Author: Carter McNamara

(Guest post from John Scherer, Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, with Billie Alban, President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This is the second blog post in a six-part series about the history of OD.)

Introduction to this Blog Series

• In our work as OD practitioners, whose shoulders are we standing on?
• Whose ‘conceptual DNA’ runs in our veins?
• What are our operating assumptions and where did they come from?

Believe it or not, there was a time when things like involving people in action-planning, group decision-making, action research, feedback, high-performance/high-satisfaction team-development, leadership and management coaching, the stages in the consulting process—and a host of other standard OD practices—did not exist. Who figured them out—and passed them on to us?

You may know some of the people on whose shoulders you are standing, certainly you have read the works of earlier ‘elders’ who have shaped your work, but many of those who developed ways to improve their social systems are lost in the mists of time. . .

NOTE: This site distinguishes the difference between “organizational development” and “Organization Development.” The former phrase refers to the nature and scope of change in organizations, i.e., the change is to the entire organization or to a significant portion of the organization. The latter phrase refers to a field of well-trained people with expertise in guiding successful organizational development.

In the first segment of this series, we looked at some of our ancient ancestors in the practice of OD, going all the way back to ‘Karg’, the Neanderthal hunter who was looking for a way to kill the mastodon without losing so many of his buddies. Thanks to several comments from readers of that segment, let’s say it was ‘Marg’, one of the women around the fire in the cave who stepped forward and made the suggestions regarding longer spears and a better strategy, the first ‘socio-tech’ intervention.

Then there was the ancient story of the Biblical conversation between Moses and his Father-in-Law, Jethro, one of the first recorded ‘executive coaching’ sessions. There were also the Egyptian ‘consulting engineers’ who maintained the Nile’s effectiveness, and even later, the court jesters, who made kings and queens laugh, finding ways to ‘speak truth to power’, affecting decisions from a ‘consulting’ position.

These historical attempts to have more effective organizations were missing several important ingredients, especially the distinction between content (where most of the above ‘consulting’ almost certainly focused) and process (something yet to be discovered). It was up to the unique exploration of more recent minds and hearts to discover and apply the principles that launched what we would recognize today as Organization Development. While many people’s work fed into the formation of our field, as you will see, it was primarily social psychologists (groups and larger systems) and psychologists (individuals and groups) who contributed the most.

In this blog segment we will name some of the psychologists whose thinking contributed their focus on changing individuals to our field, and in the next several segments we will look at ‘The Big Four (or Five)’ from several other fields who more directly shaped OD.

Psychological Branches in Our OD Family Tree

Since 1900, these psychologists have contributed concepts important in shaping our work:

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), was one of the first to postulate the existence of an inner world that drives what human beings do—something we hold today as obvious as gravity, and his concepts of Superego, Ego and Id led almost directly to Transactional Analysis’ concepts of Parent, Adult and Child.

Carl Jung (1875-1971) postulated the power of archetypes operating in the human psyche and emphasized the role of the Shadow, those aspects of who we are that have not yet been integrated. He also legitimated the world of dreams and intuition and suggested that we were more than rational beings living in a Cartesian or Newtonian world.

Mary Parker Follet (1868-1933) was a community leader and innovative organizer focusing on what happened in groups and how they functioned long before her better-known male colleagues. Although relatively unknown to many in our field, she was a pioneer in both how groups functioned and the key role of leadership in their effectiveness.

B.F. Skinner (1904-1990) took the Russian Ivan Pavlov’s salivating dogs to the next (human) level, theorizing that we are not making free-will decisions at all, but are products of what he called ‘stimulus/response-driven operant conditioning’. His principle: what gets rewarded gets repeated. (Today’s field of Performance Management comes directly from this school of thought.)

Erik Erikson (1902-1994) saw a human being’s life as a developmental journey with predictable ‘epigenetic stages’ or phases that must be successfully traversed in the process of becoming a healthy adult. All the life cycle and developmental models of today owe a debt to his thinking.

Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) showed that what motivates people varies, depending on where they are in their ‘hierarchy of needs’, and that we should be investigating not just ‘sick’ people, but those who are doing ‘well,’ to discover what makes us tick. (Appreciative Inquiry, one of the more recent innovations in OD, is a direct descendant of Maslow in this regard.)

