How to Start Your Career in Organisation Development with Dr. William Brendel - OrgDev Episode 63

In this jam-packed episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we welcome the brilliant and boundlessly productive Dr. William (Bill) Brendel - award-winning OD educator, researcher, consultant, and founder of OpensourceOD.com. If you’ve ever wondered "What kind of OD practitioner am I?" or "How do I actually get into this field?" then this episode is for you.

Bill shares insights from over 25 years of global OD consulting and cutting-edge research, including his work developing the MOST (Mastering Organizational and Societal Transformation) assessment - the first psychometrically validated OD competency model. Based on thousands of job descriptions, this tool helps emerging and seasoned practitioners align their strengths and interests with real-world career paths, providing clarity in a field often marked by ambiguity.

We unpack the challenges of entering and navigating OD careers, from the blurry boundaries of OD roles to the messy reality of job descriptions that rarely reflect the true nature of the work. Bill discusses how Opensource OD is helping bridge the gap between academia and practice, offering a "dojo" for practitioners to build technical skills and reflective wisdom through immersive, real-world case studies contributed by legends like Ed Schein and Peter Block.

Other highlights include:

• Why OD is best understood as evolving practice rooted in a three-part test: social + technical + influence
• How social presencing theater and design thinking are being used in traditional settings
• The ethical dilemmas OD professionals face, and how reflective practice and “use of self” help navigate them
• How to thrive in a world of “permanent whitewater” with mindfulness and intentional learning

This episode is a goldmine for anyone shaping or shifting their OD path. Dive in and discover your next step.

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About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

Transcript

(00:00) hi and welcome to the org dev podcast so how do you achieve a rewarding and successful career in organization development that leverages your strengths and the unique impact you want to create in the world what kind of OD practitioner are you are you a nance consultant a creative amplifier or maybe a humanity hawk in this episode of the ORDEV podcast we're joined by the formidably productive and insightful Dr william Brendle he is a cutting edge researcher in the field of OD careers and professional development dr william
(00:30) or Bill is a multi-awward-winning organization development educator a junk professor at Penn State University author and consultant and founder of Opensource OD today's episode is a like all you can eat buffet where everything is good because there are so many things we want to talk to Bill about what originally drew us to invite Bill with his work is the founder of Opensource OD a resource and community dedicated to democratizing organization development knowledge for all and Dan and I regularly site his outstanding research
(00:58) when we talk at universities not only is Bill a great researcher he has over 25 years of global OD experience as a principal consultant at the transformative learning institute and he's dedicated his career elevating the strategic performance of organizations committed to human- centered innovation and his consulting work has taken in organizations such as Bankers of America Panasonic and the US Army finally naturally Bill's experience is underpinned with impeccable academic credentials including a doctorate from
(01:26) Colombia a masters in social and organizational psychology and a degree in IO psychology as well so so Bill thank you so much for joining us we've been looking forward to this conversation all week long [Music] we're going to kick off so I was going to say easy question but you do so much tell us a bit about the work that you do what does that involve well I I think that it's it's not uncommon that folks who are you know scholar practitioners which is probably the category where I put myself do a lot of research but they
(01:58) always have their toe in consulting keep things nice and fresh but what's really consumed my time recently is a question that my students and even some of my clients just continue to ask which is what is OD what is organization development and if I get a degree or certificate in this what can I do and I was giving them crappy answers i kept saying "Well you know you could you could a consultant or you could become a better leader maybe join an HR outfit.
(02:27) " But honestly those answers I try to put myself in their shoes it's just not good enough and I mean the dirty little secret maybe it's not so much of a secret is that most people don't know what OD is most people don't know OD exists if we're being honest and that's a shame because if there's any discipline that can help us address the major problems of our world and all of these problems in the workplace it's OD so all of my work is now mainly concentrated on helping people bridge
(02:55) from academia into the field of OD creating a pipeline that's clear and cuts through all the chatter and confusion that people have and it's a big task so I haven't figured that out yet but I'm working toward it it's such important work you we're with you on the the value that OD can bring to to all of the challenges that we're seeing in society and workplaces so is that the kind of origin of open source OD then the work you've talked about there it is it is the mission and for a long time
(03:23) and I think it's a natural thing when new disciplines are born and they are forming OD is had its birth around 1969 okay so in the grand scheme of things that's that's not that long ago so when groups form you know the first thing they do is they get an identity and they're facing inward they're working to face to figure out who they are what they're all about what their mission is and so that's an inward focus and it's really time to shift that outward and so open source OD is about opening the
(03:52) doors now to OD and creating pockets where you still have the core of OD and you know what it is and you know the theories that have built it up but now you're beginning to reach out into other disciplines that's the beauty of OD it's ubiquitous you can apply it anywhere there's a person and a system it's that simple so now open source OD is dedicated to democratizing and even breaking down the walls of financial barriers to learning about OD academic barriers and so on it's not just for
(04:19) people who can afford a graduate education so that's that's where I'm going what what's the focus of open source OD at the moment then so there I know having a look there's some assess there's an assessment isn't there that you developed the most is it the most yeah MOS stands for mastering organizational and societal transformation and that assessment was reverse engineered by looking at thousands of positions actual job descriptions and websites of OD consultants because you know you have
(04:46) the internal and the external and I analyzed them for four different features what type of approach did these you know different descriptions take and that's important we found out that there's basically two dominant areas one is an innovative approach and one is a classic approach more of a step-by-step approach another difference is that there's a pure versus hybrid OD type of split pure is your purist this is OD proper we follow the the OD way and hybrid dips into other professions like strategic HR business partners and and
(05:20) that sort of talent development and so on and there are a couple of other distinguishing features that make OD what it is i won't get too deep into those but there are four and this assessment actually does two things the first is and I should should mention this it's the only psychometrically validated instrument of OD competencies so you'll already get a sense of how strong am I in different areas in different competencies but it also due to this reverse engineering will tell you and provide you with examples of job
