By Carter McNamara on December 10, 2011
In a project, whether you are conducting a formal, systematic assessment or just doing a rather informal assessment, your natural approach to gathering and processing information will influence how you work. The Myers-Briggs folks provide some useful dimensions to consider. (Myers-Briggs is a registered trademark of Consulting Psychologists Press, Inc.), Intuitive Versus Sensing Approaches to […]
By Carter McNamara on October 26, 2011
There’s a lot of money available to help small businesses, and it seems like there’ll be more available as we work to make more jobs. So OD in small businesses might be even more worthwhile. About half of our clients are small organizations. My experience of the differences of between OD in small and large […]
By Jim Smith on March 19, 2011
(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 […]
By Jim Smith on February 25, 2011
(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 […]
By Carter McNamara on November 24, 2010
Development is hard pressed to interface with operations. Yet it is extremely important that this interface be workable because developments are not relevant until they find their way into operations. This is the “reason for being” of development; to have new systems and adaptive processes and structures integrated, in the long run, to foster organizational […]
By Jim Smith on October 5, 2010
In my last half-dozen posts I have been focusing on system theories of organization. I have done this because practitioners of organization development depend upon theories about what makes organizations tick. Nothing so practical as a good theory said Kurt Lewin, the mind behind action research. Well thought out theories helps us sort patterns and […]
By Jim Smith on July 26, 2010
It was 1968 when an obscure academic at the University of Edmonton, Ludwig Von Bertalanffy, publish the book General Systems Theory. It was the first major look at the foundations and applications of systems thinking across a broad array of practical and scientific fields. Starting with the individual organism he demonstrated that the systems view […]
By Carter McNamara on June 17, 2010
Here’s an Example of a Disconnected Conversation A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine and I were talking about a particular consulting project. We just weren’t connecting in our conversation somehow — I kept repeating my points and he kept repeating his. It felt like we were disagreeing somehow, but neither of us […]
By Jim Smith on May 17, 2010
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 […]
By Jim Smith on May 10, 2010
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 […]
Carter McNamara of Authenticity Consulting, LLC, provides organizational development, consultant training and Action Learning services, and is developer of the Free Management Library. [Read more ...]