Carl Rogers (1902-1987), along with Maslow, initiated what came to be called Third Force (or Humanistic) Psychology, an alternative to the Operant Conditioning of Skinner and the Psychoanalytical model of Freud. Rogers also showed that increasing people’s effectiveness happened within a relationship between the helper and the helpee, and that the movement toward wholeness was accelerated by empathy rather than advice-giving.

Eric Berne (1910-1970), creator of Transactional Analysis, pioneered the current self-help movement by simplifying the principles of personal effectiveness and making them available to lay people. He saw the role of an internal Adult mediating between the internal Child and Parent, and showed people the ‘Games’ they were playing inside their ‘Life Script.’

But none of these extraordinary people have had more direct impact on the conception, birth and early growth of OD than the next four. Frederick Taylor, the first in chronological order, set the stage; the second and third (Kurt Lewin and Wilfred Bion) developed and applied the principles; and the last (Douglas McGregor), made them available to managers of organizations and the general public. They are also the first names on Billie Alban’s very useful Origins of OD Time-Line. Tune in next time for that time-line—and some fascinating facts about Frederick Taylor, ‘The Father of Scientific Management’.

? What’s your reaction to this history of OD?

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Reference List of Books from This Series

• References List of Books from This Series

For More Resources About Organization Development, see These Free Management Library Topics:

• History of OD: Part 1 of 6 – Prehistoric OD
• Organizational Change
• Organization Development
• Consulting

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John Scherer is Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, and Billie Alban is President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This blog is an adaptation of their chapter in the ‘bible’ of the field of OD, Practicing Organization Development (3rd Edition, 2009, Rothwell, W.J., Stavros, J.M., Sullivan. R.L. and Sullivan, A. Editors). Many colleagues contributed, among them Warner Burke, John Adams, Saul Eisen, Edie Seashore, Denny Gallagher, Marvin Weisbord Juanita Brown and others. They have drawn heavily from Weisbord’s wonderfully rich, easy-to-read, and well-documented description of the origins of the field in Productive Workplaces (1987 and revised in 2012).

(Guest post from John Scherer, Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, and Billie Alban, President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This is the first blog post in a six-part series about the history of OD.)

Introduction to this Blog Series

• In our work as OD practitioners, whose shoulders are we standing on?
• Whose ‘conceptual DNA’ runs in our veins?
• What are our operating assumptions and where did they come from?

Believe it or not, there was a time when things like involving people in action-planning, group decision-making, action research, feedback, high-performance/high-satisfaction team-development, leadership and management coaching, the stages in the consulting process—and a host of other standard OD practices—did not exist. Who figured them out—and passed them on to us?

You may know some of the people on whose shoulders you are standing, certainly you have read the works of earlier ‘elders’ who have shaped your work, but many of those who developed ways to improve their social systems are lost in the mists of time. . .

NOTE: This site distinguishes the difference between “organizational development” and “Organization Development.” The former phrase refers to the nature and scope of change in organizations, i.e., the change is to the entire organization or to a significant portion of the organization. The latter phrase refers to a field of well-trained people with expertise in guiding successful organizational development.

Pre-Historic OD?

We have no way of knowing, but imagine a group of Neanderthal men, sitting around their fire in the cave, when Karg, a more free-thinking hunter, using whatever grunts and motions he had available, speaks to his buddies. ‘You know, guys, we got the mastodon today, but I wonder how we could kill them without losing so many of us in the process?!’

Now imagine the group dynamics that might have ensued. Assuming that the leader—the fiercest hunter and warrior—allowed this discussion to continue, perhaps another hunter made a suggestion about using longer spears (technology). Maybe one of the more courageous women listening in suggested that a few hunters draw the mastodon’s attention in one direction while the best spear-throwers came at it from the other side (teamwork). Perhaps someone else said, ‘Let’s do both!’ (polarity management). Maybe the shaman suggested that they should all drink the animal’s blood to strengthen people’s ability to hunt (human resources). The result: the world’s first ‘socio-technical OD intervention’.

We would not still be here as a species if learning had not taken place at crucial points in our development. Our ancient ancestors faced real-time, real-world consequences (feedback) on a daily basis and did everything they could to solve life-and-death challenges with a combination of improved technology and smarter teamwork.

