Masterclass

Understanding Organisational Development

Led by – Chris Nutt

10.00 for 10.15 until 4.30 on 22nd April 2010
at One Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE

 

This one-day Master Class will be concerned with complementing conventional, structured thinking with a mindset that enables you to intervene more effectively in the flows of the real world.
There is a serious danger of over-simplification if in an attempt to make sense of OD we codify the purpose and process and understate the complexity and the critical part played by the practitioner.  This Master Class therefore avoids reducing an OD theme to (albeit coherent) statements of grand theory, and takes its task as understanding why, what and how you can learn from past experience and make an effective, practical difference in your current context.


Purpose
The Master Class offers you the opportunity to:
- Explore the cultural characteristics of your ‘organisation’ and your own preferences for the way you work within it, to change and sustain it for the better;
- Gain insights into OD as a philosophy and a toolkit that enables you to work up an approach that is good for you and your clients;
- Discover how to live with the complexities, be shrewd and practical as well as professional.


Scope
The day will deal with OD in any organisational situation and will cover practitioner interventions in projects and change programmes, and business as usual contexts.  The focus will be on the practitioner.
Although sometimes described as aspects of OD, the day will not focus on organisation design nor workforce planning, for which there are other events run by the Society.


Background
Change is endemic and yet is it difficult.   There have been many attempts to ‘master’ it!  However, the knowledge base is eclectic and draws on several, often competing, professional disciplines that adhere to distinct principles.
Although ill-defined, OD is currently being adopted and adapted as the preferred approach to change management within the HR & OD community.   But two contradictory approaches are promoted.  And neither is altogether reliable without the other.
a) Proponents of conventional OD in this professional community suppose that successful change must be planned, multi-disciplinary, continuous and iterative.  It is said that this is the way to deliver ‘predictable and logical’ outcomes.  This assumes that we can work it out in advance, that multiple practices operate in silos, that change is uninterrupted and that the steps in the change process can be repeated.   It goes on to assume that we can ‘see into the future’ and that we can impose our own ‘rationality’ on other cultures.
But the complex social dynamics found in organisations mean that when a planned process is applied, it is necessarily over simplified.  The cause-and-effect assumptions are limited in scope and can cope only with very short timescales.  
b) Proponents of contemporary OD therefore learn to embrace novelty which emerges from social interaction, to facilitate inter-disciplinary working, to recognise that stability is attractive too, and that we should also change the process according to new situations as they arise rather than repeat the steps.   Contemporary OD also stresses that we can learn to work successfully with and draw on unpredictable chaos and should appreciate the value of diverse cultures and not impose our own particular logic.
There are attractions in both the conventional and contemporary forms of OD.  It is not a case of either/or.  Rather it is both/and.   Conventional OD appears to be more appealing and aligned with formal corporate management systems and styles.   Contemporary OD helps us to engage with the informal cultures and to stimulate the transitions in the personal and social side of organisations.   They are quite different strategic approaches to OD and yet, since both are relevant, we must apply both, simultaneously.
This ‘Master Class’ should help you to gain insights from exploring the experience of OD, to understand the implications, and to use the varying approaches as complementary strategies.

 

The Speaker
Chris Nutt is an experienced OD Leader, Facilitator and Consultant to an array of large organisations internationally.   His corporate roles have included Head of HR, Operations & Systems Manager, Client Services Director, Business Development Director, Marketing Director and Change Programme Manager in some of our largest companies.  In each instance, the name of the role has somewhat disguised the actual core contribution which has been organisational development.
Chris is currently undertaking Doctorate research, based on six of his major change programmes, around the theme of corporate change leadership.
Chris Nutt is a Chartered Fellow, CIPD; Chairman, FiSSInG; and Managing Partner, Strategic improvement Services.  He has been Vice President of the HR Society for over a decade and until recently was a Trustee of the Strategic Planning Society.  More importantly, he would argue, he is the Chairman of a leading cricket club in the Essex League, in which he still plays. 


This event will take place at One Whitehall Place, London SW1A 2HE.  Coffee will be served from 10.00am for a 10.15 start and the day will end at 4.30pm.
The per-person fee for each event is £320 plus VAT for members of the HR Society, and £395 plus VAT for non-members. 
A 20% discount will apply to the second and subsequent participants from the same company attending any one event. 
The fee is inclusive of materials for the session, refreshments and a buffet lunch.


If you have any queries about this event or others in the HR Society Calendar please contact:
Lara Roberts, Programme Administrator
Tel: 01264 774004 ~ Fax: 01264 774009 ~ Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it