talking of Vulpian’s social/anthropological take on 21st century society, his most recent piece on empathy, socioperception and anticipation is his clearest statement yet of what he thinks is happening in the world around us. (In case, you’re not sure why we should care what he thinks, he’s one of the West’s most experienced analysts of how people see themselves and others and their place in the world. We have to take him seriously).
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Anyway, his piece focuses on socioperception (which he used to call intraception). It’s a term he uses to sum up just about everything that’s different about the way we approach the world now, compared to how people did sixty years ago. It’s a combination of reason, sensation and emotion that is based in relationship and interrelationship. It goes beyond empathy to suggest a sense of « being among » that is profoundly anti-hierarchical, relatively compassionate, well-attuned, intimate and innovative. It applies as term to our relationships with others, with society as a whole, with the physical environment and with ourselves.
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If that doesn’t seem barmy and you read French, I thoroughly recommend his article for SoL France (reproduced below). Look out for his suggestion of the five things that molst concern organisations in all this :
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- allow self-organisation, cut back ‘rational’ organisation and control by experts;
- take people and individual cases into account (rather than relying on universal rules);
- take groups and socio-systems into account;
- appoint and support empathetic and socioperceptive leaders;
- use the current crisis to strengthen cohesion.
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His conclusion ends with the suggestion that any organisation needs a « centre of analysis and evaluation », which comes close to Russ Ackoff’s advocacy of a « Virtual Inquiry Center » – an idea now being developed by Vince Barabba and which I think will underpin many successful organisations in 10 years time.
Here comes Vulpian.
Empathy Socioperception Anticipation
Posted by
Andrew Carey
http://triarchypress.blogspot.com/

SoL and SoL France
An Overview


ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING : a new approach for management

Enterprises live increasingly in a constantly changing environment and need to adapt pro-actively. Past experience has shown that companies that have remained in existence over the longest periods of time have been those able to anticipate change in their environment, develop new ideas and manage their resources with care. The business enterprise, with keen awareness of its identity, grows according to its own biological cycles which are linked in particular to processes of knowledge and experience exchange. The ability to « learn together » is therefore one of the cornerstones of modern management and it creates most favourable conditions for sharing experiences and best practices.

A little history: The first movement toward learning organizations took place in the 1970′s within Royal Dutch Shell when the company decided to innovate in its strategy formulation by creating think tanks.  Peter Wack was at the heart of a Planning Group, which had the responsibility of developing scenarios allowing the Group, in the midst of the oil crisis, to develop the visionary and forward-thinking capabilities of its managers. In the early 1980′s Arie de Geus took the leadership of Group Planning and reached out a few years later to MIT where he met Peter Senge.  They would together create the « Center for Organizational Learning », a laboratory for research in management.

This laid the seeds for Peter Senge’s, « The Fifth Discipline » followed a few years later by Arie de Geus’s book, « The Living Company. » The concept of the « learning organization » was born and Peter Senge described its 5 disciplines:

⋅    Building Shared Vision
⋅    Personal Mastery
⋅    Team Learning
⋅    Mental Models
⋅    Systems Thinking

SOL International : A global applied learning community, SOL was founded in 1997 at MIT (Boston) by Peter Senge and Arie de Geus. It developed through the launch of  sister organizations in 30 some countries, including most countries in Europe, Australia, Brazil and others. Sol International offers its members the chance to share practice experience, results of action research programs and to attend international conferences.

SoL France (Société pour l’Organisation Apprenante) is a non-profit organization legally established in January 1999 (but active as early as 1998) and a member of the international Society for Organizational Learning.

Its aim is to encourage profound and sustainable change within organizations through exchanges of experience and the realization of intra and intercompany projects bringing together operational managers, consultants and researchers.  Such « learning together » creates the conditions for the interdependent development of organizations, networks and of the people within them.

Its members include the following organizations, Bonduelle, Danfoss Socla, Danone Waters France, Groupe DANONE, France Télécom\Orange, GARF, International Mozaik,  L’Oréal Professionnel, RATP, SNCF, and Solvay, as well as ten independent consultants. The members of SoL France (and of Sol International) place learning within their core competencies and believe that sharing learning with other ventures increases their capacity to accomplish the profound changes necessary for their long-term viability.

The originality of SoL France’s approach resides in the creation of a genuine learning community within its members. Several streams of activity help to shape and form this community:

1.    Exchanges of experience and perspectives on the methods used in France and in other countries for developing capabilities in learning and knowledge management through bimonthly (Companies Circle) and quarterly (Exchanges Group) meetings, online communication and document sharing.

2.    Running pilot projects to facilitate learning through experimentation within each organization and the sharing of experiences among members in a spirit of openness and transparency.  The involvement of SoL France’s consultant researchers promotes the transfer of knowledge from one project, and one organization, to another.

3.    Training pilot project and field managers in the practices of the key learning disciplines in two, three-day seminars, « The Fundamentals of Organizational Learning » and « Team Learning for success » which develop a common language, fine-tune actual change projects and promote the common and direct understanding of the questions raised and the resources offered by each of the participating members.

4.    Participation in intercompany action research projects such as the « 10-Year Action Research Program » launched in 2008 under the leadership of social anthropologist Alain de Vulpian.

5.    Participation in conferences and seminars of SoL International, such as the three Global Forums held in Helsinki, Vienna and most recently, Oman, in April 2008.

6.    Privileged access to research results and to methods and tools in development within the SoL international network, which the American journal « Reflections » and the French « Cahiers de SoL France » help to publish.

Member organizations most benefit from their involvement in SoL France when they have at once the long-term support of senior management and of one or two internal change champions (change agents) who play an active role in the exchanges with other members, and when they choose to launch one or two pilot projects key for their future facilitated by managers who commit personally to a learning approach.

Documents and articles:

Click here for more informations about the guiding principles of SoL.

« Sustainable leadership in a changing society ». Click here to read the article by Alain de Vulpian and Irène Dupoux-Couturier.

« Towards a more human capitalism ». Click here to read the article by Alain de Vulpian.

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