DC Area OD Practitioners CoP

Topic: Time to Expand Our OD Discipline? Here Comes Knowledge Management and Conversational Leadership!

Description:  The field of Organization Development has been practicing in a diagnostic way for several decades. Bob Marshak and Gervase Bushe have been developing the idea of Dialogic OD, which is about dialogue and is nearly identical to conversation. Conversation tends to leverage knowledge. Therefore, OD, KM and conversational leadership are finding themselves in a convergence.

From an organization perspective, KM can be defined as “optimizing the flow of knowledge across an organization to ensure organizational learning.” Successful KM often results in better/faster decisions through connected expertise and increased collaboration across org silo’s. Conversational Leadership can be defined as “making sense of our complex world through expanded conversational and leadership skills to result in better decisions and new possibilities”. All of these fields seems closely related!

In this session, we will explore these emerging disciplines. How are they similar and different than OD?  How are they valuable and impactful?  Our exploration intends to be informative, challenging and conversational.  We’ll use an adaptation of the “World Café” approach known as the “Knowledge Café”. In this approach, Mr. Hovell will offer initial thoughts for 15-20 minutes, then we’ll break into small groups for three 15-minute small group discussions. To close the night, we’ll form the chairs into a circle in the middle of the room for a group-level conversation. The intent is to conduct an inspiring, thought-provoking safe environment to result in our best learning.

Presenter:  John Hovell

As a leader in the convergence of Knowledge Management (KM) and Organization Development (OD), Mr. Hovell is the CEO and co-founder of STRATactical. He is a practitioner, speaker, and author in OD/KM strategies and their application to current challenges around the world. John is married to Karen and they have 2 daughters, Camden and Michelle.

CoP Leader:  Mark Sachs, ma.sachs@verizon.net

Cancellation Policy: Registrants should contact Mark if they need to cancel.  Due to the room size, registrations will be limited so please contact Mark soonest if you register but are then unable to attend so others can register and attend instead.

Additional Notes:  A $5.00 per person contribution is requested to help pay for rental of the room.