In the above link, Roland interviews Dr. Udai as he shares his view of how OD started in India. A rare video.
OD in Asia comes from Udai with his study at National Training Labs ( NTL), Columbia University, UCLA and University of Michigan. We had so many happy, healthy and wholistic times together. He shared his soul on his death bed with me while he again repeated his vision and that was to have an India OD Network. Latter it was renamed the Asia OD Network.
The purpose of video 1 is to share deep personally my relationship with Whole System Transformation (WST) or the “WHY” of my 50 year legacy transmit. The theory, “WHY” and practice will follow. Dr. Parker, my personal physician, and Geoff who is learning WST gave me feedback on my first draft video. I have incorporated their wisdom. Geoff said that I must put emphasis on “HOW” Whole System Transformation (WST)is done in the upcoming videos. Ideally, we will become interactive with you all and learn together.
I figure I still have 5-7 years to travel. At time I will settle in Minnesota in nice weathered days and the Bahamas in the winter…all while I continue to be present around the world consulting in a hologram modality. The cost should be right by that time.
I have seen enough of the world. As I age, I wish to see/experience more of my transcendent consciousness. Just give me access to right food, fresh air, a woods or beach to walk on and I will be joyed.
My commitment to Divine Life is to do my small part in bringing alive Asia with Organization Development and Transformation.
Link to my introductory video to transmit my legacy of Whole System Transformation (WST).
My videos are not for the “Masses of the Asses”, as Dr. Kendric, my social psychology professor named the common folk. These videos are not for the run of the mill agent of change. They are for those who wish to get to know me but most importantly for those learning WST with my guidance.
I oft say. An excellent professional agent of change and transformation needs the education of brain surgeon. I have such. With out being velcrowed to my hip, some may get a few ideas to develop their own practice of helping. I believe I have answers to the counter act the great failure rate of change work and one really never learns such without being immersed with me in a client experience. As the popular Internet Nation Wide Insurance commercial says. “We have seen a thing or two so we know a thing or two.”
Truly,
Roland
Getting Everyone Improving the Whole
In the 1980s, inspired by conversations with Eric Trist and Ron Lippitt, (One of Roland’s main mentors), I found myself seeking to marry participation to Socio-Technical principles. A series of projects I reported in Productive Workplaces led me inexorably toward a scary conclusion. If we truly wanted to realize values for workplaces in which productivity rested on the bedrock of dignity, meaning and community, we needed to figure out how to get EVERYBODY IMPROVING WHOLE SYSTEMS. I noticed that in successful cases there was an attractive goal, a leader with an itch to scratch, and some energized people who had both expertise and commitment.
I also derived a few “minimum critical specifications” for effective OD: get the whole system in the room; focus on the future rather than the problem list; and set things up so that people could do the work themselves, using the skills and experience they already had. If every human deficiency had to be remedied with training before people could implement a new workplace, nobody would ever get a new workplace.
Over time, I came to understand “whole system in the room” as people with authority, information, resources, expertise in need. When we convene such diverse groups, we effectively redefined a system’s boundaries. That was a giant step beyond diagramming “environmental demands” on the flipchart ( a technique Roland learned from Beckhard). People who are each other’s environment shared what they knew. Everyone came to understand the whole in a way that no one person had done a few days earlier. Through this was a structural intervention, paradoxically, many people voluntarily change their behavior.
This phenomenon, I believe, is the key to the success of today’s “large group interventions.” (ABSOLUTELY SAYS; ROLAND) These structures provide opportunities for people to act in new ways. They tilt the power balance. Then enable fluid coalitions in real-time. Most require no training. They turn “systems thinking” into an experiential rather than a conceptual activity. They enable everybody to discover for a few hours, or a few days or a few months, how to use what they already have on behalf of a goal larger than themselves.
I put these ideas into practice experimentally for more than 30 years. Every time I ran a workshop, I saw something I had never seen before. Sandra Janoff, my Future Search Network partner for more than two decades, and many other colleagues ( including yours truly, Roland) are deeply engaged in this work as I write. Their collective efforts, and yours, constitute the present for me.
FROM THE CHAPTER TITLED:
Techniques to Match to Our Values:
An Idiosyncratic History
Of Organization Development
To be published 2015 by Sullivan, Stavros and Rothwell in Practicing Organization Development: Leading Change and Transformation, Fourth Edition
This essay iterates, paraphrases, and elaborates on themes from Productive Workplaces: Dignity, Meaning and Community in the 21st Century , 3rd Edition (2012).
Postscripts by Roland.
1. Now that Dr. Argyris is dancing in the heavens, Marvin, in my mind, is the senior living most influential organization development professional today.
2. This is a first in a long series of excerpts from our upcoming Fourth Edition of Practicing Organization Development: Leading Change and Transformation. I do so because Ron Lippitt , who is mentioned by Marvin, above told me personally that one of his predominant values was to “disseminate change knowledge freely”. For those new to the profession, Dr. Lippitt wrote the first book ever on organization change in 1957.
A video on change from one of the predominant changemakers in Asia
I have known Raju Mandhyan for perhaps four years now. He is in my mind the most articulate presenter on positive change in Asia.
My dream is to integrate his powerful speaking and futuristic concepts around change into my whole system transformation methodology.
I would be interested in your feedback. Who do you know that would be interested in transforming their organization with the two of us?
As typical of Asia, the introduction is a little long. Personally I would suggest you would start at 3:31.
