In October, I took over my father's role of running High Performance Systems. As his daughter, I felt that the best way to honor my Dad was to step up to the plate and carry on his life passion of increasing people's capacity for thinking, learning, communicating, and acting systemically. Ironically, shortly before Barry passed away, he had asked me to join HPS to develop a marketing strategy and then to execute a plan. I told him that I didn't want to compromise the relationship that I had with him as my Dad by working for him too. He accepted this, and instead, we agreed to barter our professional services with each other - - he would teach me Systems Thinking through a workshop, and consulting, and I would provide him with marketing and strategy advice for HPS. Unfortunately, we never had the chance to act on this arrangement, as his life was cut short.

But, even though Barry is gone, he didn't leave us empty-handed - - he left us with a lot to harvest. We have an amazing suite of Systems Thinking products, a very motivated and talented group of people who support his vision at HPS, and thousands of people who he inspired to think about things differently. We intend to keep doing what we have been doing, but do it even better. And here's what we've done so far to do it better.

.Brought New Talent on Board
Zahed Sheikholeslami
Zahed has over 15 years of experience in managing and growing successful
software businesses. He is also passionate about Systems Thinking and is
working on a PhD. in System Dynamics at WPI. His research deals with
dynamics of growth in the software industry. Zahed was brought on board to
help us grow our business, by creating new products and a wider range of
services to meet your needs. You can contact Zahed at zsheikh@hps-inc.com

Kathy Richmond, Director
Kathy, Barry's widow, was part of the programming team that wrote the core iThink® and STELLA® software. She spent seven years at HPS in a programming capacity, and now is back to help manage our website and to create new software for serving our growing customer base.

.Created an Advisory Board
I asked some of my father's close friends and MIT colleagues to serve on the HPS Advisory Board. This Board possesses the breadth and depth of experience to ensure that HPS remains the market leader in Systems Thinking products and services. I am pleased to introduce the distinguished members of our Advisory Board:

(click here   to learn more about the members of our Advisory Board)

We are very excited about having these thought leaders from the Systems Thinking community on our Advisory Board. We are confident that this Board will help us fulfill our mission and take the company to the next level.

.Created a New Advanced Workshop Offering - "Taking it to the Next Level"
Many of our workshop attendees have told us that our workshops are great-but what's next? We believe learning to apply Systems Thinking is a life-long process-similar to learning a martial art-so one workshop just isn't sufficient! To help you build your skills even further, we have introduced an advanced workshop, "Taking it to the Next Level", which will be offered three times this year. This workshop was developed and will be facilitated by Steve Peterson, a principal consultant at HPS. Steve has led dozens of successful public and in-house workshops as well as Strategic Forums during his sixteen years at HPS. While attending this workshop, you will spend a significant portion of the workshop working on your own model; our facilitators will help you to build models that are insightful and useful. We will also help you to learn effective ways of communicating and sharing your models with other stakeholders. If you have taken any of our workshops in the past, you should attend this one. It is well worth the investment! For more information click here

.Created this Newsletter - So we can be in better touch with you!
Chris Soderquist, a senior consultant at HPS, is the editor of this new magazine. His knowledge, experience and passion for Systems Thinking will ensure that the magazine's content will be of the highest quality. I encourage all of you to contribute to this exciting initiative by submitting articles and models to Chris. Read "From the Editor", where Chris describes how you can become an active participant in this magazine.

I would like to thank all of you, for your continued support during these difficult times. I want to assure you that HPS will apply our passion and Systems Thinking skills to build upon all that Barry taught us and strive to continue and enhance the quality of our products and services in the years to come.

Best wishes,