A colleague called me last week, reporting that she had actually spoke face-to-face with one of the gurus in our field of Organization Development. In her extreme excitement, she could hardly speak slowly enough for me to actually understand her. Several months ago, I got a brochure announcing an upcoming conference in my field. As …
Professional Development/
Consulting & Freelancing
Technical and Interpersonal Skills: Consulting Success Skills
Peter Block, in his seminal consulting book, Flawless Consulting, writes, “There is a set of skills that is an essential part of consulting over and above technical expertise and interpersonal skills – and these are consulting skills” (Jossey-Bass, 2000, p. 6). Yet, the myth continues that technical and people skills are sufficient for successful consulting. …
Organizational Change Unveiled: Definition and Implementation Every now and then I gift myself with the luxury of time available for reflection, and I “mine” my own learning of what existed. What made that effort a successful change process? Why did that one and that one work well? First of all, my experience is that organizational …
OD vs. Training – Or Is It? I’ve watched over the years as various fields and professions form firm interpretations of others. For example, many Organization Development practitioners almost look down on training as scoped to working only with individuals and not the broader context of organizations as does OD (by the way, we OD’rs …
Marv Weisbord’s Model – Two Critical Paths to Change Marv Weisbord’s model “Two Critical Paths for Improving Organizations” suggests, that when it comes to improving our organizations, the first question is, “Who is going to be involved? The second question is, “What is it they are to go about improving?” The answer to the first …
We live in traditional organizations that are functional and vertically managed. The design is similar to creating and operating a “marching organization.” Work is aligned by function and managed vertically up and down the line. When errors happen, they are pushed up to the next level of command. A control structure reinforces the hierarchy of …
It’s common in change-management projects to have a vision for change. It’s very useful to have clients consider both a grand vision and a strategic vision. We do this in our consultant training services, and the consultants usually greatly appreciate that approach. Grand visions and strategic visions can be used in strategic planning, as well. …
Mindful Proclamations: Studying Failed Movements Last week, I got a call from a consultant who lamented the “failure of all those management movements.” As usual in these conversations, the caller went on to explain how his particular idea was what leaders and managers really needed. That type of lament seems increasingly common in the literature …
