This article categorizes organization development approaches to change management into three strategies, explains their differences, and when each might be most appropriate. It focuses on the differences between two change strategies that utilize the same methods and are associated with a Dialogic OD mindset: high engagement and generative. Brief case examples follow descriptions of the high engagement and generative change strategies. The differences in roles and activities of leaders (sponsors), change agents, and those affected by the change are identified. Propositions about when each strategy is appropriate are offered. The generative change strategy is the newest and least discussed in the change literature, and we describe essential differences that make it the most rapid and transformational catalyst for change. However, generative approaches are of limited value when high levels of interdependence or significant capital outlays require central coordination of change. In such cases, one of the other strategies is a better choice.
Working with the Organisation’s Shadowside: Helping organisations discuss the undiscussable?
At the recent EU AI network meeting some colleagues and I fell into a conversation about working with the organisational shadowside. I thought it was interesting enough to share.
What is the organisational shadowside?
While discussion our work, we identified a common experience, when working with faith organisations, of encountering such a strong surface ‘story’ about what it meant to be a good person of this faith that it was impossible for the organisation to talk about actions and feelings in the organisation that didn’t fit that story. In one example it was the hurt, anger, betrayal, resentment and other difficult feelings following a round of redundancies that had taken place the previous year that was unmentionable. In another it was the difficulty of working and living within the constraints of monastic vows that was pushed under the carpet. The challenge we encountered wasn’t the stories themselves, it was the sense that we were being drawn into a secret or ‘shadow’ conversation that couldn’t be fitted into the accepted organisational story.
What Is The Most Effective Way To Achieve Organisational Change? New Research Results
Ever felt that the traditional approach to change doesn’t deliver the results you hoped? Wondered if there is a better way? Well interestingly Bradley Hasting and Gavin Schwarz[i] recently published a lengthy paper comparing the effectiveness of two different approaches to organisational development. One is the traditional mode, known as diagnostic, and the other a more recently developed approach, championed particularly by Bushe and Marshak[ii], known as dialogic….
Ten Top Tips For Online Training
Like many others, over the past months I have delivered a lot of training online that I would normally have delivered in person. Here are some of the things I learnt.
1. Breaks
Resolve to take a break of 10 minutes every hour. It is constraining and exhausting being stuck in one position with a fixed gaze. The last course I ran, one of the spontaneous comments made was, ‘what I love about this course is the breaks.’ Well, good to know I’d got something right!
Some Challenges Posed by Hybrid Working and How We Can Meet Them
Hybrid working, for many a necessity induced by lockdown, is rapidly becoming a work pattern of choice for the future. Goldman Sachs are one of the few organizations so far to have declared against the trend with their boss David Solomon rejecting the idea of remote working, labelling it an “aberration”. The more common view seems to be that the working pattern has changed for good. Google, for example, expects 20% of staff to work from home permanently in future, while Microsoft is to make remote working a permanent option. This shift towards more flexible working patterns poses some tough questions for managers and leaders.
Appreciative Inquiry: working with a system in sections
Over the years I’ve had a number of requests to run an Appreciative Inquiry event for a system that is unable to come altogether at the same time in the same space. I have found ways to accommodate this, but I have never felt the process to be entirely satisfactory. Just recently I have had two more requests like this, so when I heard the UK Appreciative Inquiry Network was coming together in December, I decided this was a great challenge to take to the group.
A group of six of us had a great conversation about this challenge: How to design an AI event for a whole system that is unable to come together for a day or more in the same space at the same time?
Did you know? Build in Wellbeing from the beginning
Lots of people feel instinctively that happiness and wellbeing at work must be important. But are they a business necessity or a ‘nice to have’. Surely it makes more sense to ensure your business is profitable and thriving before you start worrying about how people feel?
Increasingly research suggests that investing in employee wellbeing by ensuring positive work relationships, an emphasis on strengths-based development, and worker happiness has productivity pay-offs. So why delay, start promoting positive psychology practices at work today!
Energy state transformation is the key to Appreciative Inquiry effectiveness
Take a coaching approach - 7 top tips for developing talent in your team
A key challenge for leaders and managers is developing the capacity of their staff or team. Taking a coaching approach allows you to focus on drawing out motivation rather than trying to push it in! It allows you to create energy and motivation and it is usually experienced as an empowering process by your coachee. It helps people develop their intiaitive and sense of ownership of their work and tasks, and, in general, converts potential into capacity.
Here are seven tips to help make your coaching conversations highly productive.
Guest Blog - Giving and gratitude, some ideas for a (scientifically) happier Christmas by Ilona Boniwell of Positran
Christmas past
I am dreaming of a lovely family Christmas, and I don’t mind if is white or grey. I do, nevertheless, mind whether it works out or not, as well as how humanly and psychologically messy it will end up being.
Last Christmas our teens decided to surprise us by setting up a casino in the living room, dressing up as croupiers, and getting the adults (that’s me, my husband, my husband’s ex and his best friend) to be the clients. As lavish, extravagant and original as that might sound, the enjoyment of the process was rather affected by the fact that in preparing the casino set-up, the teens did not check the rules of the proposed game and a few minutes into it started arguing over the way forward. In fact, at one point, the only way forward was to end the game.