Featured Sessions
Expand your thinking and your horizons with these special professional development opportunities. All are included with your conference registration; however, many require pre-registration.
Kurt Lewin Master Class Descriptions
Windows on the World
Kurt Lewin Master Class Descriptions
Glenda Eoyang sets the conditions for adaptive capacity to enable individuals and groups to thrive in complex times. Her methods reflect the work of “wise practitioners” and are based in pattern recognition, inquiry, and action. As the Executive Director and founder of the Human Systems Dynamics (HSD) Institute, she leads a network of 150 scholar-practitioners as they build theory and practice for adaptive action in diverse environments. In this session, Glenda will share the short list of simple rules that shape effective HSD practice; demonstrate how those rules inform OD engagements in business, industry, government, and non-profit settings; and inquire with you about how these rules can inform your personal and professional practice. She is the author of Coping with Chaos: Seven Simple Tools, Facilitating Organization Change: Lessons from Complexity Science (with Ed Olson), and numerous articles and book chapters dealing with applications of complexity science to unpredictable challenges in human systems.
Barbara Bunker and Billie Alban met each other in New York City in the mid-1960s, when they were both young and so was OD. As faculty for the Columbia OD/HRM and PPOD programs, we noticed and conceptualized an emerging OD practice in systems intervention that we framed as Large Group Methods. We then wrote two books, edited two special issues of JABS, and sponsored four years of Dallas Conferences about this type of practice. We are intrigued by how ideas “get into currency,” i.e., move from the periphery to becoming generally accepted. We will talk about how the principles underlying Large Group Methods have influenced our OD practice. We will also lay out some issues and dilemmas we see in the use of these methods. We will ask small groups of participants to develop two questions they would like discussed about the use of these methods or practice in general. These questions will structure the general discussion.
Cathy Royal has been an OD practitioner for over 25 years. She developed Quadrant Behavior Theory (QBT) based on the belief that sustainable change for social justice and systems must consider the impact of social attitudes, power, and personal behavior. Cathy will share her current research on the importance of OD practitioner awareness about social justice, persistence, and social identities on long term change for diversity and inclusion. An early pioneer in the use of Appreciative Inquiry, she is an anchor and faculty member for the NTL Diversity Leadership Certificate Program (DLCP), and she taught in the AU/NTL Use-of-Self course with Charlie and Edie Seashore for 18 years. Cathy is a recipient of the Fielding Institute Social Justice award, a former NTL Ken Benne Scholar, and board member of World Education. She is also the guest editor for the current special issue of the OD Practitioner, “In Our Own Voices.”
Roger Schwarz believes that all of us naturally use theories to guide our work, even if we can’t identify them or even say what a theory is! Unfortunately, we often have a gap between the theories we think we use and ones we really use. That creates problems for our clients and for us. Roger will invite us to explore and close that gap, using his Skilled Facilitator and Facilitative Leader approaches as examples, so that we can better serve our clients and act with integrity. Over the past 30 years, as a professor and as a consultant, Roger has been helping OD practitioners and leaders reflect on and improve their practice. President of Roger Schwarz & Associates, he is author of The Skilled Facilitator and coauthor of The Skilled Facilitator Fieldbook. He considers himself a practical idealist, helping leaders and teams live their values to create better results and relationships.
Edie and Charlie Seashore have been working together for 53 years, after meeting in a T-group in Bethel in 1957. In recent years, they have focused on various aspects of Use-of-Self, and they will talk about how we access the “adult” lurking within ourselves during times of major change and growth. Co-authors of a book on feedback entitled, What Did You Say? The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback, Charlie is currently the Malcolm Knowles Chair in Adult Learning in the Fielding Graduate University Human and Organizational Development program, and Edie has been active in developing with Michael Broom the Triple Impact Practitioner/Leadership programs using some of the key concepts from her book Triple Impact Coaching, which she wrote with Beverley Patwell. She is co-founder of the American University/NTL Master’s Program in Organization Development, and they have taught in the program for the last 30 years. Both Edie and Charlie are recipients of OD Network’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
David Sibbet is founder of The Grove Consultants International, a 33-year- old, full service OD consulting, design, training, and publishing company. He is author of its Facilitation Series, Strategic Visioning Process, Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance System, Intercultural Learning Model, Sustainable Organizational Model, and Compass line of tools for personal visioning. He is well known for bringing design thinking and visualization to the field. Since 1976 he was worked with application of Arthur M. Young’s Theory of Process to the field, as a comprehensive operating system underlying all Grove tools. He received the Anodos Award in 1998 for leadership in the practical application of the Theory of Process, and the OD Network Members’ Choice Award for Innovative and Cutting Edge Practice in the field of OD in 2007. His new book, Visual Meetings, arrives in August from Wiley & Sons. In this session, he’ll share how the Theory of Process has functioned as a gyrocompass for his work.
