Episode 183: Douglas O’Loughlin on Future-Ready Organizational Development (OD)

[Music] Hello, folk. Welcome to Shiny Happy People Podcast. This is me, Vinay, your host. Okay, we have with us a repeat guest today. He was back with us a long, long, long time ago. And his episode is in our top five in terms of listeners. In fact, we got some great feedback that he would love to have him back and for us to have a conversation on making, you know, double-clicking on some of the things that we talked about. In case you're wondering who I'm referring to, I'm referring to Dr. Douglas Oloflin, who is known for his work in organizational development for over three decades. He's profound at several OD network written numerous articles and blogs, book and a global conferences, TEDx speaker, and as written book and Lightingman, the polarity thinking, which is one of the books we'll talk about. The salitating transformation, he's credited creating and holding spaces. He's someone I meet, not as frequently as I would like when I'm in Singapore. We do try and catch up. But he's done some amazing work in OD and we're going to dig a little bit deeper in how OD is evolving. Take you more right after this. Okay folks, and as Arnold Schwarzenegger used to say in his movies, I'll be back. We've got with us Douglas Oloflin and he's Douglas, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me back. I so enjoy our conversations and both here and in person, yeah. Yes, absolutely. And on the podcast, Douglas, it's been coming up to almost four years since we had you on. It was in May 2022 that we spoke on all things OD and a lot has changed since then. It sure has. Can I just sneak in that? I was listening to it yesterday to kind of prepare for this. And one of the things you said was that you were an accidental OD practitioner. Do you remember that? Yes, I do. I still have one. It has changed. There's a book that's come out since then and it's actually called OD for the accidental practitioner. So maybe they got the title from you. I don't know, but it's actually a very good book and it was published like 2024, I believe 2020. Yeah, so I thought that was quite fun to come across that to make that connection. Yeah. You share the details of the author and the book and are you one of the authors? No, no, it's out, but the authors are awesome. They really summarize the work really well better than any other book I've seen in terms of a really foundational book. Yeah, easy to read and very accessible. Excellent. So Douglas, when we did that podcast four years ago, we got a lot of great feedback. The listenership was very good. Lots of people said that that was sort of like a by my to OD, you know, D 101 for people who didn't understand it. So let's make this a little bit. Let's elevate this conversation to the next. So I'd love to hear from you. What's changed in the world of OD since 22 to today in the last four years. What are the one two three things that you see? Well, I see two major trends, which and one personal trend if I throw that in. And so the two major trends I see across, you know, the different countries that I interact with practitioners is the range. So typically people who get into design thinking or OD or agile stick to that lane. And I think there's been a realization that if we do some more learning from each other, a bit more integration. We have more tools and ways of thinking to help organizations along the way. So I find there's a sort of a nice melding of different practices in service of the system. So I feel deeper than in certain categories and others. But I still think OD is a nice foundation because it does stuff that the others don't as much about like the contracting piece and really understanding change and all that. So I even spoke of it. I did a keynote last year or so for a scrum conference. And I said, look, I hardly know anything about scrum. And that's okay. We know that the OD perspective would be really useful. So and I learned a lot from being part of that conference. So yeah, I love how we're all trying to help each other. So that's one. Are you seeing that, by the way? Yeah, you're right. And it's sort of interesting. The tools that an OD practitioner uses have definitely widened. And also the skillsets and to act to what you were saying, I really believe that OD is now becoming sort of OD practitioners are becoming a team. And it's a group of OD practitioners. Each with different nuance skillsets are going into work with the system. Right. And certainly that's my own experience. I do a lot of work with a guy who's really a design thinking really expert. Somebody else who's more into resilience of wellness. So another one is more to AI. So I think it's lovely that we're at the field is expanding. I guess the other major trend. I don't know. I know this is true for my work. And maybe because I've gone into the area of polarities. But I really see that how helpful it has been for organizations to better understand and deal with the tensions that organizations, you know, face. That's swinging back and forth between, you know, how do we meet the bottom line and take care of people. The question that gets elevated to what kind of organism you want to be in a way that the lights are stakeholders and creates a great place to work. Or if people are arguing about whether we enable our customers or citizens, whatever, and how do we regulate the industry. It's like, no, how do we do both, you know, shared that should we share data or do we protect confidentiality. Well, it keeps raising that question up to a higher level to make it easier to talk about. How do we do both. So I say that's another one. That could be just my work, because you know, I've kind of got into that in a deep way. But do you see that at all? So for our listeners, what Douglas