Articles on Human Resources & Talent Management
QUESTION: WHAT MAKES ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT (OD) UNIQUE AND POWERFUL?
ANSWER: OUR USE OF OURSELVES! The contribution of every profession and craft is grounded in some vision, method or value – or all of these; for organization development consultants, that stance is our relationship to our clients and the benefit we bring to their work world. In addition to our…
How to Choose a Leadership Coach and Grow Your Skills
Selecting the right coach for yourself is a challenging task. It begins with being proactive in setting your coaching goals, selecting the right coach, and guiding the process to ensure a valuable result. Here are some tips: Be clear about your goals for coaching; do you seek insight about the…
Engage Your Employees – Four Ways to Make it Happen!
It is surely true that being a leader is a demanding job and often takes more hours than seem to exist in any day. However, some leaders know ways to effectively engage employees to perform well. You too can use these approaches. The key is making time for effective communication…
Getting Off to a Good Start in 2017!
2017 stretches out before us all with new possibilities and many challenges. How will you make it a successful year for your organization, for your employees and for yourself? Here are some tips: Offer Coaching and Mentoring Identify one of your employees who showed promise in 2016 and commit yourself…
Empathy Is a Muscle
Some people seem to be naturals at communicating; they have an easy way of relating to others and conveying interest. Somehow they can just sense how others are feeling and what to say that helps the communication to move along. And some people do, in fact, have a natural way…
Gripes Are Not Goals!
Gripes are common and gripers can be heard everywhere. However, effective leaders know that teamwork, high morale and a productive organization cultures are built on a positive outlook – not a lot of negativity – and creating these conditions is part of your job! How does negativity show up? Whether…
The Fit Bit Motivation Strategy – Make Data Meaningful
It’s no surprise that exercise monitor wristbands (Fit Bits) have become so popular; they encourage us to get moving, and we all know that exercising is good for our health. But using the device demonstrates a principle of behavior change that is relevant to many other areas of success in…
NTL Institute Emeritus Award
Founded in 1946, NTL Institute is the esteemed educational institute that was created to study small group dynamics and the fundamentals of leadership. The founders’ brilliant work has shaped our understanding of many important organization processes that continue to be utilized throughout the world. Today NTL Institute continues their work…
When a Leader Retires
The retirement of a leader can be an unsettling time for everyone in the organization Whether the retiring leader has been viewed as a hero or a villain, whether the organization is currently thriving or stumbling, whether the retirement is a surprise or long-anticipated, it is a complicated experience.…
Organization Assessments: Achieve new levels of effectiveness and efficiency
There are times in the life of many organizations when leaders know that overall performance is not what it could be. Whether the organization’s business is products or services, the output is not what is needed for it to thrive. Morale seems off; some managers are not collaborating effectively; perhaps…
Coaching leaders who are at risk of derailing
Many organizations have found that promising, talented middle managers, leaders or solo performers seem occasionally to get stuck. Their effectiveness erodes and there is a question about their future value to the organization. Their performance becomes undermined by any of the following behaviors: They function like lone wolves even when…
AMACOM Blog – Attracting a Great Mentor: You Can Do It!
Judy’s findings on attracting a great mentor have been published by the American Management Association. For more information on the topic, read Attracting Great Mentors: Seven Strategies to Cultivate.
Facilitation 101 The Basics to Get You on Your Feet
Click Here to see the complete article with references, footnotes, figures and illustrations. “Stay focused on the fact that the work you’re facilitating is occurring at a minimum of four levels: the intrapersonal within each individual, the interpersonal among at least two people, the group, and the organization.” By Matt Minahan,…
Making “House Calls”: Whom Do Our Clients Expect to See When the Doorbell Rings?