Best to all of you. Just one reinforcement. He says that one’s change must start each day the moment you wake up. I strongly believe in such. Therefore, I start each day with 90 minutes of intense mindfulness and standing on my head. Then I’m ready to rock ‘n roll. I am a lightning bolt as begin to help the world change one organization of the time.
Would love to have your feedback. How might we improve this video. How might we do better in the creation of future videos. We have been asked to include this video in the OD portal coming with our Fourth Edition of Practicing OD. Thus, we looking to be better at video production
Free asccess to best of Change Management Research
Roland and Bill-
Thank you for the call today, I enjoyed the conversation and the opportunity sitting in front of us.
I mentioned the “Future of Change Management” webinar I taught last month that is available for replay. You can access the video from within the Prosci Portal – a new gateway to a virtual change management workspace for change management practitioners that we released last month.
You can create an account for the Prosci Portal for free at https://portal.prosci.com (click the “Create” link in the lower left). Once inside the Portal, you’ll see a number of Freesources – these include hand-selected tutorial collections around particular topics (making the case for change management, roles in change management, Prosci Methodology, integrating CM and PM) and webinar replays. The Five Tenets webinar is a great introduction to how we view and position change management. This is also where you will find the Future of Change Management webinar.
Please let me know if you are able to get in – and if not, I can certainly help you find these webinars and resources.
Thank you,
Tim
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Tim Creasey
Chief Development Officer
Phone: 970-203-9332 International: +1 970-203-9332
Boise Office: 208-333-7777
USA Time Zone: MDT Standard time zone: UTC/GMT -6 hours
Prosci Manage CHANGE, MAXIMIZE Performance
www.prosci.com | www.change-management.com
As we begin to create the 4th edition of Practicing OD, I am thinking that Dr. Marshak best be included. Here is a classic video he made for our Asian OD Network Conference recently in Singapore.
He talks of small groups. Well. Those of you who know me. I believe his principles of small group dynamics also apply large group dynamics.
Dear colleagues,
It is with great pleasure and pride that I share with you that I was awarded the title of “CIO of the year” last Thursday in Germany.
This title is awarded each year by the best known ICT magazines in Germany, the “Computerwoche” and “CIO Magazine”, which annually task a professional jury (recruited from very well-known German Universities) to select a “CIO of the year”, based on criteria like outstanding recent project deliverables, technical competencies, relationship management between business and ICT, visionary orientation, and influence in the organisation and leadership skills.
As I said in my “thank you” speech when receiving the award, I consider it primarily as recognition for the work of my entire team in the last few years both at Airbus and at EADS. Without your engagement and our common successes, this would never have happened!
I therefore would like to thank and congratulate all of you on our shared achievement. I see this as an excellent appreciation of our great teamwork and our contributions to the business!
For additional information, see Computerwoche including a short interview with me and the brochure (in German only unfortunately).
With warmest regards,
Guus Dekkers
CIO Airbus & EADS Corporate CIO
Below: My daugher with smiling and red tied Guus in the background at one of our famed engagement summits. She was the Cazreena of the 300 person transformation.
Part of her logistics team with internal change agent, Susan, in red.
Below the design team. This case is just being published in the 10th edition of Organization Development by Worley and his Guru Professor Cummings at USC.
The results have been out of this world. Guss received the top engagement rating of all of EADS verified by Gallop Poll.
And the stage below:
People hard at work
Guus and Susan just held their 5th summit without us and all agreed that it was the best ever. The point is that I expect my interventions to be repeated without me. I expect them to continue to get better and better as time goes on. I have more publications and private videos for your edification. Just email me at R@Rolandsullivan.com
Today the bright Russ Briggs and the innovative Mitch Ditkoff spoke of the importance of Dr. Ackoff contribution to our world of management. We are dreaming about integrating Risk Management, Innovation and Whole Systems Transformation to help industries such as health care to minimize Risk in their world.
My mentor, Kathie Dannenmiller used Ackoff as one of her 12 main theorists in the transformation work she initiated at Boeing and Ford in the late 70’s.
I share these 6 short Ackoff videos for all of you that wish to start or to reinforce bringing general systems theory into your life.
Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJxWoZJAD8k
Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdBiXbuD1h4
Part III
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrEJjT-dWU
Part I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pcuzRq-rDU
Part II
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8g6ZoobDV4
Part III
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25qNUxhpKQ
Note the word System in the final definition of OD by the Dick Beckhard and myself.
According to Sullivan and Beckhard; OD is “a wholistic systemic and systematic change effort, using behavioral science competencies to change or transform the organization to a new desired state” (Sullivan and Beckhard, 1999, personal interaction.
Systemic means all parts make up a whole.
Systematic means the intervention has a logical and synergistic interactions.
According to the above definition, very few are doing real OD. We anticipate that successful Change Consultants will more and more return to “Whole System” work.
This is Maja’s new YouTube vestibule for her gathering of important videos that support her work as a social psychologist and transformation agent.
Not only are classics that give a firsthand account of the history of organization development but also her new videos that she recently edited. For example, the award-winning presentation of Sullivan Transformation Agent’s Woodbury Public Safety testimony to the 39th Asia learning and development conference. Lives are being saved because of our intervention. We know of no other Public Safety Community that shut down to go offsite for three days to transform themselves. The neighboring communities provided their emergency coverage. Now Woodbury’s leadership team is consulting the other 12 or so surrounding communities to help engage their people and their community.
More will be coming including one of our most successful large group events with the organization that holds the most advanced commercial computer in the world.
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