(05:48) descriptions and evidence about what type of career path you're most closely aligned with not only through your strengths but your interests and everything else on open-source OD is dedicated to taking you from that knowledge and that understanding and connecting you with the right networks putting you in places where you can find jobs that match your competencies and interests educating you about OD and putting tool all the tools IDA tools at your fingertips and and that's really what it takes to to bridge a big gap
(06:18) between graduating or getting a certificate and practicing OD or advancing your OD career There are other things like there's a little magazine OD insights that's going to be coming out that translates academic these research findings that typically collect dust on the shelves and how you actually put them into practice so you see we're bridging a lot of research to practice and that's what it's all about it's such an incredible resource it's almost like it's the kind of thing that we wish we'd
(06:44) had cuz a lot of OD practitioners have to sort of find their way and and you touched on a really important um one of your findings is that you don't necessarily type into Monster or Indeed and type in organization development practitioner and the jobs come up you've sort of found that a lot of them are are hybrid roles what have been some of your findings of the of the job landscape oh it's it's interesting so I'm just going to be blunt and say that most of the job descriptions are not really well created
(07:11) so there's a nice there's a nice thing here where this study of OD through three lenses we look at the academic the traditional OD we look at what employers are looking at and we look through the lens of emerging practitioners right and then we go back to those descriptions and we had to throw out hundreds of these job descriptions from our inclusion in the study because they really they were leaning toward OD but they really didn't capture all of OD so I think what's going to happen hopefully
(07:40) is that through a better description of OD better job descriptions will be created instead of taking from a grabag of other job descriptions and throwing them all together and I think something else that opensource OD can help with is creating job descriptions that align very neatly with the business or organizational objectives or strategic objectives for the next 3 years and that's where I think this becomes exceptionally powerful so let's say that an organization is going to be going through a redesign and they want the
(08:11) redesign to be human centric and you have your OD employees take this assessment and you find out that some of them have training in human- centered design maybe the design thinking but they lack certain competencies in org design right and so now we know where to either invest money in upskilling or hire somebody new to complement the team and that's where those job descriptions come in and so the bridge or the pipeline is between those job descriptions and the thousands of people who are taking this assessment and
(08:39) understanding how they fit and this has already started i don't want to talk too much about it unless you're interested but we are rolling this out in organizations like the Ontario OD Healthcare Network and other places where this is just becoming advantageous to organizations and also cost cutting in a in a really nice way and being more efficient with the talent you already have so that's a big answer to your question but we're thinking pipeline better job descriptions more strategic fit so you don't have to demonstrate
(09:09) your value to the organization it's set from the beginning yeah and job descriptions are so often just like you said thrown together like there's so much care that's put into making the space for them but the job description doesn't necessarily do the mechanics why is that is it is it because it's nonod people often building the job description i love that question i think it's the saying garbage in garbage out now I'm not saying that the people who are creating the descriptions are
(09:32) garbage but a lot of times people who create these descriptions go online they type in organization development they find out what it is they get a hodge podge or they're not even thinking about what OD is and they're just throwing something together and I can't blame them because if you go to OARNet or ONET which is the US in the US we have this thing called ONET and it's like the official registry that deconstructs all jobs and their tasks and OD is not one of those official careers that is where
(10:04) a lot of people go to create their job description so one of my goals my little goals is to get OD on O onet and I think if we could do that and influence it through this validated instrument of all these different competencies we have a leg to stand on as a profession and until we do that you know we've had a lot of competency models that have come out they're wonderful in fact the one I developed is based on all of them but none of them validated themselves in the way that that really really rigorously
(10:32) needed to be done now that we have that it's time to take it to the next level so that those those job descriptions people have something i mean we can't blame them if there's nothing to pull from what do you do right yeah i was going to say the other thing is I talked to a lot of OD practitioners who've taken roles in house with the title of OD manager or head of OD and then they get in and they're not doing organization development at all yes and there's learning and development plus
(10:55) there's a huge frustration because they've gone in and they're like I'm here to do OD but I'm not being given the chance to do anything remotely like organization development so that's an education piece isn't it for the for the practitioners and the organizations they're going into it's really about strategic value and honestly I think that most OD programs have to do a lot more at helping people not just understand how to do OD but to demonstrate and be at the executive
(11:22) drawing board in terms of how do we enhance the health of this organization both through its processes and its people and its design to push our strategy forward so OD is like a secret weapon if you get it right and there are organizations who get it right you end up hiring the best and retaining the best OD professionals but you mentioned healthcare and healthcare is a is a a troublemaker they they hire according to our analysis they hire the most OD internal OD people so if you want to go after an industry and you want to this
(11:53) is a little pro tip you want to look for a job look at healthcare it has the they are hiring the most but they're executing OD the least in terms of its actual value and so it's like you said Garen it's training and development plus so what's the what's the bridge the bridge is strategic value and demonstrating that value which is why ROI understanding return on investment and making the business case are part of what open source OD is helping to do anyway if that makes sense we're trying
(12:22) to fill that gap you produced um a stunning paper that we really enjoyed reading And some of the things it talks about gets to the heart of the the OD challenge which is like you talk about the fact that it's people don't register they're not licensed that there's 144 different graduate programs or programs advanced programs of people to sort of follow it's the borders of or the boundaries of OD are very porous they're the kind of thing that makes our profession such so rich and full of
(12:48) variety we we we're called the magpie profession for a reason aren't we because we do collect Yeah all of these wonderful different disciplines and and fold them into our own it it is difficult od is always evolving isn't it in terms of what we do how do you sort of say "Right this is what it is.
