If you’re new here, start with the cornerstone pieces and work outwards.
Generativity: Appreciative Inquiry’s new method of transformation, Part 2
In a seminal paper of 1978, the social psychologist Kenneth J. Gergen argued that normal scientific assumptions couldn’t be applied to the study of human relationships; they simply couldn’t achieve the prediction and control they’d accomplished in the so-called “hard”...
Decision-making, behaviour change and thinking about thinking (Part 1)
There’s a curious fact about decision-making: most of us often make the wrong ones. If you’re trying to decide what to order at a restaurant, the consequences probably won’t be that severe. However, if you’re in a leadership role and you’re trying to enhance employee...
Organisational development: working with complexity and the unexpected, Part 2
In complex open systems such as organisations, the classical logic of linear causality (in which a cause leads to a proportional effect) just doesn’t work. Organisational development and change are shaped by little interactions that have unexpectedly big effects. Tiny...
Organisational development: working with complexity and the unexpected
Organisational Development (OD) aims at healthy organisational change through harnessing a common value base and collaborative inquiry. In reality, however, organisational life, and change, turns out to be a lot messier and a lot more unpredictable. A traditional...
Why managers need systems thinking instead of boot camp drills
In 1909, Frederick Winslow Taylor wrote a book entitled The Principles of Scientific Management. The management approach now known as “Command and Control” was born. This has dominated vast numbers of businesses for decades. Taylor’s approach was the first to bring...
Want your team to be more productive? Concentrate on happiness
If you want your team to be more productive, focus on fostering as much happiness amongst them as possible. A new study in the Journal of Applied Behavioural Science found that organisations that promote positive and virtuous practices in the workplace outperform...
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