Business academic David Needle describes organisational culture as the collective beliefs, values and principles of its members, a dynamic and evolving habitat that arises out of the continually bubbling brew of history, product, market, management style, type of...
Let’s look at the third step of Professors Beshears’ and Gino’s change management model: understanding the underlying causes of the defined problem. Two questions are critical here: is the problem mainly due to people failing to act (i.e. insufficient motivation), or...
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”...
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...
We’re so accustomed to thinking in terms of the problem-solving mentality that we can be blind to what’s working well in our lives and our organisations. That statement lies at the core of a new, Gestalt-inspired approach to organisational development, dubbed by its...
Organisational change is unavoidable, but what enables people to support change, and what leads them to resist it? How do leaders and managers keep employees engaged during a change process? A principle from Gestalt psychology is crucial: don’t pathologize employee...