CIVIL SERVICE COLLEGE (CSC) IS HOSTING THE 2ND BI-ANNUAL ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING (OL) CONFERENCE ON 27 & 28 FEBRUARY 2006. THE CONFERENCE THEME WILL BE "LEADING ORGANISATIONS INTO THE FUTURE: RE-THINKING, RE-DESIGNING AND RE-MAKING". GUEST OF HONOUR: SECRETARY-GENERAL OF ASEAN MR ONG KENG YONG

To thrive in a volatile environment, organisational learning and change are essential. To do that, organisations need to be prepared to re-examine deeply held assumptions and theories of success; re-design their policies and systems; understand the kind of actions that would bring about new outcomes; and build the leadership capacity to meet emerging challenges.

To address these and other issues in organisational transformation, the Civil Service College (CSC) is hosting the 2^nd bi-annual Organisational Learning (OL) Conference on 27 & 28 February 2006. The conference theme will be “Leading Organisations into the Future: re-Thinking, re-Designing and re-Making”.

The 2-day conference will consist of Plenary Sessions, Practitioners’ Forums and Concurrent Workshops. Keynote speakers are internationally acclaimed Dr Daniel H. Kim, Dr William Issacs and Dr Margaret Wheatley. Dr Daniel H. Kim and Diane Cory will be theme weavers[1] for the Conference, while Michelle Boos-Stone will be serve as the graphic recorder[2].

One of the highlights will be sharing by public sector organisations (i.e. Central Provident Fund Board (CPF), Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA), Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) and Singapore Police Force (SPF) as well as by SHELL Eastern Petroleum (Pte) Ltd) These organisations will touch on the application of OL frameworks and tools at the 6 Concurrent Practitioners’ Sharing Forums on both days of the conference. Participants will get to choose the forums that they are interested in, to glean insights from agencies which have adopted OL as part of their organisational transformation journey.

SPF’s topic, “Reframing for the Future”, is about the application of Learning Organisation disciplines and tools in the area of strategic planning, in light of the changing operating environment

MOE’s topic, “MOE’s Innovation and Enterprise Journey”, is about their journey in building a shared vision of what Innovation and Enterprise means to students. The project started in 2004.

SAF’s topic, “Leadership Development through Organisational Learning – The SAF Journey”, is about how SAF has infused organisational learning into their leadership development system.

DSTA’s topic, “Change, And More Changes?” tells how DSTA has applied Learning Organisation concepts to create a shared vision for the future.

CPF’s topic, “What We Want…Really”, is about how the OL journey uncovered the real desires of their staff.

Shell’s topic is on its “Leadership Development Portfolio and Competency Framework”.

There will also be 5 Concurrent Workshops to equip participants with organisational learning principles, frameworks and tools that they can bring back to their workplace.

While the conference is targeted mostly at leaders and officers from the

Singapore

public sector, CSC will also be reaching out to the private sector and overseas delegates of other public services. The audience will include Directors, Principals, Heads of Departments, Directors of Strategic Planning, Human Resource/Organisation Development/OL professionals, Line Managers and Executives. The current number of participants stands at 800.

The first OL Conference organised by the Civil Service College, was held in May 2003. More than 600 people attended that conference (96% and 4% from the public and private sector respectively). The overwhelming success of the first conference led to the decision to organise a bi-annual conference.

In Jan 2005, an Inter-Agency OL Steering Committee comprising 9 public sector agencies and 3 CSC associate trainers- Ms Chua Bee Kwan, Mrs Ding Seok Lin and Dr Jacob Lee was set up. This Steering Committee, under the chairmanship of COL Sukhmohinder from the SAF, is responsible for designing and conceptualising the OL Conference 2006. Dr Daniel H. Kim and Ms Diane Cory are advisors to the Steering Committee. As part of the Steering Committee, the Civil Service College is responsible for the actual implementation of the conference.

The 9 agencies comprising the Steering Committee are: Civil Service College (CSC), Defence Science & Technology Agency (DSTA), Housing and Development Board (HDB), Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS), Ministry of Defence (MINDEF), Ministry of Education (MOE), Singapore Armed Forces (SAF), Singapore Police Force (SPF).

[1] The theme weaver role is to help provide an integrated experience to the overall conference.

[2] Michelle, as the graphic recorder, will capture the flow of the sessions in real time (as a presenter/speaker is talking). The process involves transforming ideas and concepts shared by the speakers into a powerful highly visual graphic format of pictures, images, words and key icons.