In This Issue

Feature

Building Trust and Cohesiveness in a Leadership Team
by Deepika Nath

Many OD practitioners are asked to intervene with groups that exhibit unproductive team dynamics and are often faced with a decision of how to intervene. In this case study of a senior leadership team at a Fortune 100 company, Deepika Nath describes the application of David Kantor’s human structural dynamics model. The team involved lacked mutual respect, trust, and a willingness to listen to and learn from each other; for this reason, they were ill equipped to work in a collaborative and productive manner.

In seeking to address behavioral dysfunction that was hampering this team’s ability to work effectively and further a strategic agenda, Nath used an approach that focused not only on addressing the behavioral manifestation of the dysfunction in the team, but also at making visible the invisible source of this dysfunction, that is, the beliefs and mental models that contributed to the behavior. This two-pronged model was a powerful approach that resulted in positive outcomes for the organization and for the team.

Toolbox
Moving from Knower to Learner
by Brian Hinken

Are you producing desired results? If your answer is “No,” congratulations! You have just taken the first step on the Learner’s Path, a roadmap for continuous improvement. While there is nothing wrong with patting ourselves on the back occasionally for knowing the right answer, the key to creating sustainable results lies not in the accumulation of information, but in our continual willingness to question, evaluate, and adjust our actions and our thinking. When our obsession with knowing prevents us from inquiring, we short-circuit the learning process and find ourselves stuck in a knower’s stance.

From the Headlines
How Does Malcolm Gladwell Spell Success?
by Janice Molloy

Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, Outliers, The Story of Success, is all about patterns and how they can reveal counterintuitive insights—something every systems thinker can appreciate. In the West, we typically attribute success to individual factors: a person’s innate intelligence and drive to achieve. But why do some so-called geniuses rise to the top of their professions while others fail to have an impact? To answer this question, Gladwell delves beneath the conventional wisdom and finds that factors such as a person’s birth month or year, family background, or even random opportunities play more of a role in people’s achievement than we previously thought.

Viewpoint
A or B?
by Kellie Wardman

Sometimes, you simply have to choose. Do I send my child to this day care or that one? Do I buy this new car or stay with my old, paid-off clunker? Do I take the new job with higher pay but a longer commute? Do I stay in this tired relationship or go out on my own? These are the hardest decisions—when you have two choices that are equally plausible. The upside of any tough decision—there’s usually some learning you will get out of it. Conflict, or choice, can naturally lead to expansion.

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