is talking about is in was it 2024? Douglas, your book came out enlightenment. I was very, very fortunate to meet up with Douglas in person, get a copy of the book and read it. And I love how you kind of framed it. Every business, every leader is now being with that polarity thinking it's like managed stability and change being firm and client being and the word is blind. It's not born and it's on that scale of thinking and you're absolutely correct right now. Every leaders struggling where to be on that scare. Right, which direction are they getting pulled into and how can they be both. And I think how the work has has helped people is they, instead of swinging instead of going back and forth, they, the question is, so it's not balanced. So the word is higher purpose. So how do what kind of organizations we want to what kind of leader do I want to be? What kind of relationships do we want to create? You know, do we want to get things done and we want to make connections. So I think that's it. And I wrote a like a four page summary and it has some resources and a video I can send if anyone's curious to read a little bit about it. So I tried to condense the whole book into these pages to at least understand the concepts. Yeah. That would be great. I do share that with us. If I think in my own thing that I've seen maybe because I've been doing this a long time. I'm still I've really a little less these few viewers that got really clear that these are not just consulting or facilitation skills. These are life skills. I know that by sound basic and I guess it could have sort of really realized it sooner and such a clear way. You know, facilitation is something we do, right? We get in front of groups and we facilitate, but we facilitate family. I was part of a book. I don't know if you have this book. It's a screen. I got that one. So with birthday collective put together a book about facilitation, but it's about facilitating spaces. So facilitating silence, community, social change, you know, all kinds of different things, theater. And so I find yeah, that it looks it's more of a life skill and a way of being than. Then just think that we do when we're facilitating in the same thing with OD, right? How do we enter into a room, into a meeting, and to, when we get home, how do we do contracting with people in our life? Where do we get our data from? So I think it becomes clear over time that the work in facilitation OD, a lot of this is a life skill, which makes it even more real, and practical. - Yeah, no, I sort of, I like the frame that he said, life skill, the way I've sort of thought about it is, normally when we say OD, the organization, part that we kind of think of is usually business, but to me, that definition of organization is communities, nonprofits, like you said, families, in a sense, structure, or organization, and we can apply some of those principles everywhere, wherever there's a group of people who organize themselves in some shape or form. So if you want to look at that. - That's a very good point, and I guess another thing I can send for those who might be interested is, just, this is just also quite recent, in the last, certainly in the last, this year, so in the last couple of months, about misperceptions of OD, and one of them is the name, oh, what you just said, right, which is, it sounds like it's for organizations, but it's for any level of the system or community, for society, I think there's many of us that do work, and are you do as well, and the organization, it's about communities, it's across any system, and I actually thought about, is there a better name for it, we call it, you know, system development, but then that sounds like an IT project. - Yeah, good. - But yeah, so the O is kind of there, and it's the work we do more than the name, I suppose, but it's a little unfortunate that there's this, thinking that it's about organizations, you know. - Yeah, yeah, no, you're right, so I like the three that you kind of just said, you said one is, around the skills and nuances, and becoming more of an umbrella, bringing agias, from all of that, the second you kind of talked about, polarity and the third is the application of it. From my perspective, there's a fourth one that I'll add, which I've seen, and I'd love to get your thought on it, and you kind of hinted it on the second one. Today, every company is talking about AI, and how they're disrupted by it, and then what that means is that the whole system, approach to an organization is evolving, of how can they be more tech, and maybe that's another polarity there, right? AI and humanistic. How do you manage that? - Well, we're doing a dance, 'cause that's my exact thought, and I talk about it quite a bit, which is, it's a polarity, human and AI. I like to start with human on the first poll, because as a reminder, that's the core, right? And we add in the AI piece, and again, it's for a higher purpose. I'm not an expert, and again, love to hear your thoughts, but I find that, and this is not new to AI, this is about tech, you know, like, digitalization, sometimes it's done for its own sake, 'cause it seems like the thing to do, we should digitalize, we should do AI, we should AI things and all that. But what I'm reading, sensing, and hearing from people is, again, start with the higher purpose, you know, what are we trying to do, and then how can that tool or technology or what we call it AI, whatever, help us get there? Because there seems to be a lot of fear, like, is it gonna replace jobs, am I gonna be relevant, and all that? And those are about concerns, but if we look at it as a polarity, as you just mentioned, human and AI, then it gives us, okay, so what do we do with this? How do we partner with AI? We do it as individuals, right? Use AI sometimes to, you know, do