Miriam Lewin, Kurt Lewin's daughter, and Michael Papanek, Lewin's grandson, will be leading a very personal overview of Kurt Lewin as a husband, father, and teacher, while linking his life and work to today's practice of OD. Lewin's work was driven by a combination of his interest in developing the science of psychology beyond the limits of his time, and his personal family experiences. Miriam Lewin, after obtaining her Ph. D. in Social Psychology from Harvard, was a professor at Manhattenville College in New York. She has published two books and numerous articles, and presented at Lewin conferences around the world. Michael Papanek, her son, is principal consultant at Michael Papanek Consulting. Join Miriam and Michael to see original films and other artifacts from Lewin's life, and to discuss how Kurt Lewin's work still inspires and influences us today.
Windows on the World
Appreciative Leadership: Unleashing Positive Power for the Greater Good
The world has changed. Approaches to leadership that served in the past do not stir the spirit of the twenty-first century highly diverse, multigenerational work force. Our experience and research suggests that Appreciative Leadership does. Emerging at the nexus of Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Psychology, and the Strengths Movement, Appreciative Leadership is the relational capacity to mobilize creative potential and turn it into positive power—to set in motion positive ripples of confidence, energy, enthusiasm, and performance—to make a positive difference in the world. In this workshop we will present the Five Core Strategies of Appreciative Leadership, and we’ll share stories from our experience as leading Appreciative Inquiry consultants, guide you in a series of experiential activities to discover your positive core and domain of positive power, and enhance your repertoire of Appreciative Leadership practices. Join us to explore how you can apply the relational strategies of Appreciative Leadership to address the most pressing issues of our time.
Diana Whitney, is best known for her innovative applications of Appreciative Inquiry—the revolutionary process she helped to develop and introduce in over 30 countries—to organization culture change, strategic planning, merger integration, and large-scale transformation. She is a founder of the Taos Institute, a Distinguished Consulting Faculty with Saybrook University, and a fellow of the World Business Academy. Amanda Trosten-Bloom is a widely acclaimed consultant, master trainer, and energizing speaker, and a pioneer in the use of Appreciative Inquiry for high engagement, whole system change in business, nonprofit and community settings. Her award-winning work in high tech, service, manufacturing, and municipal sectors has been prominently featured in numerous books and articles.
OD and Social Justice: A Dialogue
How does working for the development of communities and organizations that provide inclusion, equity, access, and opportunity for all people relate to the work of OD? If OD involves effective and appropriate use of self, how can we foster change when the situation requires being conscious of the power dynamics that may either benefit us or diminish our agency in the system? Building on the contributions in the special issue of the OD Practitioner, “In Our Own Voices: the Contributions and Challenges of OD Practitioners of Color,” we invite you to a dialogue about OD and social justice with many of the contributors to that issue, including John Jenkins, Maria Ramos, Cortney Cahill, Daisy Rios, Rick Huntley, and Elfie Martinez. The session will be facilitated by co-editors Cathy Royal and John Vogelsang.
Cathy Royal is a human and organization development practitioner who specializes in Quadrant Behavior Theory, Appreciative Inquiry, and social justice. John Vogelsang, the Editor of the OD Practitioner, is a Visiting Professor at the SIT Graduate Institute, and Coordinator of the Ethnic, Racial, and Religious Understanding Project at Queens College/CUNY.
Illuminating the Shadow Organization: A Systemic Approach to Diagnosing and Improving Culture and Informal Networks
Organizational performance is driven by the things that we can see and directly influence—strategy, structure, and systems—but also by things that we cannot see, e.g., culture, employee motivation, and informal networks. Reya Group Founding Partners Jeremiah Lee and Jesse Price, along with Iman Stratenus, Managing Director, TNT China, will co-present Reya Group’s proprietary research and technology toolkit for mapping and managing culture and informal networks in order to drive organizational performance. This session will include a case study on TNT’s China organization of 3,000 employees, highlighting key insights, large-scale engagement methods, and business outcomes.
