Time to Think About the Gurus in Your Field?

By Carter McNamara on June 1, 2010

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 […]

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A Definition and Implementation of Organizational Change

By Jim Smith on May 27, 2010

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 development work is a very fragile […]

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Are You Doing OD? Training? Consulting? Coaching? All of These?

By Carter McNamara on May 21, 2010

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 […]

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Designing and Building Real-Time Learning Systems

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 […]

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From Vertical to Horizontal

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 […]

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Use Grand Visions and Strategic Visions for Change

By Carter McNamara on May 2, 2010

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. […]

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Be Careful About Proclaiming "Failed Management Movements"!

By Carter McNamara on April 28, 2010

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 literature about the need for “transforming organizations” […]

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What’s a "Mature" Organization?

By Carter McNamara on April 23, 2010

I conducted a workshop two weeks ago in which a participant mentioned that some of the other participants in the room were not from “mature organizations.”  He went on to explain that their organizations were still somewhat small. I countered that it’s often an illusion to assess the maturity of an organization based on it […]

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Foundations of Consulting — Part 3: Primary Working Goals and Assumptions of Consultants

By Carter McNamara on April 19, 2010

Peter Block, in his book, Flawless Consulting, suggests that certain goals and assumptions always be primary for consultants, that is, for individuals working to help people, but not having authority over those people.  He suggests the following goals and assumptions. Primary Working Goals of Consultants 1.  Establish a collaborative relationship with your clients As a […]

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When Consultants Should Facilitate, Coach or Train

By Carter McNamara on April 13, 2010

There are strong feelings that consulting, facilitating, coaching and training are very different roles.  I believe that a good consultant should be able to use any of the roles for different purposes.  Here are some guidelines for what roles to use and when. When You Might Resort to Facilitating Collaborative organizational consulting is about working, […]

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