Mayvin’s Principal Consultant Tony Nicholls looks at how the discomfort generated by something as simple as dress code can help us to better understand our sense of self. I’ve noticed several articles popping up lately about dress code and culture change, with headlines such as ‘Do we still need to dress for the job‘? An article I shared on …

Graham Curtis, OD Practitioner and doctoral student at the University of Hertfordshire, takes issue with organisations as complex adaptive systems and proposes a move from self as instrument to the idea of OD practice as ‘reflexive participation’. Practitioners of organisation development often talk about the difficult art of OD as intervening in an organisational system. …

Seven tips for impactful Organisation Development interventions without climbing Everest by Sandi Drewett I’d love to trek the foothills of the Himalayas, sleeping in tea houses, connecting with people along the trail and walking for miles in thin air, one foot in front of the other. Currently, it’s not an option due to family commitments …

By Catherine Morris of the Department for Communities and Local Government, having recently completed Mayvin’s Advancing Your Practice programme with our client the UK Civil Service OD & D Service. The programme is aimed at experienced Organisational Development and Design (OD&D) and change practitioners working in business/client facing roles, dealing with complex change. Throughout the programme, practitioners learn about OD&D …

Mayvin’s James Traeger shares his thoughts on exploring real experience through art. I stood before the Van Gogh in the National Gallery of Scotland. It wasn’t a well-known Van Gogh. There wasn’t a sunflower in sight. It was a simple rendering of an oblique view along Parisian river. It was quite small; about the size of …

Mayvin Director James Traeger shares his experience of working in a boatyard and how they relate to skilful OD. Once, years ago, I worked in a boatyard. I spent a bright winter there, watching the grinding and welding of iron sparkle under the starry sky, reflections bouncing off the river under the glinting flight path …

Here’s a challenge: what if we were to outlaw the cliché about HR and Organisation Development (OD) being ‘fluffy’? We’re starting to do more work with law firms, and so I was intrigued to read an article in The Lawyer, discussing the cultural costs of a mega-merger being negotiated between two firms of lawyers, Berwin …

Could we be better at evaluating what we do in organisation development (OD)? Not just better, but bolder, prouder, blingy-er. I notice that the word ‘evaluating’ has the same root as ‘valuing’. Do we shy away from valuing what we do? Mayvin Director James Traeger explores OD evaluation:     OD evaluation could simply be …

I’ve spent much of my time lately reading the work of people doing masters and doctoral papers, as part of my role as faculty of various accredited organisational development (OD) and leadership programmes. This is both a challenge and a privilege. People pour their heart and soul into this work, often carrying it over a …

Next week’s annual Organisational Development in the NHS conference is focusing on ‘forward thinking different’, a very topical theme for the service. With another new set of challenges facing the NHS, including the transition to seven-day working and new rules designed to promote honesty, a different mindset and way of planning will be needed in …

The ‘Cycle of Experience’ is perhaps the core idea that Gestalt Therapy has contributed to our understanding of the human condition. It explains how more or less consciously we all have needs, concerns and intentions moment by moment in our lives. The idea is that we recognise and pursue these needs, concerns and intentions (more …

I’ll have grounds More relative than this—the play’s the thing Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the King. Hamlet Act 2, Scene 2, 603–605 Was Hamlet right? Is it in play, the story, or to use a fashionable word these days, the ‘narrative’ that we find our most vital answers? I consider this in relation …

Much of our work is ‘Organisational Development (OD) capacity building’ – that is, giving the people in the organisation who manage change and oil the wheels of development some skills, tips, tools and techniques to make their often tricky work more productive, resourceful and enjoyable. In doing so, we have learned some important home truths …

Traditionally, uncertainty has been something we try to export. Communities, organisations and countries spent time and energy ensuring that anything challenging their certainty and sense of control was removed from within their line of sight sent somewhere over the horizon. Imagine, for example, a corporate film from the 1950s. See in your mind’s eye what …

The friend opposite me was clearly relieved about the problem he had resolved with a colleague. ‘I let it go.’ He said. ‘I felt so much better, like a weight lifted from my shoulders. It was the opposite of what I expected.’ My son just came back from Israel. But let’s not start there… Recently …

Mayvin Director James Traeger explores paradigms and monocultures. I was sitting with my friend Adam, one of my favourite people, in one of my favourite places in London, on the 6th Floor of the Royal Festival Hall, overlooking the river by Hungerford Bridge. The psycho-geography of the place is immense- the expanse of the Thames …

There are three critical attributes of wise ‘foxes’ – those who are more successful at reading what may happen in future than others, according to Dan Gardner, author of ‘Future Babble: How to stop worrying and love the Unpredictable.’ He contrasts these foxes with ‘hedgehogs’, those who predict the future with one big, often very …

I sat in the café opposite the conference venue with a friend I had just made. We drank our cappuccinos and lamented with each other:

“When are we ever going to hear anything new? I mean everyone speaking at the Conference is bright, friendly, interesting… and on paper what they are offering seems sensible. But it doesn’t really address what I face in my organisation. more The complexity. The chaos. The sudden change of direction. By the time I’ve sold any of these ideas to my CEO, he’s moved on, or been kicked out! How can we plan for real development in this environment? At a time when the need to learn fast is more urgent than ever?”

So, we are told that traditional learning formats for organisations are becoming outdated and even that ‘courses are dead’ (contrary of course to the vast amount of activity in the training & development market, which is still overwhelmingly course-based).