(13:04) " Take a photograph in time and then keep it evolving as it goes that is the million-doll question Garen i love that question and is something that has racked my brain i just that is the question because OD needs to evolve just like other professions need to evolve right you throw AI into the mix and other you know there will be other advancements that we have to evolve with so how do you keep the core of OD but also allow it to evolve so the way I look at it is what model is out there that we could copycat and the model I'm
(13:35) I pull from is the lenan model of evolution in biology right so there are certain characteristics that link all flowers together so that a child can easily differentiate a flower from a tree yet there are millions of different types of flowers all over the world so how do we keep what those key characteristics are of OD but allow for variety so that OD can handle numerous challenges because what OD is ultimately is managing and influencing change at the intersection of people and process or pe people and strategy or people and
(14:10) culture those sorts of things so there's a three-part test to whether you know something as OD this is the three-part test argument anyway based on the founders of OD od isn't OD unless you are working on something technical right like performance or design or strategy and you're working on something social right like humanity de andi culture psychology and most importantly you are influencing them so there are different ways to influence the transformation of that relationship like learning and
(14:42) innovation and consulting right so if you have something a job or a job description that has a social requires social competencies which you don't have to know all of them by the way right you could be an expert in ethics for instance that's a social piece and then there's strategy right that's the technical piece and then maybe there's the consulting and learning piece you know what that would be great for that would be a great OD application in large banks who are trying to hire and develop
(15:11) and create systems and structure structures for more ethical banking right this is a call across banking so that's how you take the core of OD that threepart OD thing and you can actually tie it to a strategic value for an industry for instance yet the way that you approach these things right for instance design which is a technical piece what IDEO did was they they introduced this thing called design thinking and made it really popular when OD was founded that didn't exist but now it's part of that evolutionary tree it
(15:45) has become part of what OD practitioners might do they might choose to do it human centered design and so those evolutions it's sort of like coming out of this three-part model you can track how OD evolves in multiple directions and that that's super exciting to me because it also creates a forefront that people can experiment with new OD applications by drawing from what has come before them it's a very long answer but now I guess how I feel Kurt Luen in the background is nodding approvingly yeah yeah right right right you got Kurt
(16:18) Luen and Bamford and Trist the social technical systems theorists and all the original people right edshine so yeah and I guess what you're doing as well is OD people are often addicted to learning and they live in the world of the conditional once I learn this then I can and it feels like a never-ending journey whereas what you're sort of saying that no you can have a very flourishing niche in it and feel free to branch out but you're good where you are like master this area that's a way in and then build
(16:49) out from there as well that that's actually quite liberating for a lot of OD practitioners i imagine it is and and you know a lot of the good work that the OD network big shout out to the OD network that really held a lot of this together um they created a competency model but the model is called full spectrum OD very similar to my model my model has some other things going on this full spectrum OD is intimidating to new practitioners because often times they look at it and they feel like I've got to learn this entire thing to be an
(17:19) OD consultant yeah good luck you have a snowballs chance in hell to do that really but what this does it's it says no you could have strategic value in any number of places so let's do this let's understand what your existing strengths are right and then look let's look at what you're super interested in doing and then the the gap between those is I call that the meaningful growth gap you create a career plan for yourself and then you know exactly which industries and types of jobs to look for and search
(17:45) terms and so on and so forth the other thing that I think is important to answer your question or your comment is it's not just if I learn this then I can do that there's an old jazz standard in the United States that it says it ain't what you do it's the way that you do it that's what gets results and so there's an additional piece to open source OD which is really supported by what are called OD immersives and this is the wisdom piece this is developing the reflective practice that all OD
(18:13) practitioners need including things like use of self understanding ethics humble inquiry intuitive consulting seeing and understanding the influence of privilege and so we have about I think nine so far and growing OD immersives which are really fun because they they bring people together they put them in the driver's seat of a real OD case study contributed by a really well-known OD person like an Ed Shine or Francis Baldwin or Peter Block and you have facilitators that guide them through not just what would you do right would you
(18:46) do process mapping here no that's not what this does what this does is it says you're going to encounter a lot of disorienting dilemmas as an OD consultant let's reflect on our inner interiority our assumptions our anxieties our attachments right let's understand how we want to react quickly in the moment but let's kind of freeze time and reflect on where are our values and how do we act in best alignment with our values and that is the wisdom of OD and that's a continuous practice so open
(19:16) source OD essentially introduces people to careers and skills that they can develop to be better practitioners but also a place like a dojo where you can go and practice your craft and there's no limit to how good you become uh and you get to do it with others which which makes it kind of fun and I guess it's almost like a bit of a sandbox as well isn't it because you know when you're with the client or you're in your own organization you know you can't help but feel that the stakes are higher but this
