Couldn't resist taking forward this conversation that Terry started with his compelling post titled Monsters and Change Agents.

Before I take a swing at this, here's what some of the OD rock stars have to say about this topic (Cummings & Worley, 2005, pg. 61):

"Gordon Lippitt suggested that the real question is the following: Assuming that some kind of change is going to occur anyway, doesn't the consultant have a responsibility to try and guide the change in the most constructive fashion possible?"

"Argyris takes an even stronger stand, maintaining that the responsibilities of professional OD practitioners to clients are comparable to those of lawyers or physicians, who, in principle, may not refuse to perform their services. He suggests that the very least the consultant can do is provide first aid to the organization, as long as the assistance does not compromise the consultant's values."

Argyris of course uses the provocative example of the KKK, and says that the consultant should at least determine if the client is interested in a self-assessment and willing to undergo all that it entails.

But I don't think all OD consultants wield the same kind of influence as Lippitt and Argyris, which might have made it easier for them to make this point as strongly as they did. For most of us, the choice often comes down to being clubbed with the devil, or worse, being reduced to bystanders as a change effort goes horribly wrong. Plus, very often, we underestimate the emotional strain it puts on us as OD professionals, when we work with people who don't buy into basic humanistic values.

No easy answers here. Would we want to work with such clients? At a certain level, of course! Isn't that why good girls always fall for the bad guys-- we are so sure our love and devotion will make 'em shiny and new. Does it work? I don't think so. People change when they want to change. When they are willing to do the work it takes to become a better person, manager or leader.

The important thing I guess, is to know what we are getting into, and be completely clear about our own intentions and the outcomes we should or can expect. And from a process point of view, spending a lot more time on the contracting phase of consulting would be a good idea too.

Another important question here would be to ask, who do we define as monsters in our profession? How can we tell if we 're just being finicky, or the person at the door really does spell trouble in capital letters?

Back to you Terry

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: organization development - ethical dilemmas - value conflict - difficult clients

US scientist heralds 'artificial life' breakthrough:

"Controversial celebrity US scientist Craig Venter has announced he is on the verge of creating the first ever artificial life form which he hails as a potential remedy to illness and global warming.

Venter told Britain's The Guardian newspaper Saturday that he has built a synthetic chromosome using chemicals made in a laboratory, and is set to announce the discovery within weeks, possibly as early as Monday. [...]

The chromosome which Venter and his team has created is known as Mycoplasma laboratorium and, in the final step of the process, will be transplanted into a living cell where it should "take control," effectively becoming a new life form."

It hasn't been done yet, so who knows what'll come out of it (I'm still fighting the sci-fi images of weird creatures taking over earth). This could be one provocative debate. The one thing this does highlight for me is that, the more advances we make in technology, without backing them up with evolution in our behavior and maturity, the closer we come to endangering ourselves.

Thoughts?

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: news - science - artificial life - technology - morality - ethics - balance

The strong winds create a visceral howl,
Swaying the branches of those strong boughs.
A thunder clap, and then the sound of rain,
Its clattering mixed with a fragrance quaint.

I watch through my window, our jackfruit tree.
It's leaves dance, as if struggling to go free.
I hear my mum rush around the house,
Securing windows- so nothing gets doused.

I break my glance from the view outside,
And another memory begins to rise.

The foothills of Himalayas majestically stretch out,
Each glorious range, lovingly draped in clouds.
We're hiking along these spectacular slopes,
Spell bound by this vista, its scale, its scope.

As the image fades, another strain from yon-
My smile speaks of hearts lost and won…

My eyes bewitched by the boy on my side,
We're walking through sunlight, filtered through pines…
The gentle breeze adding a blush to my cheeks,
Carrying our laughter, so that it ain't caught by peeps.

The sweet memory from a decade ago-
Makes way for the next one in the flow...

My then sweetheart, now life partner smiles,
He's watching me run along his side,
I'm playing with the waves, as they fall and rise,
Looking at the imprints we leave behind…

Each memory made sweeter by bonds of love,
Sheltered by nature, nay, nurtured by her…
The mountains, the lakes, the beaches, the trees,
The rain, the wind, adding life to my dreams.

I come from the earth, to her I shall return,
She's made each moment worthwhile for me.
I hope she says the same, when its time for me to sleep.

PS: Some posts around the issue of conserving energy and saving our planet  that I've written over the past year and a half:

What can you do?
Disobedience, Creativity and Light bulbs
Way to go Aussies!
This bulb's going off
Finally-Biodegradable Plastic!
The Good and the Bad

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: blog action day - environment - nature - love - duty - joy - harmony

About a month back Gautam talked about work life balance on his blog and identified two groups of people. The first are those who are intrinsically motivated by their jobs, they love doing what they do, spend long hours on it and cannot differentiate between work and other parts of their life. The second group works because work provides them material comforts, for them work is a means to an end, and they seek to create a boundary between their job and the joys outside of it.