some research or refine some things, and all that. So how do we complement at an organization level, how AI can support us in the purpose, right? It's just a different level of the system. - Yeah, but it's interesting, as you were saying that, that was one thing that came to mind, right? The way I've always framed it is, it is, human first AI enabled, right? But if you look at the language that a lot of organizations are talking about in the business press and all of that, they say, how do we make our companies an AI first company, led by AI? And to me, just framing the way it's done, it's sort of this, oh, what about humans then? Oh no, no, we'll still need them. It's almost like the afterthought, right? - Yeah, we're right. - AI first, we're AI centric. AI is at the core of what we do. And I'm almost kind of thinking, I thought people are at the core of what you do. - Yeah, it's very similar to a trend, again, that's been around a long time where people say like, we want to be a learning organization or we want to be agile or we want to be, whatever the label is, or we want to be AI, whatever the term you use, when you start with that, it's like, wait a minute, what's the point of that, right? So it should be what kind of organization do we want to be? And how do we use AI to accelerate that? That's a very fair question. And yes, there are concerns that people will get, we already seen people laid off and that trend will continue. How do we manage all that? Yeah. - Yeah, so I'm, give that from the system that we're serving as O.D. practitioners. But I'm just very curious, in the work that you've been doing, have you come across other practitioners or using AI in their O.D. work? - I would say the most common one, I mean, of course there's all the trivial ones, like creating LinkedIn posts, I suppose. But I think the two that I see that I think or that a lot of people are using is to do sense-making of data. - Oh, right. - Yeah. - So you have large survey data or data from, you have customer data, you have employee data, you have all kinds of data and you put them together and crunch it and get some themes that show up that I think that's quite helpful. I see others, I have a couple of friends, when in particular, who does it for, that's a lot of research using AI. So he was, he's telling me that we used to take weeks to do some research on the industry that he's going into work with, that he's not really work with before and he'll just crunch stuff and put it all in and with a couple of hours, he feels like he really understands the industry in a much deeper way. So those are the two that I, at least that I have heard people use that, have quite a big impact kind of work. - Yeah. - Yeah. - The second one I completely agree, I've sort of used it a little bit to understand the nuance and the context of the industry, the sector. - The sector. - And even though organization itself, right? - Organization, it'll definitely help you understand the history, the background, all of that, but I've always found that I still have to validate that in my one-on-one conversations with the key stakeholders, especially in the diagnostic phase, right? If I just, I can't skip, I can say, okay, AI's done all my diagnostic, I don't need to speak to any of the stakeholders. I just fear that there'll be one day of practitioners and they say, okay, it can skip that stage. Let's go now to design. - No. - I agree. Yeah, so in that sense, I would agree with that. And actually those interviews that we, if we do that part first where we constate and look at themes, then when we talk to people, we're testing if those themes are true, right? So, absolutely. And that's again, a good example of the human and AI polarity, right? So rather than trying to do the ground up stuff, which we also do, right? Where we start from scratch and find out what people think are the issues. We can sometimes do it the other way around. - Yeah, so you're right. And I hope our practitioners don't, I mean, it helps to reduce time, but it's not a short talk to skipping steps. - Right, correct. - Yes, right. - We still need to talk to people. And I just support that because I haven't done this work for many years. And you too, when we interview people one on one, we find out things one on one that you just know other way to find out. There's no survey on the planet. There's no focus group where people will share what they share one on one, right? As soon as they learn that we're just there to be helpful and it's confidential, confidential, and we just want to learn so we can create some processes and get connected. People share things that are just amazing, right? Which is your point. I think the one on one interviews, I hope they never go away. Yeah, me too. I hope you don't get replaced by an agentic OD consultant who will interview you on that instead of us, right? I think it's possible, but in the meantime we're going to connect with people, right? Absolutely, that's it. The whole deal with men consulting partner, bringing people and strategy together. Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook using the handle at C2COD and get updates on all of them coming up to the show. Question for you is sort of thinking. Last time we spoke four years ago, we were talking with a kind of problem statements that police come to us with where they want an OD lens to it. What kind of, have you seen those kinds of challenges, the problems that clients reach up for or what the kind of systems issues that exist have those evolved as well with time? I would say most of my work over these couple years, I guess partially because of COVID and partly because I've been based in Singapore, right? So I would speak from a Singapore context, but I would say there's no such thing anymore as like a presenting issue. What I'm working with, you know, four and a half thousand staff and the whole ecosystem is changing. And so it's had to navigate the complexity of that. It's not a point A to point B change, it's real transformation. So there's a few organizations that are like that. And others that are just, I think sometimes the yes driven, they get feedback that it's not a good place to work. They're losing good people. And there is no single problem, right? That's a system, it's a complex system. It's a, as Jeff Bellman says, the beast is the beauty of the beast and how do we help the beast become more effective. So I would say there's a couple with super complex transformation, where it's not even the organization, it's the whole ecosystem that's changing and how to navigate that. And then just sent this sense that a lot of leaders have is we're not doing well, you know, can we, we want to be, there's too many people complaining and we want to be healthier. We take care of our customers and our citizens and our patients and beneficiaries and we don't feel well. So it feels a lot more complex over the years. There's no, there's no single presenting issue anymore. And first people block would say even if they do have a presenting issue, it's never the real issue anyway. That would be a real issue, correct? Now there's no even presenting issues anymore. It's like, where a mess stop? Can you help us? Yes. We're messed up. Can you help us? We don't know how we're messed up. We don't know why we're messed up. We just feel messed up. Yeah. And, you know, and I give the credit to the ones who do reach out because they, I think reaching out for some support is the way to go, right? I mean, get some, get some folks. I mean, find a right partner. I always tell organizations, you know, if you're going to choose a consulting company or a consultant to work with, you got to make sure it's a good fit, right? So talk to a few people, see what they do well and what they offer and the synergy between the relationship, you know, and make a choice of what can help you. So I always say that to people when I'm meeting them for the first time because I do work with a lot of organizations. I actually, over those these four years, there have been a few organizations I work with for three or four years over time. But it's only because the chemistry and the fit was right. I'm not a good fit for everyone. I mean, yeah, every organization needs to find who's the right person to partner with or in this one transformation I'm working with. They have a big consulting company to do some of the major, what do you call it? Like best practices for the industry, that kind of thing. And then I do the, how do we navigate the changes through complexity and all that kind of stuff. I think organizations that are looking for that kind of support, you just find the right match, right? Yeah. And for us as well, right? I always say Douglas, you're like my role model. You get to pick the kind of assignments you want to do. You know, sometimes some of us want to pay the bills, right? But that matching of consulting, consulting forum or consultant and the client becomes so important. There's got to be a chemistry there that we would have going together. But I like what you said that there isn't a single presenting issue, which is so true because if you think about the top, I just attended a conference in Singapore recently. And it's at the top three four challenges was this for organizations and leaders. They said number one was tech, you know, how do we use AI? In this employee wellness, third is leadership agility. And the fourth one that they brought up was, I think in terms of organizational resilience to all the changes that's going on. And I was just maybe tech, they put as number one. Third, the other three have been organization challenges 20 years ago. Yeah, correct. And they become better buzzwords too, right? Yeah, exactly. And just before we started, you and I were talking about the geopolitical situation as we record this doesn't have, right? This is also makes people feel we're not feeling well. We don't know why. And one of the things is, stop watching the news. Yeah, that's true. But you're right. I feel that. And there is sort of frenetic energy, right? But I think that that does come from the global situation. People seem more on edge. They seem a bit more stressed. They seem there seems to be more like power accidents or seems to be more stuff happening at least. And I do think that's quite unsettling. And so it would be really nice if we had organizations. First of all, yes, if read less news, I guess that's a really good place to start. Or stay a little bit detached from it. That's a nice priority to stay informed and detached. So not to wear a stand. But I think a good team, forget organization. Most people's experience of their work life is in the team, right? So if we have teams that take care of each other and support each other, that goes a long way, right? To help people feeling a little bit more. I guess a bit more grounded in the mess of what feels like a pretty chaotic world these days. Yeah. So I had a question on that on the staying grounded because in our practice, and we sort of touched upon this last time, not maybe not so much in detail, but you and I have conversations that sometimes the system needs to pause, reflect, have leaders step back, have the team step back, reflect what they've done well, what they could change before they move forward, right? You can't change the wheel when you're going to six, when you're going to succeed. I'm just very curious from an old dealer and from, do you think that the piece of organizations today allows space to pause and reflect? Or is it just like, I get a sense that organizations have just, instead of pausing and reflecting, they've just hit