Purpose

The Philadelphia Region Organizational Development Network Learning events are a critical component to meeting the mission and strategic goals of PRODN. We consider our role extremely important in providing you, as the membership and our key interface to the business community, a broad range of educational topics that meet the various needs that you have in servicing your clients, whether you act as an internal or external consultant, line manager, Human Resources, or any other position.

We are very proud and excited to provide you with this years scheduled learning events.  We are planning a year that educates and builds our PRODN community to be stronger and wiser going forward.

2002 PRODN
Survey Results

In the Summer/Early Fall of 2002, electronic and hard copy surveys were distributed to the PRODN membership.  30 out of 300 of you responded to the hard copy; roughly 40 of you responded to the electronic survey.

Results indicated that as a membership, you want the following from your PRODN membership:

• Increased opportunities for networking
• Direct application of topics to business needs
• Personal growth/learning
• Knowledge of “What’s Happening in OD”
• Variety in the format of events

Highly rated topics areas included:

• Leadership/management skills development
• Methods of working with “Whole Systems”
• Working across boundaries
• Change Management
• Becoming Effective Strategic Partnerships
• Coaching and 360 Feedback Tools
• Strategic Planning Tools

Some of you also recommended the following specific topics:

• Discovering Your Strengths: A Primer
• Developing the Emotional Intelligence of Executives
• Complex Adaptive Systems
• Return of Investment of OD Interventions
• Organizational Trust
• The Tipping Point (Malcolm Gladwell)  

2003 Learning Events

“Building Your OD Toolkit”

The PRODN Learning Events Committee for 2003 has developed the working theme of “Building your OD Toolkit” and topics as listed above will be included as much as possible into our programming in 2003.  Additional suggestions for topics put forth to the Learning Events will be reviewed and offered against their fit with this theme and offered where time frames permit.

In response to your requests for insuring that topics map to business needs, facilitators and presenters will be provided with recommended presentation guidelines for their topics.  Additionally, and where applicable, we will request the explanation of how measurement in the client system can be accomplished with the topic.  This request results from the significant rating that the “Return of Investment of OD Interventions” topic scored, perhaps indicating that our membership is experiencing this as a growing request with our client systems.

Across the board, formats of learning events will be varied with an increase in networking opportunities and interactive sessions.

Food Provisions

Traditionally, it has not been possible to adequately predict the appropriate amount of food required.  As a result, significant dollars are wasted on provision of food for “no shows”.  Because of our commitment to be wise stewards of your membership funds, food will generally be limited to light snacks and beverages at monthly meetings.

For Special Events, food will be included with the pricing of the event (unless otherwise indicated).

Meeting Locations

To attempt to meet the geographic demographics of our membership, we will be working to conduct meetings in various geographical locations around the city and suburbs of Philadelphia that are of minimal costs to PRODN.  A majority of our meetings will be conducted at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine to continue fostering our relationship with them, however we will be scheduling some events at alternative venues that foster a networking environment.

What We Need From You

We seek your balanced feedback as to how well your membership goals are being met. When you have comments, please see one of the Learning Events Committee members listed below.

We look forward to learning and growing with you in 2003!

PRODN Learning Events Committee