Articles
Inclusion as the HOW® for The Next Organizational Breakthrough
Every massive social change calls for a breakthrough in the way organizations work. In today's big shift-from the industrial economy to the knowledge era-that breakthrough must focus on the interactions between people: HOW they connect to unleash their ideas and creativity for success in a challenging marketplace. To address this issue, Inclusion as the HOW establishes new mindsets and expectations for how people treat each other, operate within the enterprise, and get results. The results are a more connected workforce, wider bandwidth for collaborative thinking and innovation, and higher operational performance.
Copyright © 2009 The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No duplication permitted without written consent. 518.271.7000. www.kjcg.com. This article appeared as a chapter in Practicing Organization Development - Third Edition, Rothwell, W., Stavros, J., Sullivan, A. and Sullivan, R., eds. (Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 2009).
The Need for Silence, Spontaneity, and Thinking Time in 21st Century Organizations
Sometimes, to get where you are going, you have to go back and pick up what you dropped along the way. Before organizations can break through and take a LEAP forward, they first have to reintroduce and embrace some of the behaviors that have been forgotten or just lost. The capacity to create space for three of these behaviors-Silence, Spontaneity, and Thinking Time-is required for an organization to be ready for the rapid changes in the marketplace, the workforce, and global opportunities and challenges.
Frederick A. Miller. Copyright© 2007 The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No duplication permitted without written consent. 518.271.7000. www.kjcg.com. Published in ASTD Links, August 2007.
People in a Box
In the Industrial Age, workers were valued for their hands and feet, not their minds. Management knew best and people were asked merely to do as they were told. Today, that model no longer works because of the external challenges facing organizations, as well as the attitudes and beliefs of the new generation of employees. Indeed, the coming generation's emphasis on meaningful work, fast promotion, multiple careers, and other values continually challenges the notion of company loyalty. How can organizations adapt to this new environment? By letting people out of the box of organizational rules and regulations. Flexibility and respect for differences are key to organizational success and higher performance, so the notion of keeping people in a box needs to cease.
Frederick A. Miller and Judith H. Katz © 2003. The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No duplication without the written permission of The Kaleel Jamison Consulting Group, Inc. 518.271.7000. www.kjcg.com. Published in HR Review (Spring 2004).
The Next Leap Forward The Next Leap Forward: Diversity and Inclusion-An OD Opportunity
Many leaders still see diversity as an "in the box" initiative with little connection to significant change across the organization. Over the past thirty years, however, we have seen that changing the interactions within an organization is THE core intervention to ensure that all people can do their best work. These efforts remove barriers based on social identity while enabling individuals' talents, backgrounds, and experiences to be used as an asset to productivity. In this model, differences are not an end in itself, but a doorway to driving higher operational performance. It is time for us all to take a leap in our thinking and approach to the value of differences.
Frederick A. Miller and Judith H. Katz ©2007 by the Organization Development Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Published in OD PRACTITIONER Vol. 39 No. 2 2007
Tapping the Wisdom of the Ages: Ageism and the Need for Multigenerational Organizations
Everyone is talking about the "brain drain': the Boomer exodus that has already begun to sap organizations of their intellectual capital. What is the connection between this and ageism? What can organizations do to offset this drain and, instead, leverage the possibilities that will enable all generations to contribute and all individuals to reach their goals?
We need a mindshift FROM thinking of age as a relatively innocuous dimension of difference (a dimension in which we accept limits and stereotypes as fact) TO seeing the value of an organization that is truly multigenerational, using the best thinking from everyone and leveraging opportunities that can only come from cross-generational creativity.
Corey L. Jamison © 2007 by the Organization Development Network, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Published in OD PRACTITIONER Vol. 39 No. 2 2007