Jeremiah Lee and Jesse Price founded Shanghai-based Reya Group in 2008 as a unique organizational research and consulting practice, providing change management services to large international companies and developing cutting edge research tools. Iman Stratenus is the Managing Director of TNT International Express in China and has previously held key positions for TNT in throughout Asia and at Group Head Office.
New Realities and Their Impact on Change Work: How Might Our Culturally Diverse Society Influence our Current Theories of Change?
Our global world is very culturally and ethnically diverse, and the multiplicity of cultures and the depth of our differences can prove to be very challenging when we’re working to promote and guide change. To acknowledge this complexity, in this session we’ll examine the question, “When seeking to evoke change within diverse organizations and communities, do change agents, in particular, need a special kind of cultural awareness?” If so, how do we gain this awareness as we engage in OD initiatives? As we explore these questions, we’ll also consider the consequences that can and often do result when we use familiar intervention strategies in culturally and ethnically diverse situations without focused, sophisticated cultural awareness. We’ll conclude our conversation with recommendations for helping practitioners develop and use a more culturally sensitive approach to change.
Christopher Easley, is an Associate Professor of Management at Governors State University, and an organization development consultant. Prior to her academic role, she spent over 20 years in the corporate sector as a consultant-leader in managerial and directorship positions in operations, human resources, and organization development. She received her BA degree in Psychology and Master’s Degree in Industrial Relations, from Loyola University of Chicago, and her Ph.D. in Organization Development from Benedictine University. She is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Divinity at Chicago Theological Seminary.
iPods & Organization Structures: How the Fields of Design & OD Can Strengthen Each Other
What do iPods & effective organizations have in common? Both are the result of the intentional creation of an authentic emotive experience. Peter Block, in his OD Network Conference 2009 keynote, encouraged OD professionals to integrate design thinking into their work in the 21st century. Tim Brown, CEO of global design firm IDEO, recently asked, “Can organizations be beautiful?” This talk aims to answer this question by exploring the values, principles, and challenges that the design and OD fields share in common, and the ways in which the theories and methods of each can strengthen the other. In the clinic portion of this event, the co-facilitators will guide participants to apply design thinking and methods to live OD scenarios.
Tonya M. Peck and Alex M. Dunne have a combined 40+ years experience designing, growing, and managing successful product teams in the US and Europe, largely by focusing on the growth and development of people. Their work as program managers, trainers, facilitators, and consultants has assisted companies in the US and Europe, such as American Standard, Audi, Elsevier, JPMorgan, Microsoft, and Razorfish. Tonya holds a B.A. in International Business from American University, and an M.A. in Applied Behavioral Science from LIOS/Bastyr University. Alex holds a B.A. in Regional Science from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.A. in Applied Behavioral Science from LIOS/Bastyr University.
Getting to the Table: How to Ensure that Executives Seek You Out on Strategic Changes
Research shows that 60-70% of major change efforts fail, a statistic that was true ten years ago and is still true today. What is needed for major change to succeed, and why do OD practitioners not get called to the table when major efforts are launched? Who does get called? Project Management? Change Management? Big external consulting firms? But if these professionals are obviously not providing all that’s required for success, what is it that OD can and should provide? This session explores how to re-brand OD to support executives to deliver greater results from change, and up-skill our change work at the enterprise level through addressing the essential human, process, and systems dynamics at play—the very dynamics causing change to fail. It will introduce the new language and idea of strategic change consulting, and how to build organizational change capability through leading change as a strategic discipline. This session pushes the edge of our practice.
Linda Ackerman Anderson is the Vice President and Co‐Founder of Being First, Inc. and a published thought leader in the area of organizational transformation. Creator of The Change Leader’s Roadmap, a renowned methodology used in organizations worldwide, and author of Beyond Change Management and The Change Leader's Roadmap, she brings more than 30 years of experience, best practices, and practical insights to her work in Conscious Transformation. Throughout her career Linda has created and authored numerous other guidebooks, tools, resources, and articles for executives, leaders and consultants to change. Linda’s clients include; United Way of America, Wachovia, PeaceHealth Hospital System, The Canadian Park Service, The Nature Conservancy, Hewlett-Packard, Lockheed Martin, and many more. Linda’s ongoing coaching with executives, gives her a unique understanding of the challenges faced when implementing large and small scale transformations. By combining inspiration with information, Linda’s work is both dynamic and empowering. Her knowledge of best‐practices is blended with current events to provide a mix of practical tools, humor, and inspired thought.