the accelerator even more in response to what whatever it might be. I think it's harder to do the pause. Every member years ago, and this is not that long, well, 15 years ago is a long time, right? If there was an organization I work with where they had 20, 20 over leaders and we would every year, we'd do these three day retreats, fly overseas and do all that pause stuff, you just talk about. Right. If one person got sick or couldn't make it, they would cancel the whole thing, flights, hotels, everything because we needed to be altogether. Now because of the pace of things, I don't, it's really hard to do any team thing where everyone is there and it's almost become the norm that this person's flying in there, they're there or something's happening. But I still find that the organizations that do it find it useful to do that pause. Otherwise, that treadmill just keeps going. So I think it takes a bit more discipline to do it and maybe don't do it as often. But a lot of times I do it and I say, we don't have time or some people I hate these things and all that. Like, well, what do we do? This is precious, precious, precious day or half a day, whatever we're going to do, what would make that useful. And as long as we deliver that, then they will continue to do the pauses, even though and if everyone's not here. or maybe not on a frequent basis as it used to be. Maybe it's a re-five months, four or five months rather than every month or something, but probably more important than ever, right, given this circumstance. Yeah. And the big challenge is the ROI, right? We've got to help people identify the value or effect. And today, I come from finance background, and even I find it sort of funny thing, you can quantify everything guys. People say, yeah, but put stuff, what's the value we get? Can you tell me three hours of reflective workshop with seven leaders, that's 21 hours, what's that going to give me? I'm like, oh my god, you guys are doing crazy math here. So yeah. And that's why I think it's important for us when we do this, to-- for them to come up with tangible things are going to do to support each other, right? So first of all, understand the whole system. So get for them to create something about the state, the current state of the system. So they get a common picture. And then it could be-- it could be team norms or something, or check on how they're doing with their norms, or offers and requests on how can we lift the business up. So at least they have tangible conversations about the meaningful stuff. The work we do is John's here, a lot of people call this stuff soft, right? But he calls it tough stuff, which I think is a bit more accurate. So I think it's tough stuff. And they see tangible agreements and outcomes that come out of it. Then I think even the most RRI, KPI, OKR, people will be OK with it, because it's-- we're moving towards a direction. With tangible things to do. Is that right to you? Yeah, you're right. It's sort of begin with the end in mind, sort of define what the outcomes they want to achieve as. And as long as you facilitate the conversation to achieve their outcomes, they'll feel like it was meaningful. You were talking about earlier making a group of leaders to the polarity work as well. Very curious. Can you tell me the genesis of that? Why did they want to go through that? What was the outcome of it? How did the leaders react to how do that conversation on the polarities? Yeah, so I've been doing a lot of polarity stuff. I guess I don't know if it was triggered by the book, or just because I've been doing it for a while, and seems to be helpful for organizations and leaders, but I've done a lot. I've done a lot of stuff in education with clusters of principles and vice principles and for the Ministry of Education. So for them, it's really to identify those tensions in their system and address them. So for example, education, I assume this is a pretty global thing. We want our young people to develop academically. And we also want to develop as whole child, whole being, social, emotional development. So I think there's something about naming that, that helped them. Or I do a lot of work in Bhutan. And when I did polarities with the leaders in Bhutan, they talked a lot about how they find the challenge for their youth. This is that education, but for the younger people about how do you honor the tradition, which is one of their four pillars of G&H, go to national happiness, and also modernize how do you do bulls. So when they can find two or three kind of tensions in their system and then put it on the table, they really appreciate it. Like do what I did the other day with like seals and leaders of the arts and culture sector, like museums and Esplanade, you know, the Esplanade, all that. So for them, they talked, what was the one, the main one that they got really excited about was like artistic, they had a few around artistic integrity and social impact. And yeah, so when they get to see that and play with it, it's quite engaging for them and help some see things differently. Yeah. Yeah. No, what I'm sensing from what you just shared, Douglas, is the value is having that conversation and just naming the tension itself sort of reduces the tension. Does that make sense? Yeah, because people can think about actually the definition of polarization, which is that two people or two teams or whatever have a different perspective and then they make the other side wrong, right? And sometimes they don't see that. Like the one IT company found out their big problem. And this is also since the four years, right? So they said the biggest problem was that developers want to get the programs out to all the customers, or in this case, all the hospitals and all that. And they have cybersecurity and compliance that are slowing them