I think there is a third group. The group that loves doing what they do, and yet wants to have a life. And before I jump into the why's how's and what's of this discussion, let me caveat it by saying that I belong to this group. And no doubt, my being married has a lot to do with it. In the first couple of years of my career, I worked like a maniac. I did so, because I loved my job. The 14 hours a day were a pure adrenalin rush, and I was learning so much that it made me want to sing (yeah, I know, geek!). I still love what I do, and I'm still learning new stuff, and on some days it still makes me want to sing. But I don't want to work 14 hours a day. Maybe my friend and professor, Dr. Paul Yost is right. Maybe, a lot of what we are and how we behave depends upon the stage of life we're in.

However, this creates a huge conundrum for organizations, doesn't it? How does one create systems that cater to these diverse groups of people? Those who work because they have to, those who work because they just can't help it and those who work for the love of it, but want to be able to enjoy the blue sky too.

That's an important question, but I don't think most organizations are ready to ask that question yet. I think for most part, organizations are so wedded to the notion of long work hours indicating dedication and job commitment, that they just want all their employees to model that behavior. A case in point is Steven Smith's blog post titled Full Time for Half Time Work? 

I could sit here and pull out one research after another, that shows that job flexibility and work-life balance friendly policies increase job satisfaction and performance. I could point you to Best Buy's clock-less work style and its compelling results. I could reason with you and demonstrate that healthier, relaxed employees makes good economic sense. But I'm not going to do any of that.

Instead I'm going to proposition that we all need to take our heads out of the account books for a bit and take a hard look at the world view we are creating and working by. You see, people don't exist to make organizations successful. Quite on the contrary, organizations exist to further society and the happiness of the people who live in it.

And once we've turned this mirror upside down, it seems insane that we have to convince organizations to focus on work life balance issues.

It took a long while for organizations to start thinking about their impact on the environment. And we're still a long way from where our sustainability efforts should be. I hope it doesn't take as long for us to start thinking about how our organizational actions impact the families that our connected to us, the children who are raised in those families, and societal health and harmony that hinges on us.

 Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: work life balance - employee satisfaction - organizational citizenship - employee health - happiness at work

If you're as fond of reading Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman and Maureen Dowd as I am- then you've gotta be jumping with joy.

Here's Daily Tech's appraisal on New York Time's move to open up its select columns. I just set up rss's for the columns. I like this new addition to my morning reading.

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: free content - new york times - columns - rss

 I love social networks. I love them because they have so much potential in terms of allowing people to organize themselves. Its amazing. Well at least to an organizational psychologist. Once you hand over control to a community, you can sit back and watch people take initiative, feel enabled and every once in a while create something wonderful.

Up until now though, social networks have been mainly limited to two categories.

1. The first are the generic, get your profile up on a known universe kind that you can use to stay connected with friends. Orkut, facebook, myspace etc belong to this group (I have to point out though, that facebook allows you to do a lot more than just exchange messages and pictures, that too in a privacy sensitive manner).
2. The second are the specialized networks created by organizations that can afford to pay for custom services, and are hence beyond the reach of niche groups, who simply want to get together, collaborate and feed off each others' ideas. Free services from the archaic web era, like msn and yahoo groups, fall woefully below standards in terms of facilitating conversations and energy.

Well now, people have options. In an article on TechCrunch titled 9 Ways to Build Your Own Social Network, Mark Hendrickson outlines several free services that allow you to organize around niche interests and passions.

I've been looking to create a private social network for a peer mentoring effort for a while. I tried Kickapps and Ning, but since Kickapps doesn't offer private networks, we finally went with Ning, and I have to say are soooo glad for it.

If Kathy Sierra was still blogging, I bet she could've used the Ning team as a case study in how to create passionate users! Ning has created a platform that scales beautifully, both in terms of number of users, and expertise of the administrator, allowing immense customization to the html+css (php is a bonus!) literate. They work on two week release cycles, which means that every two weeks the users can expect a gift of fresh features, in large part driven by the wish lists that the users themselves submit. I love it!

Considering the web is still in the process of maturing, I can think of a lot of websites/blogs that would be better served by a social networking platform. Plus starting an open social network can be a great way to market a new product or service. By the by, I was pleasantly surprised to find a RecruitingBlogs community at ning-- and even though it has feeds from Recruiting.com all over it, I dunno how related the two sites are. 

