O.D. Institute Newsletter

March 2010

What is New in OD Continues

Hi Terry – I read your note in the recent newsletter and have good news for you.  There is a lot new going on in OD.  There is a groundswell with Bob Marshak and the National Training Institute to shape the future of OD.  Here is the recent invitation I received (and accepted):

The NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science (NTL) is hosting a “Conference on the New OD” stimulated by the recent writings of Bob Marshak with some of his colleagues. These writings assert that there have been enough substantive new developments in the underlying premises and practices in the field of OD over the past 25 years to suggest that different forms of OD have evolved and should be recognized in the literature and teachings in the field.  

The conference will take place at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Maryland, from the evening of March 18th through noon of March 21st, 2010. Information about registration can be found on the web at www.ntl.org. As host and convener of the conference, NTL will be joined by several organizations that grew out of NTL roots – the AU/NTL MSOD graduate program; Case Western Reserve’s School of Organization Behavior; The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (JABS), and, The Lewin Center. In addition, this group will be joined by The Taos Institute.

On the evening of March 18th, Charles and Edith Seashore will open the conference. The Seashores will be joined by Barbara Bunker, Bailey Jackson and others, who have observed and written about how the field has grown and changed over the 60 years since Kurt Lewin and his colleagues began to study human behavior in groups. This will be an evening of stories about “roots” and the development of the field and will be an open forum for all to participate.

Bob Marshak will open the conference on the 19th with an in-depth explanation of the shifts and changes that are taking place in OD today. He will be joined in this open dialog session by colleagues, Gervase Bushe, Cliff Oswick and David Grant, who have worked with him to articulate the changes taking place in the field.

Later that afternoon, Ken and Mary Gergen, founders of The Taos Institute and pioneers in the articulation and spread of “social constructionist” theory, will present on the impact of that theory on human behavior in systems along with members of their board and other associates. This theory is a key component of Bob Marshak’s and other’s writings about the New OD.

With the history of OD as a field and the information about the shifts in both theory and practice in place, the participants will self-organize around topics of interest during the final 2 days of the conference. The idea is to have academics and practitioners create work groups for deep dialogue about these ideas and theories with a potential outcome being a presentation to a plenary session and, in many cases, articles written for a new publication about the question: What Is the New OD? Rather than asking for papers written in advance to be presented, the major focus will be on creating writing partnerships among the participants.

We invite you to join us for this exciting future-focused gathering that will be an important contribution to our field, and also to offer your insights and thoughts to this dialogue and to the conference itself. This is a gathering of scholars and practitioners committed to exploring and shaping the future of OD.

Karen Barrow, MSOD, RODC     

President

 www.baybridgeconsulting.com      

Editor’s note: The conference is now full, but Karen makes some good points.

What’s new in OD Continues

I had no sooner turned out last month’s newsletter and the NTL conference was brought to my attention.  I must admit that I am not as good as Don Cole was at tracking down and keeping in touch with other OD conferences.  I certain would like to have a volunteer to keep track of OD conferences.  Deb Pagel has done a great job with the jobs page as I am sure all of the readers of this newsletter can attest.  It would be helpful if someone would volunteer to scan the various OD sources and have a short section on upcoming conferences for the monthly newsletter.  It could include local and regional conferences as well as national ones.  Doing a regular monthly newsletter takes lots of work but is critical to an organization’s success.  I learned this lesson when I was working for cooperatives and attended a week-long workshop on cooperative newsletters.  The most important thing I learned form that conference was that a monthly newsletter was the most critical communication devises available to organizations.  Now with all the electronic media available many no doubt believe this not to be true.  However, I know that with all the electronic media available to me I ignore most of it, but read all the paper newsletters that I receive.  I believe that newsletters are still one of the most powerful tools for communicating.  I certainly use the internet for e-mails and looking up information but ignore the passive communication that comes my way; instead of it being interactive, like it is suppose to be, it just becomes  noise and background junk.

If you have anything you would like to publish in the newsletter on “What’s New in OD” please send it to the editor at odtrainer@aol.com.