(19:42) is a place to practice and sort of listen to those messages that you hear for your intuition or physiologically and all that as well yeah it really and you know what one of the hidden benefits I never thought of but it's really come out is that people feel like it's their place to feel sane again where they come and they go I've been through that i don't know what the hell to do in that situation i don't want to strangle my client you want to strangle your client why do you want to strangle my your client cuz
(20:08) he's missing all these things or she she keeps doing things that she wants despite what the group wants right and when you're with other practitioners what's beautiful is that in all of these immersives it's not about the simulation it's about the people in the room because we get people from all over the world and when they're in the same room experiencing the same dilemma all these ideas come up all of these coping strategies and great questions to ask and it just sort of becomes this
(20:34) generative space where people say "Okay one I'm not alone change is really hard right and two there there are some really great strategies to do this." So the neat thing about being an OD consultant is you're never really alone you always have o consultants on your shoulder kind of reminding you about your value system and the and the strategies and so on and that's something you don't really get in higher ed that's that's a big missing component because the curriculum focuses more on a
(21:01) banking methodology where you have a PowerPoint and you open the person's head and you throw this is step one this is step two but the doing of it that's where you're most effective and it's scary because a lot of people get thrown into our field and they get freaked out either because they're in a career path that is antithetical to what their interests and strengths are or it's just overwhelming it can be really overwhelming as a new practitioner so that's why I like this and I have a lot
(21:28) of fun this is sort of my like guilty pleasure is doing these immersives brilliant and and what was your journey into OD like how did you find it how did you begin before you made this huge commitment to bringing up this brilliant resource well I was always a consultant always since I don't know 1998 i'll age myself a little bit here i was always consulting and of course to become a better consultant you got to fill your you have to fill your noggin you got to learn things you have to learn practices
(21:56) and and so I decided you know knowing Warner Burke as a big name in the field of OD and the fact that he was right up the you know the one train to the to Columbia University I decided let me go there let me learn from a founder of this field and it was incredible primary focus was social organizational psychology and change but what I wasn't getting from the program was an understanding of a deeper understanding of adult learning and leadership which really are kind of the same thing right if you're if you're helping people learn
(22:28) which includes motivation and so on so that's where I got my doctorate at Colombia which was a degree in adult learning and leadership so I like to tell people if you took my doctorate and you took my undergrad and they had a baby that would be a very powerful form of OD right because you've got the rigor and you've got the ROI and you have the behav behavioral science background but you also have what to do with it how to lead how to people learn i found that in most programs this is my shout out to
(22:55) all those 144 programs to think about where your imbalance is right you might be more balanced towards the learning piece and you're missing the ROI and strategic piece or it might be the the opposite so the question is how do you balance those out same thing in organizations what is your dominant and recessive sort of approach and individuals what's your dominant and recessive how do you do you balance those and one of the things that comes out as well uh is you talk ethics seems to be a big part of your work as well
(23:25) you talked about the role that ethics plays in decision making what is it about sort of that that stood out for you as a subject that you really wanted to focus on you know last night when I was teaching my appreciative inquiry course online we were talking about the ethical dimensions of appreciative inquiry and the ethical pitfalls and there are many so one area I'm really interested in is this area that was produced by Alfred Bandura or Albert Bura and it's on a a subject called moral disengagement and you may have
(23:54) heard about this without knowing what the proper title is moral engagement is a psychological mechanism that exists in all of us in all of us and it basically is what is it that makes us talk ourselves out of doing the right thing rationalizing out of doing the right thing and there are eight different moral disengagement mechanisms which means we are ripe for doing the wrong thing right so with you know if you think about a piece of paper on the floor and you see it you could say do I pick up that piece of paper and throw it
(24:24) out or do I leave it there and you can imagine there's all kinds of reasons to just leave it there right somebody else will do it that's called diffusion of responsibility right it's dirty right and that's another moral disengagement mechanism so with well-intentioned approaches like appreciative inquiry or theory u or any of these really well-intentioned highly practiced highly researched ways of doing things they can actually have unintentional negative ethics ethical consequences here's an example in
(24:52) appreciative inquiry if you are focusing on growth areas and you're using the term growth areas but the systemic problem is bullying in the workplace growth areas becomes a euphemistic label which actually disregards the significance the severity of bullying even if appreciative inquiry is not meant intentionally to address bullying it's not addressing the underlying thing that's a toxic piece in the culture right and the and the opposite is true if you're coming in not with an appreciative lens but a deficit lens
(25:24) you're missing something else that is also part of the equation part of the human experience so there are a lot of pitfalls ethical pitfalls you know what they say about the road to hell right paved with good intentions so I think it's really important to practice two things to remedy this one is mindfulness practice which is a really big interest of mine and the other which is related is reflective practice which I talked about a little earlier and the field of OD has a really great ethical defense
