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Ms Sheila Damodaran has been presenting and consulting internationally in the use of the works of
Learning Organization since early 2000. The field of Learning Organization is the landmark publication
by Dr Peter Senge of MIT, Boston.
A student of management, her interest in this particular field began in 1996 and has led her to complete a
post-graduate programme in 2000. She shares this work with various sectors on a local network (www.
lopn.net) which originated in Singapore and has reachouts to the surrounding regions. Her experience
now spans parts of Africa, South Asia (India), South East Asia (in Indonesia, Vietnam and Cambodia and
Singapore) and the Far East (Taiwan and Hong Kong).
She has become very skilled in teaching and applying the five disciplines in teams, organizational and
issues-based settings both with intact as well as cross-functional teams. She uses this work to support
organizations in identifying systemic forces and uses collective learning as a key to creating successs in
planning and implementing strategies. The turnaround from these learnings are immediate!
She is currently on a medium-term project with the Government of Botswana in southern africa. The
project which began in 2007 is intended to assist officers in the public sector learn and apply the tools of
Learning Organization across the country. This effort is being led by their Permanent Secretaries and
Directors within each Ministry (the equivalent of corporate CEOs) in an effort to determine ways the
country may turn around the systemic challenges facing the country and has helped the nation learn
ways to reduce its deficit significantly.
Her interest in applying the tools of Learning Organization (and where relevant Servant Leadership,
Human Dynamics and The World Café) range from assisting organizations to overcome resistant
problems to organizations learning to deal with deep-seated social issues using the knowledge of
systemic insights all of which when not dealt with tends to erode our resources drastically.
These issues now cover areas such as:
- Developing public sector reform efforts (issues ranges from diversifying the country's economy to
growing efforts at officers' performance levels);
- Creating sustainable systemic growths in private sector organizations ranging from agriculture,
manufacturing, service and trade industries.
- Understanding and dealing with civic issues such as prevalence of HIV/AIDs, empowerment of
women or genders, efforts at cessation of substance abuses, spread of destitution, extent to which
corruption occurs, environmental degradation and environmental sustainability efforts, cross-
border disputes, transport and communications development, handling issues of poverty, extent of
spread of diseases in humans or animals, integration of the core family and so on.
Anything that has shown the ability to resist public policy implementation as much as it is hard to admit the
thought that it may be happening. However it is usually in teams learning to create these results for
themselves that help make that difference for them in their confidence to use this work.
She has set her sights on one day seeing these works also help nations unite.
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