Developing the Organization

Understanding how your organization functions can seem overwhelming; where to start? In this session, we start with four common forms of organizations and investigate their strengths, weaknesses, and implications. You will come to a better appreciation of your organization and others, seeing them as the interplay of specific forms and forces.

You may have noticed that people play politics in organizations. Not you of course - other people. Nevertheless, it is important to understand how they do it and why. In fact, it is important to know about the positive side of politics and what it can do to help an organization.

We hear a great deal about being “global” these days but maybe we should question this! Not just those of us who travel the globe, but all of us. We all need to be more “worldly”. To be Worldly is to be worldly-wise, as it is sometimes called. This means: “experienced in life, sophisticated, practical.” Imagine companies like this! These discussions are designed to get you thinking about striking a balance between being global and being worldly.

It has been popular to see organizations as chains: linear sequences of activities. But many organizations don’t fit this, and even ones that partially do can benefit from considering alternative perspectives: organizing as hubs, webs, and/or sets. This can make a huge difference to how you manage.

Many of today’s organizations are highly-structured and complex which can make communicating and getting the job done difficult. We look at two characteristics of their formal structures – silos and slabs - and the challenges these present to managing, and investigate ways to manage across and beyond them.

Sometimes we think too much about our decisions. Perhaps we would do better to see them more insightfully. Or just act on them in order to think about them better. This session contrasts "thinking first" with "seeing first" and "doing first" as approaches to decision making, using examples from finding a mate to handling decisions at work.

Experiences with CoachingOurselves and the three related programs from which it has sprung suggest a set of guidelines for the development of an organization as a community. This CoachingOurselves topic presents six guidelines and asks you to consider how you can apply them in your own organization.