Motivation in an Environment of Uncertainty

Imagine you are considering a new job.  One of the key performance objectives of the job is to motivate the staff that will be working for you.  You are told that there is no money in the budget for bonuses and in fact some salary reduction will likely take place.  There is a chance of [...]

A Change of Preference

In the past few weeks I’ve had the chance to work with a bunch of really great people.  A lot of this work was focused on one of our assessments; the Team Management Profile  (TMP). Some of the people I worked with had taken the assessment for a second time, after a number of years [...]

More Interaction, More Change

Most current perspectives on the future of organizations will begin with comments on the accelerating pace of change.  The consequential generation of ideas for dealing with these phenomena focuses on leadership, management, technology, character, relationship and just about any other topic of interest. I think it is very important to make sure we scratch hard at the [...]

A Place of Wondrous Certainty

This week my colleague shared with the rest of our small team part of a transcript from a radio program she had heard over the weekend.  The program talked about grade school Christmas concerts which at this time of year are in full force.  Part of this transcript hit a chord: Childhood is another country. [...]

The Normalcy of Uniqueness

If you listen to pretty much any discussion on organizational challenges or read virtually any book on organizational change, leadership, management or whatever, somewhere it is bound to mention the ‘unprecedented’ pace of change, or the presence of challenges ‘never before encountered’ or some other term to describe how our specific time is unique in [...]

Conversations in a Climate of Fear

What are the types of conversations that are the most valuable in organizations when a thread of fear seems to be wrapping itself around us and makes us feel like we don’t want to talk to anyone? It feels like many of us are in this position right now, a climate of fear permeates so [...]

Organizational Lessons – Midnight in Paris and the Tree of Life

Sometimes you don’t need to pay a brilliant OD person a bunch of money to get some really good insights into organizational life.  Once in a while you can just go to the movies.  For me, watching Midnight in Paris and The Tree of Life in the last month were great lessons in organizational development. [...]

Every Interaction Matters

Perhaps one of the most important things that the complexity sciences have taught us is that very small disturbances can, at times, create dramatic, significant and unforeseen changes.  Perhaps an even more significant lesson that unfortunately doesn’t get nearly as much air time is that it is not predictable which small disturbances might create what [...]

The Complexity of Good Interactions

I had the opportunity and pleasure of spending last evening with a group of HR professionals in our city of London, Ontario.  I had been asked to come and talk a little about our approach to understanding organizations and what we call our infinity interaction process. Other things were happening at this get together.  There [...]

Endings and Beginnings – Being Present to Both

Back in August of 2010 I wrote the post Kids, Parents, Organizations, Models and Understanding  It had to do with a conversation with my son, using our model of organizations, as he left for his last year as a hockey player in an elite amateur league here in Canada. While the message was mostly about ways [...]