down. And I was like, that's not a problem, because is it good to get your code out? There's all this stuff out. And they go, yes, and is it good to have some security and compliance and make sure everything is OK? Yes. Well, then it's not a problem. You have a polarity. So once they really put-- once you put on the table and they talk about it, then they're all real. I say we're in this together because the higher purpose is a healthy system, right? A healthy-- so once they get the higher purpose, and they see that they're both sides are right. I think you're right. Just name it. You've got to see it, name it. And then they get to have these conversations, which they've never had before, because they usually have it in their own camps, right? Yeah. So I'm visualizing here a huge opportunity for OD practitioners under the guidance of Douglas or Polarity Group. Helping companies have the human AI confolarity conversation. Yeah. I think that's a good one. Actually, nobody-- we talk about it, but nobody's really taking that one and put it on the table. I really mapped it and unpapped it. But that would be a good one to do. Yeah. So it's human AI, and then some will say, gender AI and cognitive AI is moving closer to the human aspect of it. It's kind of interesting because if you go to some industries, like I'm talking, which is a sub-practice. It's kind of sometimes used in our own e-work with leaders and all of that. The coaching sector in this field is now saying, can a gender AI do coaching? Do we really need human coaches? I'm just sort of thinking, you can feed all the potential answers with where's empathy in that conversation. I did read some of the reason. I don't know how prevalent this is, but I read a piece of research recently that said for people who use that kind of coach or counselor, the first few sessions are really useful. And of course, they do that empathic kind of responses. After a while, they said that many people after three or four sessions start to miss the human on the other side. But that could be because this is all new at this point. I don't know, but yeah. Yeah, I don't know how much of it is. The high-psychologic versus the reality of it. But your point, organizations and leaders and the system is definitely being challenged by this at this point in time. So you said it's not one problem statement that they've come with. Now it's much more complex. How can an OD practitioners stay up to speed with how of what's needed and how organizations are evolving? You won't get a media frame that. Are OD practitioners upskilling and staying in touch with it or are we falling behind in a theories and frameworks of OD? How do we balance that? Maybe that's our polarity as an industry as opposed to that. Yeah, I suppose. I suppose. I think from what I'm saying, people are really expanding their toolbox and their perspectives and trying to all kinds of different things and complexity. And one thing we have not talked about, but even in vertical development or what adult I call adult developmental psychology, but how do we think bigger? How do we make connections? How do we see systems more impactfully? How do we do intervene in the best way? So I do think there's a relatively healthy expansion of the work that you kind of started with. I think it ought to be effective. You sort of have to. Right. Yeah, at an individual level, I think definitely to your point, we probably are. But as a community, I'm not-- I don't know if you're having those conversations of our own industry polarities. If you know what I mean, right? Yeah. to stop going to conferences because it tends to be a little bit like that. Yeah. There is one in October in Bangkok, the Iota, which is a great organization. Probably goes to that because it's in the neighborhood and I know many of the people. I'm sorry, it's a good question whether how expansive it will be in terms of its range. There's an opportunity. Douglas, when we spoke in 2020, we didn't have a crystal ball. We were just coming out of COVID and all of that stuff, right? The virtual. But I'm sure you'll fine tune the crystal ball today. So my question is, what's the next couple of years sort of going to look like in the world of OD? What do you think are? What can a practitioner look forward to? That's a fair question. I think there has been a trend for years and I think it's going to continue to get, as Marv Weisbord called, this phase of the system working on itself. So to bring large groups, representatives of the system or the whole system together and do the work together. And now we can use a little bit more tech and able to get some of that data together and to document some of the things from the large system. So I see that as a continuing thing because there's no one group or no senior leaders that can come up with everything and then just share it. And there's many people who want to have a voice and they appreciate have a voice. And so when everyone hears each other's voice, I think the system benefits from that. So I think the continuing trend and I hope accelerates is to bring people together, can be virtual or in person and really do the work together rather than telling or selling ideas and all that. So I think that's what I think is the next phase of really making a system healthier. Yeah, until point I don't know if you agree with me or not, even if the system is out of frame at the language wise, but even if the system isn't ready to create that space for all the voices, the voices will make themselves heard. But whether within the system or they'll go and take it out and put it in social media or in the LinkedIn poster, it's amazing how much stuff it's just just just an example and who we're recording this in early April. And there's a very large IT company that just announced massive global