Meeting Summary

Thursday March 21, 2002 was a blustery evening – mirroring perhaps the cold wind a consultant feels when a prospective client bemoans the list of technology projects looming on the horizon. In the past, this might have provided an opportunity to briefly commiserate, and leave making a mental note to "call back in 6 months when SAP is installed".

At the end of the evening participants who braved the wind, found themselves a little more able to imagine a different kind of conversation. Perhaps your distracted internal partner is not banning OD services for the duration, he or she might be in real need of an OD professional’s help to support the people part of their changing world while software engineers and implementation team toil with system testing and debugging.

We started by learning that CRM is Customer Relationship Management, and SAP is not really an insult, it is an enterprise wide system that boasts interconnectivity for machines but does not guarantee that the people processes will reap the benefits of improved communications.

Tricia Steege and Tione Kormanik helped us understand that our skills may be essential for a successful software implementation IF we can speak enough technology to highlight the need for a complete system solution, or the consequences of a myopic approach.

The gem of the evening, the Leavitt Diamond, provided a model for talking to clients about the integration of technical and socio-technical systems. Using the Leavitt Diamond (a familiar model for technology folks from the CIO to project managers) considers the impact of People, Work Processes, Information & Technology and Organizational Structure as interdependent components, and makes it possible to speak OD in the context of technological change. As we hear all too often, the money for change is more likely to be budgeted for technology than for (as my company’s president says) "tree hugging" projects.

The message to each of us was, speak the language of business, the bottom line and ROI, to connect with senior level leaders. The challenge is to build our own comfort and credibility in this different world. Thanks to Tricia and Tione for their tips, thoughts and bravery in topic selection.

Program Announcement 

The world will change more in the next ten years than in the last fifty. Human systems and business processes will be greatly impacted because of the manner in which technology will be utilized. Society is already and will continue to experience the impact of these changes in ways never imagined. Today, when we think we are already overwhelmed by the speed of the movement of the world, we are using only 20% of the capability of what technology can do for us. It is no longer a "nice to have" – it is changing the way the world thinks, plans and behaves.

In this timely, exciting program, we will have an opportunity to learn how the integration of technology solutions into our lives will continue to increase, whether we like it or not. We will explore the effect on us as human beings, and the changes to which we will be required to adjust---from a societal, economic, business, and technology perspective. We cannot stop the change from happening, and there is huge potential for us to influence how it happens. We will look at how technology provides infinite possibilities for collaboration……and how it provides infinite possibilities for disaster.

The session will be facilitated by Tricia Steege, Transformation Strategies, and Tione Kormanik, Unisys Corporation, who will enable us to create an evening of practical and discovery oriented conversation focused on learning more about the high tech world, about what we see happening in our client groups, as well as what is happening in the world at large. You will also have an opportunity, on an individual basis, to review your own consulting practices (internal and external) for strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats around this key influencer, and to develop an action plan about how you will interact with it.