Explaining Stuff With Organization Development
My next blogpost is coming, and it's written through the lens of OD
September 9, 2022
It’s not that you have something to say. It’s that you find out what you have to say.
—Austin Kleon, Author
Top News
I’ve added a perpetual header under the What I Learned This Week section. Explaining Stuff is an important skill I need to keep honing, so I’ll make myself accountable for its progress.
Much progress has been made on my latest blogpost entitled, Should. It will be a focus on an organization development (OD) phrase I learned about 10 years ago, “never should on someone.” The reader or listener and I will
…look at OD as the ultimate yet conspicuously if not metaphorically undefined consultative discipline in business. From there, we'll learn how supplanting another's position with vehemence is an encroachment upon someone else's situation. Ultimately, we'll bring the concept of should into the management arena (NOTE: it doesn't fit).
Supporting the Ambitions of Others
Sometimes it takes a different message sender to explain the same message already received.
I prompted acknowledgement in a coworker to an eye-opening coaching he/she had received. A manager had made a special effort to coach him/her. (‘Am really proud of that Associate. Bright future.)One bit of feedback received from my video prototype, How To Figure Out What To Do For Your Career, was celebration worthy. The person said it really made him/her think about how his/her approach needs to change, that doing nothing is bad.
A coworker with whom I’ve been having a running conversation over the past month or so thanked me for clarity. He/She is constantly attempting to reconcile scenarios experienced versus how situations make him/her feel or react versus how to manage a response.
A former mentor of mine used to tell me. When I asked the same question I was asked this week, “How do you know what to do?”, he would turn his shoulder to show his back and say imaginatively, “‘You see these scars?” I have failed…a LOT. I’m glad my own failures can generate advancements for others.On the flip side, my successes were of use to someone I have found myself coaching to develop his business. He has a brilliant mind, an openness to ideas, an immeasurable work ethic, and a passion unlike most. I know he’ll be successful. I’ll segue this point into the next section…
What I Learned This Week
Explaining Stuff
Regarding the fourth point from Supporting the Ambitions of Others, I shared how I networked when an independent consultant. The activity spawned all sorts of opportunities, connections and resulting outcomes that money could not buy.
Doing so, I was reminded of my theory on how to learn.
Try and fail.
Mimic others who already have or can.
Teach or explain the topic.
That Austin Kleon quote I recount every week is really meaningful to me. “It’s not that you have something to say. It’s that you find out what you have to say.” My future explainer videos aren’t just for others. They’re for me, too!
How Hard It Is To Be A Good Manager
Authors Jim Detert, Kevin Kniffin, and Hannes Leroy co-authored a real keeper of an article in the Fall 2022 MIT Sloan Management Review, “Saving Management From Our Obsession With Leadership.” I liked how grounded this article was. For instance, how about this interesting fact about the Great Resignation:
The COVID-19 pandemic might have created a tipping point for what people will or won’t put up with at work, but it has not created or significantly changed the underlying problems — they’ve been widespread for a long time.
Why are these problems so ubiquitous and enduring? Because organizations and top teams downplay or ignore how hard it is simply to be a good manager — to skillfully hire, engage, develop, coach, supervise, evaluate, and promote people.1
Dialogic Organization Development (OD)
I had never heard of Dialogic OD until this week. The Organization Development Network (https://www.odnetwork.org/) has an insightful table and description of this other form of OD. I'm much more of a subscriber to it than the traditional Diagnostic OD.
A few of the highlights2 that I found to be discoveries amid my own experience were
Instead of “reality being an objective fact,” “reality is socially constructed.”
Instead of “truth is transcendent and discoverable,” “truth is immanent and emerges from the situation.”
Instead of “collecting and applying valid data using objective problem-solving methods leads to change,” “creating containers and processes to produce generative ideas leads to change.”
Instead of “emphasis on changing behavior and what people do,” “emphasis [is] on changing mindsets and what people think.”
For readers who are intrigued by Dialogic OD, hop onto YouTube and type in ‘appreciative inquiry’. ‘Doesn’t get more down-is-up and up-is-up than that! Positive positivity. Great stuff.
Working With Others
I’ve reached out to several businesses and organizations whose work and production may be of interest to this audience. With permission to share their content and commentary, I will bring their products and services to this newsletter. It’s an ongoing process and ultimately their decision. Stay tuned, though, because not only will you be exposed to their work, you’ll learn more about how I create Danny Rehr’s Blog and all of its brands.
Other News & Updates
What I Do Has A Name
I’m a Creatorpreneur.
While Danny Rehr’s Blog has no profit model—Buy Me A Coffee is an exception that takes donations—I do fit this definition by Ali Abdaal.
A Creatorpreneur leverages the principles of business and entrepreneurship to turn their creative side hustle into a sustainable and scalable business. 🥳3
My First (real) Explainer Video Will Be…
My first (real) explainer video will be a graphical take on my July 20 blogpost, Failure. I like its message. It’s simple and direct. And its challenge to hand over to the graphical medium should be right-sized for my animation video production abilities at this time. I won’t get started until I’m done with my current drafting of Should.
Upcoming Quotes and/or Graphics
From my upcoming blogpost, Should, here’s a quote and a graphic (subject to change):
Only in quantum physics can something be in two places at once. Here on Earth's human scale, we try our best through busyness, competing priorities, or positional interactions with one another. I want to highlight interactions with one another to prove a point: imposition or transcendence of one's personal ambition unto another is a violation.
Detert, Jim et al. "Saving Management From Our Obsession With Leadership". MIT Sloan Management Review, 2022, https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/saving-management-from-our-obsession-with-leadership/. Accessed 30 Aug 2022.
Organization Development Network. "What Is Dialogic OD". Dialogic OD | What Is Dialogic OD, https://www.odnetwork.org/page/dialogic-od. Accessed 3 Sept 2022.
Abdaal, Ali. "Who Should You Hire First?". Creatorpreneur Newsletter via Email. Received 8 Sept 2022.