Around 10,000 BCE, as humans began to multiply more rapidly and settle down—especially around The Fertile Crescent in what is now Iraq—the tribal social system, which served so well as long as people moved around, began to break down. When humans put down roots to live in one place because of climate, water supply and/or the presence of game, a more complex social system was required. New roles and new forms of organization had to be invented. Now some people had to not hunt or farm, but stay back to guard that which had been garnered. Someone now needed to count quantities and weights and keep track of who got what. Someone had to make decisions and control the group’s effort and direction. (See Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel for a fascinating exploration of the rise of civilization and the changing role of leadership.)

The First Consulting Engineers—circa 5,000 BCE

There is evidence that the Egyptian culture during the time of the Pharaohs had what we would call ‘consulting engineers’, whose job it was to go around to the major construction projects and make sure they were ‘on time and under budget.’ When the Nile flooded every year, communication and cooperation all up and down a thousand miles of river was necessary, leading to command and control structures and enforcement capabilities. If one community astride the river failed to maintain their section of the dam or did not channel the water properly, the ensuing flood would wash away crops all along the river, threatening the very survival of the entire region.

This emergence of larger social systems also inevitably led to the emergence of a new kind of leader who was not simply the best hunter or fighter, but who was good at what we would call strategic planning and decision-making. The leader then needed people below them (read ‘managers’) who did the organizing and controlling. Just think, all this was in place centuries before the shop floors of the Industrial Revolution.

Moses and Jethro: The First Recorded Coaching Consultation for Large-Scale Change

What may be the earliest written account of ‘consulting for organizational change’ can be found in the biblical story of an exchange between Moses and his father-in-law, Jethro. (See Exodus 18:13-27.) Moses had just led the motley bunch of former slaves through the desert, turning South after escaping Pharaoh’s army to rest awhile in Jethro’s domain, the Land of Midian. Moses was probably there to check in on his new wife, Leah. Just a thought, but since Jethro was a Midianite, he would be seen by the client (Moses) and the client system (the Hebrew people) as ‘from out of town,’ and therefore perceived as neutral regarding substantive issues and solutions. (One of Richard Walton’s criteria for predicting a consultant’s effectiveness. . .) As the ancient tale goes, caught in a state of complete overwhelm, Moses turns to his father-in-law, Jethro, for help.

Now, we don’t know what exactly happened back then in that conversation, but here is one paraphrase:

• ‘I can’t handle it any more!’ Moses says one night to Jethro.
• ‘What’s the problem?’ says Jethro, caring deeply about this wild man who is married to his favorite daughter.
• ‘I’ve just got too many people coming to me for decisions and advice. All day long. . . It’s all I do now. Hundreds of people bringing me every little problem they have, wanting a decision or a judgment. It’s driving me crazy! I’m exhausted. . . What can I do?!’
• Jethro thinks for a while and says, ‘Yes. . . This is going to be a problem all along your journey, son. People are going to want solutions from you as long as you are their leader. . .’ He thinks some more. ‘Well. . . How about this? What if you set up some of your best decision-makers to be responsible for a hundred people, and a few of your very best to be responsible for a thousand people. That way, some handle the little stuff, others handle the not-so-little stuff, leaving you to take care of the really big stuff.’
• ‘Hey!’ says Moses. ‘I like that!’ and he did what Jethro suggested, creating a hierarchical organization much like the one you probably work in—or consult to—today. (Only it sounds like Moses had a slightly wider span of control. . .)

There is a lot about OD consulting, albeit the more traditional ‘expert’ variety, embedded in this ancient vignette:

• There was real-world pressure for change, and sufficient dissonance in the client. Moses is hard-working—you might say even driven—and is experiencing some strong dissonance between his idea of how this wilderness trip was supposed to go and what was actually happening.
• They had sufficient mutual trust for this conversation. Jethro is older, more experienced, knows his way around, and is someone Moses respects.
• Jethro had the emotional distance and clarity to help his client from behind a solid boundary. He didn’t get reactive to Moses’ complaining.
• Moses was trapped inside his old paradigm—the one that came out of his promise to Yahweh about getting everyone to the promised land all by himself—and couldn’t see his way to a solution.
• Moses asked for help. The feedback and coaching was requested. This opened Moses’ heart and mind to receive his coach’s radical idea. (The typical hierarchical organization chart that he recommended is so familiar to us today that we fail to understand just how strange that proposal would seem, especially to someone who thought he had to do it all. . . alone. . . for Yahweh.)
• Jethro first affirms what will not change in the situation. He stands in reality, not in ‘pie-in-the-sky’ thinking. ‘Yes, Moses, these people are going to keep coming to you—or someone—for a long time. . .’ (This observation is from the creative theologically-trained mind of OD consultant and good friend, Mike Murray.)
• Jethro then suggests something for Moses’ consideration. He doesn’t try to force or ‘sell’ his idea. It is an offering, not a command. Like a good consultant, he offers an idea, he did not use positional power with his client (which he would have had as a father-in-law in those days), but rather relied on the validity of the idea itself.
• Moses acts on the coaching. He sets up the organization suggested by Jethro and sees it through.

So we OD consultants of the last 50-60 years are not the first in history to attempt to improve the quality of leadership and/or the effectiveness of the organizations around us. Written records are not available for many others, but surely kings and princes and religious leaders around the world had advisors they would turn to from time to time for help in matters military, economic, spiritual or political—or maybe even personal. Just as today, we can look back in time and see what a leader has decided—and the results. What we can’t see is the process by which that decision came into being—and who contributed.

There was the court jester who played a very important role in the medieval halls of power. The jester’s job was to hold up a mirror, playfully, to make a point in such a way that decision-makers and their hangers-on could laugh at what they saw. Then, on reflection, the more thoughtful participants could possibly see the folly in a particular decision or situation, and either change it or do things differently next time. If we think getting fired by a client is bad news, imagine what our ancestors faced every time they pushed the leader’s face in their own mess!

These historical attempts to have more effective organizations were missing several important ingredients, especially the distinction between content—where most of the above ‘consulting’ almost certainly focused—and process, something yet to be discovered. It was up to the unique exploration of more recent minds and hearts to discover and apply the principles that launched what we would recognize today as Organization Development.

Let’s take a look at some of the ‘heavy’ contributors in the next blog. . .

? What’s your reaction to this history of OD?

Reference List of Books from This Series

• References List of Books from This Series

For More Resources About Organization Development, see These Free Management Library Topics:

• Organizational Change
• Organization Development
• Consulting

—

John Scherer is Co-Director of Scherer Leadership International, and Billie Alban is President of Alban & Williams, Ltd. This blog is an adaptation of their chapter in the ‘bible’ of the field of OD, Practicing Organization Development (3rd Edition, 2009, Rothwell, W.J., Stavros, J.M., Sullivan. R.L. and Sullivan, A. Editors). Many colleagues contributed, among them Warner Burke, John Adams, Saul Eisen, Edie Seashore, Denny Gallagher, Marvin Weisbord Juanita Brown and others. They have drawn heavily from Weisbord’s wonderfully rich, easy-to-read, and well-documented description of the origins of the field in Productive Workplaces (1987 and revised in 2012).

Why It’s Important for Us to Know Our Paradigms, Theories and Models

Paradigms, theories and models – we all have them and work from them. Many of us don’t know it. But we really should.

When we practitioners in human development (consultants, coaches, trainers, etc.) come to conclusions about our clients and their organizations, we should closely examine those conclusions. Are they accurate? Are your client’s accurate? What did you see in your client’s situation? What might you have missed? What were your assumptions about the situation? Were they valid? What do you know that might not be so?

The more we practitioners can understand and clarify our paradigms, theories and models, the more we can learn about ourselves and the more effective we can be in our practice. Also, the more we can explain to our clients and learners about what we do and why.

The overall field of human development has grown rapidly, especially in recent decades. Accordingly, so have different perspectives and opinions, including about the following terms. The terms paradigm, theories and models are highly related and integrated. As important as coming to any standard definition of each is the readers coming to their own definitions. Obviously, the following opinions are but mine.

So, What’s a Paradigm?

The term “paradigm,” especially in the broad field of human and organization development, refers to our overall way of seeing things – our overall way of thinking about something.