layoffs, right? And within six hours of that layoff employees statements, the letter that they supposedly sent to all the employees with the layoff, the 6 a.m. email, everything is already available on social media. And everyone is commenting on whether the company did it within their firm to see how they did it and it's amazing. So I guess that's one reason to make sure everyone gets a voice. So it's important to have a trend. And also for organizations to be a bit more sensitive about how they do things. Knowing that if you don't do it well, some of the stories you just shared about what that looks like on social media. It's not pretty. I don't think any company wants to see their names dragged through out in the public. They're dirty laundry, so to speak. And in Singapore, in the last six months, we've had so many of these, especially FNB outlets that have suddenly closed up. Like in the Thursday morning, they just sign that says we are officially closed. And so many of those. I'm thinking 14 outlets or whatever X number, 100 and all employees, how did you guys just decide to go? What happened in the system? It's really not cool. But in that case, nobody can boycott them because they closed the whole company. You can't boycott them. That's really unfortunate. We want a boycott. Yeah, exactly. So if we put people bad and they still have certain branches, we can do that right or to an organization, but not this one, not those. And there have been a few of those. Quick, I know we're running a time that was going to be cognizant of what we'd blocked you for. You're top. This is an advice for an OD practitioner today. How can they upskill it? Whatever it might be, not stealing how they show up, how they serve the clients of the system. What would they be? Well, it's fair enough. It's also a very big question, right? And I still think there's some timeless advice. So I think in the OD field, not just OD, I call you a lot of this use of self. So I think it's always looking at tuning up our own, how we show up, right? And the idea that if we really want to improve systems, then it's our responsibility, right, to become more whole human beings, right? Manage our biases, how we show up, our social intelligence, how we connect with people, what kind of data shows up in our space. So I think it, so really keep working on the inner self so that we can have more impact. So I think that's pretty timeless. I mean, many, many different ways to look at systems. I think one way is not enough. It's not enough to know the Berklet-Win model or the Barry Aschery approach. So I think the more approaches we have to seeing the system and the ecosystem is super helpful. And as we have talked about a couple of times, also branch out and dip into some of these other fields, particularly design thinking, I think, and then a child to at least compliment that work a little bit. Or bring somebody in to partner with that has that expertise in and we can design something. So that's my quick food for thought. Yeah, so I like what you said is from a very simplistic perspective, center yourself and be an agile learner. Right, here we go. Thanks for the summary, Vinay. You're so good at that. Yeah, I'm learning it for me. No, excuse me. Brilliant. Douglas has always such a pleasure, my friend. Thanks for the invitation. You're all right. I will send you those two articles, the one that's the Enlightenment, Polarity One, and then there's a misperceptions of the field of OD. Is that me the author of the accidental OD? Yeah, yeah. Oh, the name of it. Yeah, it's because it's really good. In their definition, they're a Chris, they have many definitions, so I'll do it with the last one. They just come down to it. You want it simple and they bold it, which is we help organizations and people be better. Right. Cool. Done. Let's not do that. OD is hard to explain. Let's anyone out there, please don't ever say that. Yes, I know. That is. Have a definition ready for whoever you're talking to. Yeah, exactly. Thank you again. And I look forward to catching up in person soon. Okay, take care, buddy. Bye. Okay, there it is. Second conversation with Douglas and I'm already feeling like I need to have a third. It's really good stuff. I think we did pick up from where we left in episode 81, so that was a long time ago. And several things stand out for me, but over to you, I don't know what was one thing that stood out for you. Well, when I first of all, it's such a pleasure having him back on the podcast. And you know, I feel like each time I meet Douglas, whether it's online for the podcast or even offline, he just leaves me with so much of insight on OD. And in this conversation, I particularly liked the, when you asked him what has changed in OD, right, since we had him on the podcast four years ago. Quite hard to hear that the needle seems to be moving in the right direction. That organizations are now really thinking about OD. Beyond the tokenism that we may have seen maybe say 10 years ago, and you know, the fact that the organizations are understanding, better understanding the impact that OD can have. Moving from thinking about just what's the bottom line, or are we doing right by our people to really asking what kind of an organization we want to be. And I could Douglas here, that's what he said, right? So I love that he calls OD as a life skill. So that kind of stuff with me, right? Yeah, absolutely, and there's some really full insight and of course, I just love his old demeanor about it and says, yep, we'll make it happen, right? So absolutely. Great to connect with Douglas again on the podcast and I'm looking forward to meeting him in person soon. I hope all of you enjoyed this and came away with something new that you learned. Stay tuned folks, more exciting episodes coming soon. Over and out. [Music]