(25:51) mechanism called use of self and use of self is essentially how do I choose to be my best most ethical self in every moment it's a constant it's a practice of checking your aspoused values versus your values in use as Chris Argers would call it constantly and learning from experience and baking that into your next time out so a really nice remedy to the ethical dilemmas that are scattered all throughout OD is use of self so that's become another interest of mine it's really interesting though isn't it
(26:22) cuz when you do get engaged by an organization people will try to recruit you to their cause um and so you might well be an agent they want to use you as an agent to achieve their particular agenda but their agenda doesn't always in a ven diagram way overlap with the interests of the organization or the employees isn't it so those are the kind of ethical dilemmas we find ourselves in constantly don't we absolutely and here here's a a nice way to to a little trick if you're in an OD consultation ask
(26:50) yourself who has the greatest interest expressed in the change process who has the greatest access to information who has the greatest control and authority right making the final decision and all of these questions come from um you know critical ideology they come from the Frankfurt school looking at what are the systemic barriers to change and those barriers right they cause all kinds of problems so for instance if you're an OD consultant and you're doing strategic planning times cultural change that's a
(27:21) f that's a popular one to do both of those at the same time and you come up with a strategic plan and a culture development plan and you vetted it and the employees have helped to develop it and your external stakeholders feel good about it and then you put it down in front of the decision makers who have been involved the whole time checks and balances and they don't quite feel comfortable with the way it looks they want to change some things right and so the question as an AI practitioner is is there anything they're changing that is
(27:50) fundamental right that will undo fundamentally what we've created because they do have control they do have authority right is it fundamentally does it fundamentally stray from what our organization has created and that's where you get into a lot of problems and and OD practitioners rationalize because they they know who pays their salary right that's where the rubber meets the road and also why OD is not a straightforward or practice it's it's it takes a brave soul a lot of times we firefight we're brought in like
(28:19) firefighters right yes we're much better in the prevention space but generally people hire us for firefighting yes i love that i love it it's perfectly said do you think it's Do you think it's possible to do OD in any conditions or are there certain things that need to be in place to to do impactful OD in an organization it's such a I'm going to give you such a cheap answer it It depends it depends right you're allowed it's such a cheap answer but this is also why I really am a very big fan of
(28:49) dialogic OD very big fan so if you're using dialogic OD you see the the organization as a sensemaking system right you're not trying to change the way people act but you're trying to help them change the way they make sense of things and and understand their attitudes from a different perspective i think Ed Shine at one point said that all organizations by function of being an organization are dysfunctional so you're never really walking into a place that's perfectly conditioned not that's
(29:18) what you were saying you weren't saying that but that has all the thesis in place there's always something that you need to round out and I think that is best addressed through dialogue so check out the work i'm going to name a name that maybe some of your listeners don't know about the work of Jervis Bush and Bob Marsh tremendous work on you so big shout out to them for cottifying that for our field they've got some great little kind of books um that give that a kind of really good introduction to that
(29:45) that field if people are interested so what do you enjoy most about the work you do you do so many different things but is there particular parts of it that really kind of spark joy and kind of interest you you know the cheap answer would be when people change and the light bulbs go off like of course everybody loves that everybody loves that but I think the thing that makes me happy depends on really my own definition of happiness and it's not that fleeting thing right it's more align with where is your day most
(30:13) meaningful so it might not even feel good but it's highly meaningful to you it's aligned with your raisin detra this is very meaningful to me so a lot when I look back at all my engagements the things that were most engaging and meaningful to me were when I I along with my client teams emerging leaders were in the bunker together and we were it was not easy and there were all kinds of forms of resistance like every type that you'll find in Peter Block's flawless consulting being lobbed at us
(30:44) suck it out a band of brothers and sisters so when I look back at that that's that's what makes me most happy and it didn't always feel good but you got up dusted yourself off you felt scrappy and now you have a good war story right to tell and and help others learn from so I would say that's what makes me most happy hi we're just pausing this interview for a moment have you ever finished an episode of the org dev podcast and wish you had a cheat sheet that summarizes all of the key points us too so we made one it's called
(31:14) From Pod to Practice and each week in our newsletter we'll share a two-page summary of the latest org dev episode and it includes key takeaways a reflection prompt and one small action you can try and it's all in a digital format with space at the end to add your own notes and reflections and it's designed to help you take the learning from the podcast into your day-to-day work so to get your copy just sign up to our next step to better newsletter the links in the show notes or you can visit our website at
(31:40) www.distinction.live to get the latest from Pod to Practice in your inbox and let us know what you think we'd love to get your feedback so you mentioned earlier kind of OD uh open source OD you've got 198 tools kind of kind of mapped out have you got any particular favorites are there ones you come back to time and again my goodness i have ones that are very provocative especially in spaces that take classic approaches to OD but you can always you know like a Trojan horse come in to the organizational system looking very