Click Here to see the complete article with references, footnotes, figures and illustrations. Peter Norlin and Judy Vogel challenge us to understand ourselves as marginal helpers, called in from outside the boundaries of a human system to serve people in special circumstances. Their provocative piece asks us to look at the…
Our Journey in the OD Network — A Personal Essay
Click Here to see the complete article with references, footnotes, figures and illustrations. “What drew us to ODN and what ODN members provided for us were two important types of support to our career transitions into the profession. First was deepening our craft through learning core values, new models, and useful methods;…
Organization Development: A Practitioner’s Guide for OD and HR – Book Review
Organization Development By Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge and Linda Holbeche (2011) London, UK: Kogan Page. 324pp. $44.95 Reviewed by Judy Vogel Cheung-Judge and Holbeche have given a wonderful gift to the field of organization development and to OD and HR practitioners of all levels of experience. This book offers a remarkable combination…
Renewing Organizations in a Time of Change
Click Here to see the complete article with references, footnotes, figures and illustrations By Judith A. Vogel and David R. Glaser Abstract: Organizations today face changes that occur at an increasingly rapid pace. The effects of these changes alter the implicit contracts that organizations have with their members. When signs of stress…
The Potent Pause: How Organizations and Individuals Learn from Change
By David R. Glaser Abstract: A “potent pause” provides an opportunity for learning. It can occur in action research, for the organization, and, in meditation, for the organizational consultant. This article explains the analogies between action research and meditation and why turning toward experiences and problems, rather than away from…
Wise Leadership for Difficult Times
Click Here to see the complete article with references, footnotes, figures and illustrations. By Judith A. Vogel and David R. Glaser, Vogel/Glaser & Associates, Inc. During these difficult economic times, more and more organizations are faced with the need to make hard decisions about financial and human resources. When the choice is…
Attracting Great Mentors: Seven Strategies to Cultivate
Click Here to see the complete article with references, footnotes, figures and illustrations. “While a lot has been written about how to be a mentor for others and how to design organizational mentoring systems, we have seen little published on the approaches that some individuals themselves draw on to organically and…
Design School: Mastering OD Design Principles Outside the Guild Experience
Click Here to see the complete article with references, footnotes, figures and illustrations. “Rarely do we hear an analysis or exploration of arguably the most critical dimension that determines the success of any intervention that delivers meaningful, sustainable impact: design thinking, and the process of translating that thinking into a blueprint for change.”…
Team Work Faces a Whole New Challenge
By David R. Glaser What are Geographically-Dispersed Teams? As a result of corporate acquisition, downsizing, merger, and globalization, more and more people are working on teams that are dispersed across town, across the country and around the world. No longer do team members have the luxury of sharing an office…
A Small Intervention with a Big Impact
By Judy Vogel The first article by Judy Vogel, launches the start of a new series for Practicing OD – “What if I only had one intervention?”. In this inaugral piece, Judy discusses the value and impact of simply probing someone on whether they have expressed, shared or asked another…
A Graphic Summary–A Workshop on Mindfulness and Action Research
Recently David Glaser gave a presentation at the Chesapeake Bay Organization Development Network conference. His subject was: “Complementary Strategies for Courageous Consulting: Mindfulness Meditation and the Action research Model” When the workshop ended he was delighted to learn that one of the participants was Stephanie Brown, a very talented Graphic…
Find a Mentor: Build Your Career
“Leadership Broward” in Ft. Lauderdale was the most recent audience for Judy’s research-based model for attracting a mentor’s help. The article “Attracting Great Mentors: Seven Strategies to Cultivate” is here on our site and the slides are below: [pdfviewer width="800px" height="617px" beta="false"]https://vogelglaser.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Broward-Emerge-Workshop.pdf[/pdfviewer]
New Strategic HR Handbook
Check out the new Handbook of Strategic HR-flier Judy and colleagues from the Editorial Review Board of the esteemed “OD Practitioner” gathered and edited 78 classic and contemporary articles. It has just been released by Amacom Publishers.
Talk Is Easy
Ideas Are Easy; Implementation Is Hard! There are very smart and creative people in organizations and they come up with lots of exciting ideas about initiatives that could bring enhanced products and services to their customers and revenue to their businesses. In our experience as Organization Change consultants, we are…