The complexity of tough issues can only be handled effectively with intensive local participation. Such participation is not straightforward as people may shy away from the unfamiliar repertoires, unpredictable processes and inevitable opposition that come with the territory. This paper focuses on how to facilitate local ownership in a series of paradoxical interventions with sufficient depth and credibility. Read more…
This chapter presents a questionnaire that measures individual change preferences based on a meta-theory of five paradigms of change. We describe its construction and improvement over a 13-year period, during which time more than 100,000 people have used the test as an instrument for self-reflection.
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Complex issues require continuous change that is planned incrementally. This paper focuses on how such emergent change can be shaped through a process of small wins and explains how this may even use adversity to fuel the change. The research shows how planning is anything but an innocuous support activity for change efforts and describes how it can either frustrate or enable deep change. Read more…
The challenges consultants face warrant ongoing education. When those practitioners have 15- 30 years of experience dealing with messy realities, however, it makes little sense for faculty to teach clean-cut models in standardized curricula. Read more…
There is no shortage of tough issues: whether it is collaboration between professionals, external oriented government, sustainable economy or development cooperation. They are characterized by complexity of different kinds: many factors and many actors are involved. It makes tough issues hard to pin down and impossible to eradicate. The dominant change repertoires are ill equipped for tough issues: clear division of tasks and responsibilities, minimizing conflicts, drawing up organizational missions, rolling out large-scale change programs Read more…
In this chapter we explore the most prominent clusters of theories for changing organizations and changing people. Managers and management consultants make use of the first set of theories while psychotherapist use the latter. Our assumption was that there would be considerable overlap between these sets of theories. Read more…
People learn, all the time and everywhere. Yet it seems we all have our own images and ideas about what learning actually is. More importantly, we all seem to have our favourite approaches to learning, which we call upon whenever a learning situation arises. Read more…