(32:10) classic but then once you roll that that horse in you let the little soldiers out and they're all innovative so the innovative thing that I love that has worked in places like US Bank and other very traditional settings is the work of and the tools provided by Otto Charmer at the presencing institute and you you'll not only find those tools on on open source OD which actually is going to be released this year so it's it's very close it's prototyped right now and we're testing it but you could go right
(32:39) now without waiting to the presencing institute website and find some great tools like let's see social presencing theater which sounds like what the heck is that are you familiar with that at all no yeah see this is the fun thing so this is why I like the the avanguard so what this does is you get a group of people right now imagine you sat them down at a table and you said all right what seems to be the problem right their first answer is going to be an answer that due to you know wanting to look good and esteemed amongst your peers is
(33:13) the answer that everybody's been talking about but what OD consultants do that is more special than management consultants is they get to the the latent needs the needs behind the problem that are deeply intuitive and people have a hard time expressing what those needs are they don't even have the language for it because they don't access it the right way so what social presence in theater does is instead of asking people what seems to be the problem or what seems to be your hope if you're taking an
(33:39) appreciative perspective is you bring people together and you say I want you all to assume a pose with your body that embodies the struggle you have right now and as people know that as people form those things like it could be like this like this could be like this there's all these different right could be open you look around and you begin to intuit it what it is this like it's more symbolic understanding of what is blocking you as your starting point and then from that tacit place you make those feelings and
(34:10) those obstacles and those hopes explicit using words everybody hears that and then in social presencing theater what you do is you all move to a new sculpt a new way of holding your body that represents the future state that you want to emerge and that process is called presencing from the present moment you're moving into the future that wants to emerge and then you make that explicit and you draw those connections so a really great example I won't name where it was but it was in a large institution was somebody who was
(34:41) in the seauite and we did this and you know everybody's like what are we doing this is so weird but she struck a pose where she was balancing spinning plates on her toes and her fingers and all of her employees got to see that that on it that on its own is powerful that's a metaphor isn't it for people to It is a beautiful theatrical metaphor and then you got to look around the room and you saw what others are doing right another post she made was like kind of like pushing and she explained this as I know
(35:12) what we have to do but I feel like I'm constantly fighting upward and I'm pushing right so it's it's that's a big answer to your question but I am really a big fan of the more progressive forms of OD that tap into intuition and this knowledge that sits in sort of qualia like our ability to know what it's like to be something AI can't do which is also why I love it take that AI our jobs are safe but it does it does something because it it goes beyond because there's there's limits to our language
(35:42) like how would someone express that and if if you talk to a lot of senior leaders the pallet of colors to paint their their description of how they are is very limited isn't it often it's you know emotions are suppressed a lot of the time so at best you'd get four or five emotions that they can articulate and that kind of it's just what words could they come up with to express it so it really creates something that's not possible in other ways doesn't it and because it is a shared experience
(36:08) there's there's connection in there too so it's it's actually incredibly clever isn't there it is and you'll be surprised or maybe not but maybe the listener might be surprised that really big well-known organizations like take GE for instance um a while ago I had a conversation with their chief learning officer Rob Kalosi and I asked him like "How much of your operating budget do you spend on progressive more innovative forms of learning?" And he said something around 30% which imagine how
(36:36) much money that is for G's learning group okay and I said tell tell me an example of something you're doing that's progressive and this was triggered by something you said Karen which is the painting so they bring executives in and the goal the objective is to help them become more comfortable with making mistakes and taking risks which is essentially psychological safety and the big lesson here is that even when you're painting things change so they have executives stand in front of big tanks
(37:03) of water and paint on top of water and through that experience unpack and use that as a metaphor for what's going on and they can develop skills with and and more of a tolerance for ambiguity and polarity management and these more advanced skills through that through that experience and it's fun it's kind of a fun thing but there's a lot of newaged and you can't again you cannot do that with AI you can't get to that level that OD professionals are really tasked with getting at and just to shift
(37:34) gears a bit what what do you find most challenging about That's a good question i think it's my own assumptions anxieties and attachments i'm not Yoda or Buddha i'm not walking on water so I think what's frustrating is the little inner perfectionist in me that inner voice and the inner cynic the voice of the cynic in me the voice of the pessimist they all rise in my mind and so what's frustrating is knowing that they'll always be there and that it's more of a practice of recognizing that
(38:05) they're there for instance like you're getting defensive about something you just heard someone say or you have confirmation bias that arises because your a leader is challenging your your process so the challenge is really like seeing that and letting go of it coming back to what Edshine would call humble inquiry first principles asking questions as if it's the first engagement you've ever done so that's a challenge it's a real challenge and it's a practice and sometimes you take two
