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Rebirth and Renewal

The workshop handouts are also available as a free white paper (Adobe Acrobat PDF format. Requires the free Adobe Acrobat Reader for viewing.):

• text only (68 Kb file: fast download without images)
• full version (540 Kb file with all images)

In addition, we have established a discussion area specifically for attendees of the Toronto Conference to facilitate sharing ideas, experiences, concerns, general comments, and change strategies. Those discussions, moderated by our professional staff of organizational development practitioners, have the potential to offer insights that you cannot find anywhere else ... since they derive directly from the experience of professionals like you.

We cordially invite you to participate in an engaging dialog between and among your peers in this rapidly evolving profession.

Every living thing is dynamic. Nothing is static, at least not for long. The life and health of any living organism is dependent on its ability to change and adapt to the ecosystem in which it must live. To slow or limit this adaptation is to invite disease, ill health, and premature aging. To arrest this adaptation is essentially choosing to die. Whether death is quick or slow, harsh or gracious, it is inevitable. As Organization Development practitioners, Change Agents, or Leadership practitioners, we understand and even preach this truth. We intellectually and perhaps even spiritually understand the need for change and, we advocate for it at every turn. Psychologically and particularly emotionally, however, we frequently resist making change in our own ways with equal, if not more, passion than we have advocated for it in the lives of others.

In most instances, we find it easier to direct others to change and to assist them in doing so than we find it easy to direct and assist ourselves. If we could be objective observers of our own behaviors, we might even view ourselves as hindrances to organizational, group, or community adaptation and change. If we were able to be self-reflective, we might even see ourselves as drawn to change agent roles because we are seeking ways to make change in our own lives more comfortable.

Perhaps the greatest paradox of life is that the very adaptation on which we depend to sustain us and the organizations, institutions, and communities which we establish, is the very requirement from which we desire the most freedom and over which we have the least control. As those practicing leadership, serving as change agents, and blazing new trails in organizational life and practice, we must be a source of renewal, an example of continual adaptation and change rather than a source of arrested development and resistance.

Becoming this source of renewal will require that we change our perspectives, that we give up established paradigms and methods of practice, and move out of our comfort zone. We must ask ourselves hard questions. Do we behave as we do in our organizations, communities, and governments because we believe that doing so is in the best interest of the whole? Or do we behave as we do because it enables us to maintain some control, retain our expert status, and significantly reduce the anxiety and perhaps even the embarrassment that we feel when we do not have all the answers and cannot predict the future.

We believe that organizations are living organisms, at one with their members. And for organizations, as for all organisms, adaptation is the key to life and health. As change agents and as members, we must hold this truth sacred. What works today may not work tomorrow and what does not work today may very well work tomorrow.

It is with this spirit of openness to renewal and learning that we share with you our journey in the belief that this sharing and the resulting interactions and conversations will create new horizons and possibilities for us all.