Glossary of SoL Terms
(revised 2017)

Capacity – Individual and collective capabilities of people to produce results consistent with their deepest aspirations.

Change agents – Individuals or groups, who, collaboratively or single-handed, bring about change in the traditional way of handling or thinking about a problem, change in behavior or environment.

Collaborating for systemic change – Engaging diverse stakeholders inspired by a common vision to create long lasting inclusive social well-being based on trust, openness, imagination, genuine caring and collective intelligence.

Communities of interest and practices – Communities in which members have similar aims and get together to work toward that aims.

Learning as a social process – Learning is the act, process, or experience of gaining knowledge or skill (also involving challenging our mental models) and people learn best from and with one another.

Learning spaces – The space where human beings fall into the gravity well of their own most natural and generative ways of being. The conditions are: being as truly present as one can be; allowing others to be exactly who they are; and continually inquiring into that which each of us do not see, the blind spots and biases that limit our sense of reality to what is most comfortable given our taken-for-given historical perspective. SoL communities convene (an art in itself), reflect together, tell stories of hope and possibility, listen to one anothers’ stories and sufferings, and continually hold the possibility and remind us that there is a larger generative whole in which we are embedded and, at our best, are agents in its magnificent unfolding.

Organizational Learning – The enhanced capacity of people, individually and collectively, to create results consistent with their deepest aspirations, leading to institutions that can continually adapt and evolve.

Practice – Production of results that are consistent with the individual and collective aspirations of people through the application of concepts and methods in pursuit of meaningful ends.

Research – A disciplined approach to inquiry and testing with a commitment to share as widely as possible.

Self-governance – An organizational governance system in which members have freely committed to consciously follow the mission and purpose, and in which the decisions and policies of the system are regulated by its own members and not delegated to a formal authority.

Social well-being – Social well-being is living in congruence with nature or humanness and arises spontaneously in a constantly changing network of conversations. Social well-being is not a concept, definition nor a result of reflection but a manner of living together in harmony. We speak of well-being when we refer to living in operational harmony with the circumstances of the realization of our living.

As the principles state, we believe that sustained high performance in any social system comes through creating high levels of social well-being.

Self-organizing – A way to organize groups truly leveraging the collective power steered by an accountability that is nurtured by chaordic principles, balancing chaos and order.

Sustainable organizations – Organizations operating under the paradigm of preserving nature with their actions.