Name
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Damodaran Sheila
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Address
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Home Address: 3 Tai Keng Terrace
Singapore 535235
PO Box: 3274, Main Mall, Gaborone, Botswana
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Contact
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+267-74780886 (Contact in Botswana)
+267-3190236 (Fax)
+65-94790526 (Mobile contact in Singapore)
+65-62837969 (Home Office)
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Email
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sheilasingapore@gmail.com or sheila@lopn.net
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Nationality
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Singapore (IC No.: S1634023E)
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Educational
Qualification
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- Bachelor of Business Administration (1984-1987) National University of Singapore
- Postgraduate Diploma on "Leaders for Learning" offered by Civil Service College by Dr Daniel
H. Kim (1999-2000)
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Work Experience
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Jan 2009 - present (3 years); Consultancy in the area: (16 years)
Learning Organization Practitioners' Network
September 2002 — Present (6 years)
Coordinates and designs spaces for practitioners of Learning Organizations (public / private /
NGO sectors) within the country / region learn and practices the disciplines of this work. More
details at http://www.lopn.net
- Assistant Director (Learning Organization)
Planning and Organization Department
Police Headquarters
Singapore Police Force
August 1999 — December 2008 (9 years 4 months)
Have oversight of the planning, training and coordination of Learning Organization (as
espoused by Peter Senge) capacity building efforts and projects for junior, middle and senior
police management positions.
- Criminal Intelligence Training and Strategic Planning
Singapore Police Force
July 1995 — August 1999 (4 years 2 months)
- Head Criminal Intelligence Analysis
Singapore Immigration
January 1993 — July 1994 (1 year 7 months)
- Head Crime Statistics and Analysis
Singapore Police Force
August 1989 — December 1992 (3 years 5 months)
Superior Developers
October 1987 — July 1989 (1 year 10 months)
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Specialization
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Understanding and managing complexity, Creating Productive Conversations (Chris Argyris and
facilitation), Designing sustainable interventions, Large-scale organizational and social complexity
interventions, Organizational Learning (disciplines as espoused by Dr Peter Senge),
My journey today is in uncovering "systemic structures" that govern the sustainability and growth of
organizations and social systems (such as issues ranging from inability to meet the organisation's
mission, attrition, mounting costs,declining productivity, poverty, traffic woes, natural disasters, rising
health concerns, HIV/AIDs epidemic, prostitution, corruption and global warming) and pass the skills
on to teams so they can use it to create results that matter for them.
I look forward to working with organizations who care to understand the five disciplines of Learning
Organizations as Peter Senge has defined. This takes the shape of training and consultancy works
that help carry the (leadership) teams from theory to practice. It culminates with uncovering
systemic structures for their organization and learning to turn these into leverage action plans
towards sustainable organizational successes. Members can also expect to build an internal
capacity for their organization in the three core processes of this work helping the organization learn
to create results that matter.
The work happening for me include:
- Been in this field since 1996 (as part of a local public organization), I use the philosophy and
the methodology by Dr Peter Senge in his publication: The Art and Practice of Learning
Organizations. In particular, these include:
- Creating the capacities for systemic thinking (Systems Thinking),
- Learning to shift defensive conversations to productive and generative ones and;
- Learning to build and lead inspiring teams that produce outcomes that matter.
- My mentoring in the works was led by the likes of Dr Daniel H. Kim, Diane Cory, Michael
Goodman, Chris Argyris, Sandra Seagal, Bob Putnam, Phil MacArthur and Dr Deanna Berg
began as far back as 1996, and I maintain regular contacts with Dr Peter Senge himself.
- Public Sector Organizations: An ongoing consultant to the Office of the President of
Botswana in teaching the five disciplines of Learning Organization to their Permanent
Secretaries and Directorate staff (the equivalent of corporate CEOs) and facilitating each
Ministry develop their reinforcing loops of success (engines of growth that considers goals of
the whole system – shared visions).
