For the past several weeks, work has been progressing on the production of a special, OD-themed edition of the online journal e-Organisations and People (e-O&P). This has been put together in recognition of the upcoming 20th Anniversary of the formation of the OD Innovation Network (ODiN), which I helped to found in…

The Company's "Management in Five Acts" graphic features in a new book by the University of Hertfordshire's Head of Leadership and Organisational Development, Kevin Flinn. Entitled Leadership Development - A complexity perspective[1], the book presents a radical challenge to conventional leadership development methodologies. In a welcome contrast to the usual…

This post was first published in Informal Coalitions in October 2008, under the title: "Discipline in organizations - On 'hot stove rules', performance conversations, and an opportunity to learn" The October 2008 edition of Management Today bemoaned the fact that the management of discipline and poor performance in the workplace…

In Informal Coalitions, I mentioned the oft-quoted statistic that upwards of two-thirds of planned change programmes end in failure. In this case, I used Breaking the Code of Change, edited in 2000 by HBS professors Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria, as the source of the claim. No doubt we could…

As Peter Drucker (1) once said, To make strength productive is the unique purpose of organization. It cannot, of course, overcome the weaknesses with which each one of us is abundantly endowed. But it can make them irrelevant. Its task is to use the strength of each man as a…