Barry Oshry has been a pioneer in the field of human social systems, attempting to unlock the perplexity of power and powerlessness in organisational life. Within the OD Laboratory, he will present his renowned Organization Workshop. Working intuitively and dynamically, Barry will help participants consider why partnership is critical to their own organisational success, what gets in the way of developing it, and the integral role they must play in making organisational partnerships happen. Taking roles as top executives, middle managers, workers and customers interacting in a fast-paced environment, participants will be enlightened by a high-energy approach that is grounded in pragmatic strategic frameworks.
What are the key benefits for individuals and organisations of your Organization Workshop?
Basically it provides people with the understanding that enables them to work effectively up, down, and across organisational lines. It clears away many of the myths and misunderstandings people carry with them about people in other parts of the organisation. The result is less frustration, less anger, less misdirected energy. There is more cooperation and mutual support. More of the energy of the system is directed where it needs to be directed.
What for you has been the most significant development in OD that you feel people need to focus on?
Obviously others will have their own answer to that question. For me, the needed transition is from the personal to the systemic. It’s akin to an evolutionary step that we are groping toward. And it’s not easy. The personal is reflexive; we don’t think about it, choose it; we simply go that way. When things go wrong, we blame the other or ourselves or our clash of personalities. And if our diagnoses are personal so will be our solutions: fix, fire, rotate, therapise, separate, divorce. Only too often the fixes don’t fix anything.
For example, in the workshop we see the regularly recurring relationship issues that develop amongst Tops – turf; among
Middles – alienation; and among Bottoms - groupthink. To deal with these issues from a personal perspective is pointless and fruitless. The issues are not personal, they are systemic. And if we are able to make that leap from personal to systemic, we are in a position to transform indifference and strife into partnership that is satisfying to the members and productive for the organisation.
What’s the benefit to the OD consultant?
The OD consultant is likely to work with people in all of these worlds – Top, Middle, and Bottom, and with Customers too. And the OD consultant – like the rest of us – is vulnerable to falling victim to the personal bias, that is, explaining problems in terms of the personal characteristics of the players. The workshop gives the OD consultant a human systems framework for understanding and intervening in these worlds along with concrete strategies. As consultants it is too easy for us to be evaluative of our clients – if only they saw the world as clearly as we do. The workshop can give the OD consultant more heart and head in dealing with their clients, more empathy with their worlds and more wisdom as to how to survive and thrive in those worlds.
That’s quite a tall order. Can you give us some sense of how this happens?
The workshop has the effect of turning a light on in a dark room when you thought the light was already on. Here’s what I mean. A key element of the workshop is an intense organisation exercise. We create an organisation of Tops, Middles, and Bottoms interacting with Customers and potential Customers during turbulent times. Participants are randomly assigned to these positions. The exercise enables people to experience directly the dilemmas Tops, Middles, Bottoms, and Customers experience daily. The action begins and the interactions are very familiar to participants. But what is different is that here – through a variety of techniques - we are able to look into each of these worlds. What are the unique issues, dilemmas, and choices Tops are facing? What are the Bottoms dealing with? What are the Middle experiencing as they attempt to navigate between requests, demands, initiatives coming at them from Tops and Bottoms? And how is all of this affecting the Customers? This is where the myths and misunderstandings melt away; we get a more accurate understanding of others’ actions or inactions. It becomes clear: much that seems personal in organisational life is not personal. And once we grasp that critical principle we are in a position to deal empathically and realistically with one another, opening up the possibilities of productive partnership.