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...
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...
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...
Having acted as a consultant to many different businesses I appreciate that organisations are living entities; and like all living entities, they usually tend to notice what’s become a problem rather than what doesn’t need fixing. From the perspective of Gestalt...
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...
Writing in the Harvard Business Review, business consultant Ron Ashkenas claims that too many change managers don’t know the difference between change and transformation. The two terms seem to get muddled, Ashkenas argues. However, there are crucial differences...