(38:35) steps forward and then five steps back um but that's why I think it's good to have friends like you like when you have friends you you go "Okay you know what this is natural this is this is we're all in this together this human thing this human experience." But I think I think it really strengthens the profession when someone who like yourself is you know you're you're really well read for very successful career like academically and still finding that internal battle but I think
(39:02) it's really helpful for people at the beginning of the journey to know that as well because there are so many people we're sort of finding from the podcast of our own discussions people feel enormous imposter syndrome at the beginning am I doing it am I doing it and if I'm doing it how perfectly am I doing it i'm sure I'm not doing it as well as others and I think that kind of message just really helps doesn't it for those coming through the next generation it does then actually so when we create
(39:25) our OD immersives and we work with people like Peter Black and you know these these big names I intentionally ask them to provide a case where they made a mistake or they fed something up or they felt imposttor syndrome and then it's almost like when you watch a war movie i don't know if you ever watch war movies my my father loves it so I I watched them with him and at the end of the movie there's usually a little montage that shows the actual person who is being depicted in the movie and maybe
(39:52) there's a little interview with them so at the end of these immersives you will see an Ed Shine saying you know what actually to be honest with you and he he did this in in uh the immersive humble consulting he said actually my best consulting was just asking dumb questions what the great Ed Shine who wrote all of these books and perspectives and so when you hear that you say well I can ask dumb questions I ask I think of dumb questions all the time so we're trying to dispel that myth of the ninja practitioner somebody said
(40:23) something to me early in my career that about half of what they ask is wrong and just to get comfortable with that and it's like that that's quite freeing when you've got that it's like you don't have to have a perfect question or you know just expect to be I will throw out I'm going to name drop one of the people who I have met in my career who knows just the right questions to ask the ones that blow your mind and as he would say make you realize that you're praying to too small a god is Peter Block who you know
(40:50) started out with flawless consulting but now is really engaged in the common good and the questions he asks are at such a deep level of humanity and and humility that any chance you have if you're listening to this to engage with designed learning which is Peter Block's organization which does a lot of events online you just need to connect on LinkedIn i would go to in fact we're having a wisdom exchange it's a it's an article I wrote on LinkedIn you could by the way you can find me on LinkedIn i'll
(41:20) just put a little plug here at William Brendelle a lot of people look for Bill but the reason I'm throwing that out there is not so I can up my contact uh you know number but it's because I will throw things out like an invitation to meet with Peter Block and all these greats for emerging practitioners and to have a wisdom exchange a two-way wisdom exchange so we're planning to do that in spring again I think this is the the competitive advantage that OD practitioners have is the ability to release existing wisdom within clients
(41:51) through great questions great frameworks so check that out od wisdom exchange free open source OD will host it we have a lot of interest brilliant and all all of the links that Bill is sharing with us are going to be in the show notes to go with this episode as well so when you listen on audio as well so absolutely please do because all the reference that Bill given you absolutely brilliant big question but when you look back at your career what were some of the biggest lessons that you've learned so far i'm
(42:15) going to give you one biggest lesson and I'm going to I'm going to refer people if you're a nerd like I am refer to the work of Bob Keegan read his book The Evolving Self which is a little bit of a dense read and he admits this but in the first chapter he talks about how in the Western world like if I were to hold a like what do you see like when I do this what do you see in front of you it's not a trick question you see a fist yeah it's a fist right so as an OD practitioner we might go into an
(42:42) organization and see a fist but the eastern perspective is that this is actually part one moment in time of a process of opening and closing your hand opening and closing your hand this is a Bob Keegan reference so that I didn't make this up so that's really important because when you're working with a leader or a team or a group you have to allow for them to change just when you think you've pegged them their personality their flaws if you continue to treat them with that way you are projecting something onto them as a
(43:13) practitioner even without words it could be an eye roll you know it could be anything it could be not asking them for their opinion people need room to change people make mistakes and you as the practitioner need room to change so that lesson of seeing ourselves as a process versus a a single personality and a fixed using that fixed mindset in addition to that right seeing ourselves as a process connecting with our own fallibility right our own I mean as as measures of reality we're terrible we're terrible if you ever study eyewitness
(43:48) testimony how inaccurate eyewitness testimony is and a lot of OD is eyewitness testimony it's like what I saw especially process consultation so I I think that one of the lessons is to always keep yourself honest check yourself before you wreck yourself and again that's a practice and I haven't figured it out i'm not going to say that I have but we're all on that journey how are you investing in your own learning and development now what does that look like for you currently this is a a very
(44:14) big weakness of mine be honest with you and I've had a lot of friends say you know you're a producer but you don't consume you don't consume right and what does that mean it's not that I don't read right of course I read all the time i'm constantly doing research but really genuinely going to to an event or listening to listening to somebody and just putting all of my big thoughts and you know favorite things aside like and I'll give you an example let's say I'm listening to Peter Block or actually you