Anyhow, if you're part of a small organization or simply a group of people looking for a collaboration boost, go ahead get a social network for yourself. A network on ning, combined with the share your files widget from www.box.net provide quite a powerful suite to get the brainstorming going!

Not to mention, that these are great tools for learning/development specialist to have in their kit. If your primary job is to facilitate interaction and flow of ideas, then as an OD person, it really helps to know this stuff.

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: free social networks - collaboration - ning - kickapps - community - ideas - creating passionate users - self-organization - enabling people - facilitating learning

Metaphorically. Check out Prasad's post titled Career planning and the myth of Sisyphus. Prasad offers a great analogy for the current state of career development initiatives in a majority of organizations & triggers an animated comment thread.

Anish, one of the commenters, talks about the failure of career management to curb the double digit attrition figure in Indian IT firms. And while the maturity of the employee demographic definitely seems to be a common thread of concern, he also highlights the fact that a lot of attrition occurs due to factors beyond the company's control.

I remember similar results in a project with an ITeS firm. A lot of employees were treating the company as a parking place, while they figured out ways of moving onto brighter career prospects. The problem was that the learning curve (time taken for the employee to perform the task profitably) was way longer than the average time in which the new hires were quitting.

I feel this problem tends to afflict those jobs more which are not perceived as meaningful, or capable of providing a sense of identity to the worker. Richard Hackman talks about this in his book Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances. He contrasts the emotions a worker in a toast factory might feel if she were attaching plugs in toasters day after day, versus putting together a complete toaster. Doing the latter, she might be able to tell her children how she puts together toasters so that families, and kids like them, can have a wonderful breakfast each day. 

The thing is, some jobs have just that much scope, and someone's gotta do them. How do we retain people in those roles? On another note, is it fair to want to keep people in limited roles, wouldn't a model based on regular churn be more applicable?

For call center jobs in India, I feel, it might be worth the effort to invest money in teaching language skills to people for whom this job offers entry into a whole different social strata. For people from underdeveloped and infrastructurally lacking social segments, the job might offer a sense of pride and accomplishment which compensates for the repetitiveness of the role.

Thoughts?

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: career development - training - learning and development - Indian IT Companies - ITeS sector - attrition - ideas for call centers - meaningful work - socially oriented training efforts

Check out the tafiti search engine- and make sure you see the tree view of the results. Impressive.

Notes for the developers:

- the tree view would be a lot more useful if I could rotate it myself

- If the branches actually bunched up search results based on some parameters, e.g., pages linked to one another, talking about the same topic, date of publication etc.

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: beta - search engine - silverlight - tafiti - cool interface

The Happiness Manager at Walking Down The Path of Organization 2.0 has written a really well articulated post titled Happiness @ Work is Possible. I really like her premise, and I believe she's gotten it just right:

Happiness @ work happens when there is enough meaningful work for everyone to do.

The post goes on to identify conditions which must be fulfilled for workplaces to be happier and more productive. I would only like to add that for all of these things to take root there must be an understanding that the organization is commonly owned by all it's members, and not just by the people at the helm. Terry's post on what's a real company captures it well, he quotes Kenny Moore:

 At its core, company is about meaning, purpose and mutual support. Many of today’s businesses had their origins around like-minded individuals coming together to support and nurture each other in starting a labor of love.

Now that's a company I'd work at, wouldn't you?

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I like these two posts from the Death to the Internal Marketing blog, (here and here; also really neat banner Kevin!) offering counter points to the view that blogs are providing a platform to amateurs to not only desecrate English language but also compromise professional expertise.

Here are snippets I particularly enjoyed reading:

So what if blogging, teens texting and the evolution of the language squash all those things Miss Snodgrass drummed into our heads in English class.  We’ll always have the language as it existed at any given time (we can re-read Shakespeare and Orwell whenever we want).  Those who bemoan the loss of the language stand like King Canute while the tide passes them by.  It amuses me that those protesting the loudest are those who consider themselves “writers” — the elite.

Of course, there is a lot of crap out there.  But there is also a lot of stunning discourse, wonderful creativity and ideas being shared by those who would never have had a way to be seen and heard.

Another gem:

We no longer need to rely on a “limited number” of opinions — if we ever have.  But we can make the space to accommodate a new set of outsourced thinkers.  Just as I can filter out the noise of the supermarket, the hundreds of pasta sauces and soups and 24 kinds of mustard, I can also filter the bloggers and pretty quickly assess who I decide to value and who I can safely filter out.

So, definitively, the more the merrier.  I trust my critical faculties.  Bring on another million bloggers.

Very well said!

Email Me      |        Technorati Tags: andrew keen - cult of amateurs - amateurs - death to internal marketing - bloggers - elitism - wisdom of the crowds