Are you interested in what unites us and what makes us different? But does focusing and enlarging these differences endanger the existence of the OD profession? This October at Roffey Park’s OD Conference, Honorary Professor at the University of Exeter and Partner at Ginkgo Consulting, Jesse Segers, will be asking you if there is a need for the OD field to unite on a global level.
Jesse’s journey
Jesse Segers is a Partner at Ginkgo Consulting and also an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Exeter, UK. Jesse teaches leadership and develops leaders at executive and board levels, and he is also a visiting faculty member at the Stichting Bedrijfskunde, Netherlands. He serves and has served in several board member functions.
Rewind some years and Jesse began his journey studying an MSc in Psychology at Vrije Universiteit Brussels before working in several national and international HR roles. Jesse then received his PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Antwerpen in Belgium. Jesse is the former Associate Dean of Education and MSc Programmes and co-director of the Expertise Centre on Leadership at the Antwerp Management School, Belgium. He is a former visiting professor at the Northern Illinois University, USA, the University of Calgary, Canada and AOG School of Management, the Netherlands.
Impressively, Jesse has published 7 books and more than 200 papers in both top academic journals as well as practitioners’ journals. His research interests are linked to how individuals, leaders, teams, organisations and societies can change with specific attention given to leadership and middle managers.
Jesse and OD
With an impressive and expansive background in and surrounding OD, including being on the board of Organisation Development Network Europe, Jesse’s passion comes from combining a number of different aspects of OD including leadership and complexity. His current organisation, Ginkgo, helps other organisations tackle change from a systemic, humanistic and participative perspective.
Jesse’s speaker conversation will use Bartlett & Ghoshal’s model of international strategies to encourage us all to take the first steps towards thinking globally and acting locally. Bartlett & Ghoshal’s model of international strategies is a framework that distinguishes multiple forms of internationally operating businesses based on two criteria: global efficiency and local responsiveness. Jesse understands the field of OD to be multi-domestic with multiple institutes coexisting yet not optimised. He told us, “We are working with local communities, local governments and national governments but if you want to work where the real power is, then you probably need a global perspective as well.”
Jesse’s talk will focus on what holds us back from being more united, and the different sub-dimensions that exist within the field of OD that may not be as connected as they could be. Using the aforementioned model, Jesse plans to use a statistic methodology exercise called multidimensional scaling to provide a map of dimensions that helps categorise and find a place for every school of thought. Jesse explained, “Once we have that territory of our field with different dimensions, we can map different cultures on it, we can unite and we can become much more transnational than the multi-domestic, which in turn will make our field much more powerful and meaningful.”
Jesse asks participants to come to the conference with an open mind as discussion areas may seem provocative but he is keen to avoid the idea that his suggestion is the right way forward. He has two questions that he would like participants to think about. Do you believe there is a need for our field to unite more on a global level? And what do you think would help build a more global OD community, thinking beyond personal needs?
