Love your article "Total System Power" and am trying to think of a short experiential activity (30 minutes) to get participants into the experience of it.  We teach your theory in our Advanced Leadership Skills course.  Appreciate any ideas.

Answer:
Thirty minutes is an impossibly short period in which to do a serious total system experiential activity.  We introduce that framework as part of our 1- or 2-day Organization Workshops following one or two intensive Top, Middle, Bottom, Customer organization exercises.  These exercises deal with how we empower ourselves when we are in each of these conditions.  Then the "Total System Power" framework looks at how we empower the system from those positions.  So the framework makes sense when it builds on the prior exercises.  For example, we're not likely to be System Developers (or Shapers) if as Tops we suck up responsibility to ourselves and away from others.

Your 30-minute request raises one of the difficulties and strengths of total system thinking.  These are complex processes that require complex mixes of theory, reflection, and experience to unravel.

So my first thought is:  Why not involve your people in the full Organization Workshop? 

My second thought is: Why not become a licensed Organization Workshop trainer so that you can strengthen your organization's capacity to teach these concepts and where you'd learn lots of design variations? 

My third thought is participatory but not experiential.  You might divide your audience into the 4 positions, give them time to read and briefly discuss the system power potential of their position, come up with the payoffs to the system, the difficulties they anticipate, and what they need from others in order to support them in their function.  Then some sharing across groups.

Naturally, I lean toward alternatives #1 and #2.  Let us know what you do.