What are you learning now? Part 1: design, leadership, change

OSR graduates responded to this question in our latest survey. The first installment of the results features design, leadership and change.

Design

“I am constantly reminded that groups facing new circumstances and challenges benefit from the structures and design of good meetings and planning efforts. Thoughtfully designed and facilitated meetings allow participants to focus on the topics before them, no matter how sophisticated the group may have been in previous endeavors. I am regularly reminded how confused, anxious, and uncomfortable people can be when faced with unexpected challenges."

"How to integrate engineering-sourced development processes with transformational ones"

"Because the pace in business has accelerated dramatically, sometimes there is very short term thinking which leads to less than desirable decision-making."

"Managing contracts, facilitating truth telling with compassion and attunement and embracing conflict for creative work"

"Using graphic facilitation"

"Rather than complex designs to enable the false promise of simplicity, I am learning to design simply to affect the complexity inherent in the issues that required design in the first place."

Leadership

"The Toyota Way describes a method of continuous process improvement that itself becomes a method of leadership development, which truly empowers leadership at all levels. One can apply this method either locally (point improvements) or systemically, and I've been engaged in both and see how powerful systemic change can be."

"Influencing decision-makers from a position of no power"

"I am delving more deeply into the role of leadership in complex change and continue my study of self as intervention, how focusing on one's own authentic intentions can be a useful instrument for positive change."

"Interested in complexity leadership theory and the application to current challenges."

Change

"Designing and leading systemic organizational change is hard. The bigger and more entrenched the system, the harder the task. I wish that we had spent more time talking about how to truly assess an organization's readiness to engage in the change process. I am also finding that the system that I am currently working in is using the economy as a justification for abandoning systemic change efforts."

"The economy will impact how an organization changes — training and OD are the first to go in a poor economy. Each organization/industry has its own approach to change i.e. corporate, government and schools, etc."

"How I can personally contribute to change"

"Exploring your theory of change and helping groups learn to do this is very important. People want practical short-term improvements first and fast. They want quick wins and this helps build credibility for the longer-term system changes."

"It's much harder in person... Resistance cannot be underestimated."

"I'm learning how hungry people are to make sense of change, to embrace change, and to make things better. I'm learning (see David Whyte's new book) that work and life and relationships are woven or married, not things to be juggled or balanced. I learning (again and again) that my job is to first and above all meet my clients where they are."

"How valuable Heifetz' concept of adaptive challenges is when working with groups"

"As I watch Obama's administration try to enact national and international change at such an enormous scale, I am thinking every day about the challenges in trying to change existing systems. I am learning that systems emerge and evolve to meet spoken and unspoken needs and that they serve both obvious and unseen masters. I continue to learn how hard it is for individuals, groups and nations to talk about the full scope of why change needs to happen and what the responsibilities and consequence are of designing, implementing and leading change."

"Human factors are the biggest barrier to quick and sustainable change."

"More on interventions, self-organizing groups, internal work needed for leadership, organizational culture"

"I am learning that it is an ongoing and continual work in progress. There is nothing static. Everything changes. We adapt, or we can't survive. It is the most worthwhile work in the entire corporate arena!"

"It's still very difficult to take leadership eyes off of technical solutions and pay some attention to process, and human change needs. My application of the learning from OSR largely revolves around change management, and setting up the structure to make change happen effectively. It's still a difficult sell to get such work funded, even though there is clear recognition of the need."

"Currently there are many departments going through major structural changes, so there is very little designing as much as reacting."

"I’m learning that organizations are very effective at resisting change and that if you are inside an organization, you can try as hard as you might and still not be successful as a change agent. I guess you have to then change yourself first."

Part 2: complexity, connection, unique situations
Part 3: agility to spirituality
Part 4: applying the learning