Hello. My name is Ann Svendsen. I’m the Executive Director of the Centre for Innovation in Management. Our centre is part of the Faculty of Business here at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver.
This wonderful facility, which is also part of SFU, has been especially designed to foster dialogue, It has only been open for a year. We are really proud to hold the second New Terms of Engagement conference here at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue.
Our Centre (CIM as it is affectionately known) is hosting this conference along with the Sustainable Enterprise Academy from the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. (if you want to know more about CIM please look at the white folder in your participant kits – HOLD IT UP). I’d also like to thank our terrific sponsors, whose support we grateful acknowledge include Simon Fraser University, Shell Canada, Ontario Power Generation and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.
Now with those introductions taken care of, I would like to welcome all of you to beautiful Vancouver. The weather appears to be holding and with a fair bit of luck we will have clear skies over the next few days – especially important for tomorrow evening as we enjoy our dinner and the view of the mountains and the harbour at the World Café dinner!
In total there are 142 of us here – just the right number to get to know each other over the next two and a half days.
We are a diverse group - almost evenly split between corporate, government and civic society sectors –I am sure this diversity will enrich and deepen our learning.
We have a total of 18 intact teams involving up to 7 people from one organization – the smallest team is 3 people.
We have also created 4 learning teams involving 6-7 individuals from a number of organizations. You will be working with your teams this afternoon, Friday afternoon and at several points in between.
So what makes this conference special? First of all we believe that the team focus of this event is an important and unique feature. We are very pleased to welcome all of the teams –and we realize it has been an organizational feat of mammoth proportions to identify the right people and get everyone here – with or without your profile!! Whether you are part of an intact team or a learning team, we believe that team members will be able to support and continue to learn from each other long after the conference is over. The second special feature of this conference is the opportunity you will have to experience and practise innovative methods of engagement, from large group dialogue in the Asia Pacific Hall upstairs to ‘walkabouts’, open space and conversation cafes. We have tried to model ‘new terms of engagement’ in the design of the conference knowing that personal experience is the best teacher. We expect that you will leave the conference with new confidence and skills in stakeholder dialogue and engagement methods.
And just in case someone else signed you up for the conference without showing you the brochure –this is not going to be a typical talking heads conference. Opportunities to sleep walk through workshops and plenary sessions will be limited. We know that each of you is a global leader in sustainability and stakeholder engagement and that you all have a great deal to contribute. We won’t let you off the hook – You will be invited to contribute and share your ideas all the way through. And it will be intense – so get ready!
The third unique feature of the conference is the opportunity to co-create of new learning communities on specific topics like dialogue, creating stakeholder networks, measurement and reporting, and organizational transformation and change. We anticipate that by the time we leave on Friday afternoon, we will have developed the intellectual as well as social capital that will allow us to collaborate in the months to come. This certainly happened in a big way after New Terms One – and we hope the same for this gathering.
But why should we take three days out of our very hectic schedules to focus on ‘new terms of engagement’? Why is this an important and even urgent topic?
I have a very personal answer to that question that takes me back to a trip I made to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1996. It was a holiday and I was excited about being in an incredibly beautiful and culturally fascinating city – initially I, was struck by how much the harbour, beaches, mountains reminded me of Vancouver.
But having spent 10 days in what could be a wonderful city, I ended up feeling like a prisoner – and I am not an overly cautious traveller.
We didn’t go swimming, despite the crystal clear water because nothing that was left on the beach would still be there when the swim was over, not even a hotel towel. going out at night was risky–police advise taxis and residents not to stop at stop signs because of the chance that the car will be hijacked and passengers robbed and occasionally shot; it just wasn’t safe and most of the time I didn’t fee like risking my life to go out to a restaurant or to see the sights. It was frustrating for sure, but what hit home, was not just the deplorable living conditions and poverty experienced by more than a million people, but also the fact that their poverty affected me directly, just as it was affecting the middle class and the rich living barricaded lives in Rio. I left Rio without really seeing or experiencing much of what the city had to offer– my freedom and my quality of life was curtailed by social inequality
And this realization of our interconnectedness and our interdependence as citizens of the world was made even more dramatically evident on September 11
We woke up to the fact that we are not immune to what happens in India, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
Which brings me to the specific focus of this conference – new terms of engagement….
I believe that we are at a crucial point in history when we must address complex and intertwined issues of poverty, environmental degradation, and economic and cultural globalization if we are to sustain ourselves on this planet.
While there are certainly technical and scientific issues to solve, what will ultimately determine our survival and our quality of life is our capacity to work together –to engage with each other to innovate - to solve complex problems that we in academic circles refer to as “messes”. (For once an academic term that has appeal!)
That’s why I am here – to participate with you in a ‘hot house’ of thinking about how to build lasting relationships that are the source of opportunity creation, creativity and growth.
Once again, welcome to our second New Terms of Engagement conference – we are really pleased you are here.
Now, I’d like to introduce Myriam Laberge our conference moderator and Alan Briskin, our conference’ weaver’ to lead us in the next part of this afternoon’s session.