It’s only a model – building your own change processes

Today I am speaking at a conference on OD again.  Having seen the slides of the speakers, including my own,  i can see we have an unhealthy preoccupation with models.  In describing what we do in OD and change we seem to have to resort to a 2×2 or 3×3 or spiral or pyramid or cube or sliding intersecting circles or some other often meaningless drawing.  It’s not the drawing or the model I object to, as I am a user myself of diagrams, but the faith we place in them to show how change works.

Lets get some things clear, change is complex, and a model may not show all the elements of what is going on.  What ever your favorite model happens to be, there are others out there that might also be of use. What you have will inevitably not cover all the bases in the game, all the time, in all the organizations you work in.

Models in engineering are examples to show what might be, models in architecture the same so why should we be so wedded to our conceptual models of what might be in change.

I think the model is the starting point, a place to deviate from, to build onto,  to dissect, to deconstruct in the pursuit of understanding.  My conclusion is that this takes a will to be wrong and a will to be open to new interpretations.  If the outcomes are more models, more diverse but more appropriate to the specific change undertaken,  then that for me at least is a good thing.

Third presentation attended  and I have model and diagram fatigue – have I learn’t more about understanding of OD…. Jury is out on that one.