For example, my field, the field of Organization Development (OD), often suggests a new paradigm about organizations. Many OD professionals assert that it’s no longer useful to have an overall “mechanistic” view of the organization – as if it’s a machine with various parts that must be controlled in a top-down, highly centralized and controlled manner – as if employees are motivated primarily by external forces, such as authority and money. These professionals assert that, because of today’s very diverse and rapidly changing world, organizations must constantly learn and adapt.

Therefore, these professionals assert that we must undertake a “paradigm shift” to a more organic view of the organization – that the organization must constantly be changing and that this change comes from more decentralized designs that empower people to act and learn at the same time.

• What’s your paradigm on organizations and people? Families? Economies?

Well, Then What’s a “Theory”?

A theory is a suggested explanation of why something occurs as it does. It suggests causes and effects. Our overall view on the world – our paradigm – greatly influences what theories we choose to learn and use. Our theories, in turn, influence our paradigms.

Perhaps the field of psychology is the best example to use here because those theories are often the basis for how we consultants, coaches and trainers work with people and organizations. We’re familiar with many of the theories of how people behave.

For example, there’s theories on what motivates people. Theory X suggests that people are naturally lazy and dislike work, so they need to be closely monitored and directed. The Theory suggests how we should design organizations and supervise people. We can see how this theory is closely aligned with the mechanistic paradigm.

Theory Y suggests that people enjoy satisfying and fulfilling work, and are self-motivated. Thus, if work is designed to be satisfying and fulfilling for them, they don’t need to be closely monitored and directed. Theory Y is closely associated with a newer paradigm on organizations and people.

Some people group theories into overall types of theories. For example, various theories in the field of psychology are often the overall types of theories held by consultants, coaches and trainers. The psychoanalytic theories (developed by Sigmund Freud) derived those of Alfred Adler and Carol Jung. The adult development theories include the solution-focused therapy, which is often referred to by the field of personal and professional coaching. Another example is Systems Theory, which includes many theories about how systems work.

• What theory or theories explain why you do what you do with your clients?
• Can you explain them?

OK, So What’s a Model? (Sometimes Referred to as a “Framework”)

A model depicts a theory. It depicts the relationships, the causes and effects suggested by the theory. For example, many coaching schools that have the same paradigms and have similar theories, but differentiate themselves by using different models.

In coaching, one of the most popular models is GROW, which is an acronym for the phases of a coaching process, including 1) clarifying goals, 2) understanding the current reality, 3) identifying relevant and realistic options to address the goals, and 4) deciding what a person will do about the situation. The GROW model probably is aligned with various theories, but certainly seems to be with Theory Y and also with a newer paradigm on organizations and people.

Some people might refer to a model as a “framework,” meaning the phases or steps and their sequence. For example, many OD consultants refer to the action research framework, which has numerous variations based largely on the sequence of 1) doing a plan, 2) taking actions based on that plan, 3) observing the results and 4) reflecting on the results to learn from them, and perhaps to modify the original plan.

Theories and models often generate associated tools. For example, there are numerous systems tools associated with systems theories.

• What are some of your models in your work?
• Can you explain them?
• Are they associated with any theory(s)?

What About Just Using Our “Gut Feel”? What’s Wrong With That?

Many practitioners might assert that they just operate by “gut feel” – they intuitively sense the situation, how to work with their clients, and what should occur as a result. They work almost unconsciously. Many practitioners are extremely successful with that approach.

The field of training and development often refers to stages of competences and how people must progress through them in order to achieve long-lasting development. The stages include:

1. Unconscious incompetence
2. Conscious incompetence
3. Conscious competence
4. Unconscious competence

“Gut feel” practitioners have somehow reached stage four.

But it can be extremely difficult to further develop one’s skills unless those developments go through the stages, as well. At some point, the practitioner must consciously recognize what he is doing and why in order to more fully develop their skills.

Here’s another reason to go beyond gut feel. There is increasing competition among practitioners in the fields of human and organization development. It helps tremendously if practitioners can clearly explain their models to potential clients in order to differentiate themselves from the increasing number of practitioners in the field of human development. Practitioners are not likely to be successful in this competitive environment if they explain that they go by “gut feel.”

• If you are very successful at using “gut feel,” then perhaps there are theory(s) and model(s) behind your powerful intuition. Draft a basic model that describes the basic steps and their sequence that you use with clients. Then describe to yourself, especially why you use those steps and that sequence. So is that your “model” after all?

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