Another Dedication to Ed Schein: The Most Active Living Founder of OD

Below are five relatively current videos by Ed Schein that articulate his latest views on  culture and the world of change. 

Schein is my hero. We dedicated one of our Practicing Organization Development editions to Ed. We say:

We dedicate this book to Edgar Schein for:

-Cofounding and then being the major lead in documenting  the theory and practice of the new field of OD in its start up phase via the well-known Addison-Wesley series;

– Being the first to articulate the constraints of the consultants role as expert and advisor, and for articulating the than new notion that the consultant should help others discover what they need and then with sensitivity facilitate them towards their desired state;

( Ed shares the story on how he learned the above in the second or third video by Maja below.)

– Helping the field of organization change and development become aware that results in change efforts come largely from the design, facilitation, and management of processes;

– Making the concept of “process consultation” a household word among change agents; and 

– His contributions while being a Sloan fellows professor of management emeritus and senior lecture at MIT Sloan school of management through his countless articles, videos and books. 

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Let’s end with a personal story.

In the fall of 1969, the famous doctoral student, at Loyola University of Chicago, Father Gerard Egan, handed me a book by Ed Schein titled Process Consultation. (It was the first book in the Addison Wesley OD series.) Then Egan said to me, “Welcome to your new masters program in Organization Development.” He said that this was our first textbook. At the time in 1969, I was the only person in the upcoming Masters program in OD at Loyola. 

The second textbook Egan gave me was his yet to be presented thesis titled Encounter. My first assignment was to proof it and offer feedback. To this day, some of us original Change Agents believe the book Encounter is still the best researched book on group dynamics in existence. Organization Development uniquely has a focus on Group Dynamics.

A few weeks latter, Egan gave me the  next two textbooks that were also in the Addison Wesley series by Beckhard and Bennis. From the Bennis book is where I took my famous statement that I’ve given to every group publicly since 1969.Here it is again:

We are entering an epoch of a dizzying rate of change.  Expect more positive change to occur the rest of your life since the beginning of the recording in civilization 4,500 years ago.

Well, in the year 2018, I  believe we just reached the explosion of that forecasted change. Now, I say expect more positive change in the next 20 to 25 years than in the past 400 to 500 years!

Artificial Intelligence, singularity, digital transformation, exponential change, the global brain, and IBM Watson for the cloud have all arrived!

Hang onto your hats! We are entering just now the most exciting time in the history of civilization.

Here are the videos:

 

Another 3 Videos on Maja’s interview with Schein on Culture.

 

Truly,

Roland & Maja