(44:43) know what let's take another example let's let's say I'm talking to an amazing emerging practitioner i'm going to name drop Sasha Farley of Sasha Farley Consulting let's say I'm listening to her and she's talking about some really amazing things and by the way you should connect with her on LinkedIn an amazing practitioner i wouldn't even call her emerging anymore she's fantastic so if I'm talking to her and I'm listening and I'm learning from her but my filter is everything she says
(45:10) I want to commodify into open source OD in some way i'm not really consuming i'm really not i am not letting what she say is saying pour over me so I think that even though I'm doing all kinds of professional development I have to get better my greater learning edge is being present putting all of that aside and letting the person truly communicate and consuming that so that's that's the learning edge and last question that we always ask in in every single podcast but especially in this one and we really
(45:40) want you to sign post people to your own resources as well what advice would you give someone considering a career in organization development one of the things you talked about in another webinar I was watching about the age of whitewater uh the fact that it's such a tumultuous time as well um so what advice would you give for that next generation coming through so we just ran an immersive called permanent whitewater which is inspired by the work of Peter Vale which is I'm named dropping lots of people peter Vil really originally came
(46:09) up with that although one of his students used that term permanent whitewater he adopted it and it became a big piece for him the idea that it's no longer what used to be called punctuated equil equilibrium where everything's going okay for a while then there's a big industry change like a wave but then you go back to stasis right that doesn't exist any now you have permanent white water and the answer there's a lot of ways to deal with permanent white water and check out that immersive we offer
(46:37) that in fact we're going to be offering that out of Germany March 24th so if you go to open source od it's free you'll experience that but the biggest the biggest advice I would give is is learning mindfulness practice because and here's what I'm going to use a metaphor let's say you're in white water and you're flailing and sometimes you see the shoreline and sometimes you see where you're going but things are things are changing like for instance you could be doing strategic planning and then all
(47:02) of a sudden somebody's doing some other strategic plan at the same time that you're working on the main strategic plan here comes some more white water so for a new practitioner the ability what do you do stop struggling let go and come underwater and surfers know this if you get pummeled by a big wave take a deep breath and you go underwater where everything is quiet and you can reestablish center you can think then of course you have to resurface but you always have that place available to you and so creating those spaces whether
(47:33) it's practicing mindfulness in real time knowing when to disengage when your mind is full and you're like I can't even think anymore and then establishing maybe a regular mindfulness practice which could be way more than meditation it could be going for a walk having wine with a friend so that's my advice because most people have the skills and the desire and what it takes but I think that's the if you can if you can get that going and make it a habit that's my advice brilliant well it's been an
(48:00) absolutely fantastic episode i don't know about you Danny but I have the biggest reading list to take away from this i could see your pen moving and my pen moving if I would capture that oh okay brilliant so it has been an all you can eat buffet and everything was absolutely brilliant so so thank you Bill danny what are you taking away from today's conversation so many things i think this is going to be one of those episodes that people listen back to multipleness and goodness so I really enjoyed learning about the work of um open
(48:25) source OD and kind of hearing more about the immersives i think such a a brilliant concept and so so much needed um the social presence in theater um I'm going to go away and look read into that and look at more and then I think the the importance of seeing seeing ourselves as a process so important yeah and for me d all those things and I love what you're saying about moral disengagement and the eight different ways in which it happens and that organizations people don't set out to be unethical but it just it happens one
(48:54) situation before we find ourselves and sort of been able to articulate that and the other thing you talked about is like when you're round the table and you are commissioning the work who has the greatest interest and what happens to your commission when they start to salami slice it and starts to become something that hang on this isn't what I eventually intended but is that enough am I still doing the work as well so it's been absolutely brilliant bill if people want to follow your work if they
(49:18) want to sort of keep up to date or connect with you what is the best way people to do that you know I'm on I'm probably addicted to LinkedIn to tell you the truth so if you find me on LinkedIn William Brendell I'm constantly posting new free things that you can get involved in and also check out open-source.
(49:36) com that is where we are putting up so many free resources and and we see it as sort of a movement so check that out I would say and I can I've done it and I'm actually a Renaissance consultant all right that's great well that makes a lot of sense that makes a lot of sense doing what you do you're just soaking it all in beautiful so for all those that are curious about it go to Bill's website it is brilliant it's very accessible it's really clean very easy to use and it's really eye opening and the report that
(50:03) you get is brilliant and your results are compared against a norm group as well so even better so it really is a really great report as well and loads of resources for you to explore um Bill you've also got out of your sick bed because you've had flu so so thank you so much for pushing through the the pain into it today but I think all of our viewers are going to get so much so much value from it thank you thank you you create this space it's wonderful i love listening to your podcast and you're
(50:28) picking just some of the very best people i don't know how I wiggled my way but I love listening to your podcast and I hope wish you the best of luck thank you so much [Music]