This is in their quest to address the complex challenges facing the country (the country has
among the highest prevalence of HIV/AIDs incidents in the world) and eventually determine
ways the works happening across Ministries are aligned and determine leverage intervention
actions. We are now seeing systemic structures that plague most government policies that
get in the way of their successes. The lessons learned are used to rethink strategies on their
key issues. The work is captured here: http://www.lopn.
net/ST_Casestudy25_ANationGrowing.html.
- Private Sector Organizations: Companies in realty and insurance industries who have
agents working for them. I teach the five disciplines to senior management team members of
the organizations to help them understand systemically the challenges they face in their
industry as well as at organizational levels. They have recognized this helps them not turn the
anger they feel as individuals on each other which otherwise often leads to conflicts and
attrition among their staff. The organizations are ringing in more sales and are focused on
developing capacities to shift their attention from individual faults to learning to watch issues
more systemically.
- Civic Groups: Member of an NGO group across several parts of Asia (Vietnam, Indonesia
and Cambodia) learn the tools to help them understand a range of social issues (corruption,
spate of natural disasters, traffic congestion woes, Cambodia-Vietnam relations) that plague
citizens in their country. Members notice a growing systemic awareness of the issues that has
turned their attention (and anger) away from activism to learning to pick up skills work that
would allow stakeholders to think together and then work together.
- I have been doing these both at professional and personal capacities and span the region
from Taiwan, Vietnam Cambodia, Indonesia, India and Africa. I would like to see more of that
happen for me. Be happy to explore and develop the work further both locally and in the
region.
- Extending support in all of these areas with organisations such as the Supreme Court,
Singapore Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, MENDAKI, schools in Singapore, Changi
Women’s Prison, National Community Leadership Institute, Defence Management Group,
UNIFEM, Singapore Powers, Singapore General Hospital, Wild Wild West Real Estate,
Manulife Insurance Team, Singapore Pools, Kranji Turf Club and recently as an adjunct
researcher with a public health research institution in Singapore.
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Leads or founding of
regional and
international
network (Discussion
Groups) of Learning
Organization
practitioners
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International: LinkedIn LOPN
Singapore: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/LOPN/
Botswana: http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/BotswanaLO/
India: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndiaLO/
Vietnam: http://groups.google.com/group/lopnvietnam
Asia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsianLearningOrganizationPractitioners/
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Papers presented at
Conferences / led
significant group
facilitation efforts
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"Facilitating Learning Organization", 2005, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Facilitated "System of how a nation works together" 2005/ 2007, Cabinet Botswana
Facilitated "Systemic implications of child-sex tourism" 2005, UNIFEM
Facilitated World Cafe Café Asia! "Shaping Livable Futures for Our Children" at the Quest for
Global Healing Conference 2006 Bali, Indonesia
"Understanding the Systemic Nature of Complexity" at Systems Thinking in Action Conference, 2006
Boston, MA
Facilitated "Understanding corruption", 2007 Vietnam
"Learning to Facilitate World Cafe", Large-group Intervention Fiesta 2007, Singapore
Facilitated "Cambodia-Vietnam Dialogue" 2007, Vietnam
Facilitated "Understanding the systemic nature of natural disasters in Indonesia" 2007, Indonesia
"Managing Defensive Conversations" at Asia Facilitator Conference 2007, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
"Dealing with Defensive Conversations" at Singapore Facilitator Conference 2007, SIngapore
Facilitated "Understanding HIV/AIDs phenomena" 2007 Botswana
Facilitated "Traffic congestion woes" 2008, Vietnam
Upcoming:
"Deconstructing Complexity" at Systems Thinking in Action Conference by Pegasus
Communications, Boston, USA (proposal
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Group Affiliations
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SoL (Society for Organizational Learning) Global Coordinator (Singapore)
http://www.solonline.org/working_groups/GlobalCoordinators/members
Consultant member Society for Organizational (SoL) Learning (Global) http://www.solonline.org
Asia's Regional Steward for World Cafe http://www.theworldcafe.com/hubs.htm
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