(Guest post from John Scherer, Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International. This is the fourth blog post in a six-part series about the history of Organization Development, “On the Shoulders of Giants.” NOTE: Most of what I have learned about Frederick Taylor I received from my long-time OD colleague, Marvin Wseibord, both in personal conversations and [...]
(Guest post from John Scherer, Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, with Billie Alban, President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This is the third blog post in a six-part series about the history of OD.) Introduction to this Blog Series In the first part of this series, we explored some of our ancient ancestors in the [...]
(Guest post from John Scherer, Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, with Billie Alban, President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This is the second blog post in a six-part series about the history of OD.) Introduction to this Blog Series In our work as OD practitioners, whose shoulders are we standing on? Whose ‘conceptual DNA’ runs [...]
(Guest post from John Scherer, Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, and Billie Alban, President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This is the first blog post in a six-part series about the history of OD.) Introduction to this Blog Series In our work as OD practitioners, whose shoulders are we standing on? Whose ‘conceptual DNA’ runs [...]
Why It’s Important for Us to Know Our Paradigms, Theories and Models Paradigms, theories and models – we all have them and work from them. Many of us don’t know it. But we really should. When we practitioners in human development (consultants, coaches, trainers, etc.) come to conclusions about our clients and their organizations, we [...]
As a consultant, you work with clients to solve problems. Or, perhaps your philosophy is to help them address “priorities,” rather than “problems.” In any case, it’s extremely important to understand your own approach and how it affects others, especially your clients when working with them. Different people have quite different preferences and approaches for [...]
Free Advice Too Often Backfires On You During a recession when potential clients are more reluctant to pay consultants for services, it can be very enticing for consultants to do almost anything to win contracts, even to do a lot of free consulting — to give away what the consultants otherwise would be paid for. [...]
(See Part 2 of 3) Warren Bennis taught me to ask three questions: What’s So? So What? What Now?” How we handle uncertainty and how we deal with it personally is critical in how we manage change. Given the uncertainty and complexity in our organizations, dealing with ambiguity is a critical skill for consultants. This [...]
(See part 1 of 3.) The personal development lessons come from putting myself into what Richard Leider called “The Land Of I Don’t Know. “ Putting myself into a total situation where I literally do not know how to survive on my own or I literally do not know what is going on half the [...]
(Part 1 of 3) I have been in Africa for the past month. I am still in re-entry. About once ever 12-18 months my partner and I take teams of people into developing nations to work in villages to build clinics, or schools, or other projects to assist the local community as a whole. We [...]
Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, provides organization development and consultant training services, and is developer of the Free Management Library. [Read more ...]
Jim Smith has been a consultant for over 40 years, and has very strong knowledge and expertise in successfully guiding change
in many types of organizations. [Read more ...]Provided by
