Content Addiction

This post is about what seems to be a very common addiction in organizational learning.  That addiction is to content.  The scenario can be described like this:  There is a set period of time put aside where some kind of developmental learning is supposed to happen.  It might be about leadership, maybe change, perhaps communication; [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

HRPLD Meeting May 25, 2011

Hello everyone!  I am going to be attending your meeting on May 25th and will be talking with you about a very different way of understanding our organizations and our experiences in them.  Back in 2009, my colleague, Bonnie Cooper and I presented at the Organization Development conference in Seattle on the topic: Complex Responsive [...]

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 [...]

Adding Value by Getting Out of the Way

As OD professionals we typically are asked to work with individuals and groups to improve performance.  It is assumed we have and can impart some type of expertise that will be one of the causal factors of this improved performance.  In doing this we would be adding value and in our proof driven organizations this [...]

A Dark Side to Systems Thinking

Over the past number of months I have been following (and in some cases contributing) to discussions on a number of LinkedIn groups that focus on systems thinking.  Many of these groups have hundreds or even thousands of members. Personally, after many years of working with systems thinking I no longer find the concept of [...]