During the 26th-27th of October, Dr Graham Curtis will be one of the keynote speakers at Roffey Park Institute’s OD Conference. Graham will draw upon his doctoral research to encourage us to explore how we think about our practice which puts curiosity and doubt at the heart of how we work. Graham is passionate for…
We have a tendency to try and predict the future of OD but we can never be certain of what that looks like. What we do know is that people belong at the heart of the process but this has been dramatically challenged during the post-Covid world. Supply chains have been disrupted and the energy…
Recently we met with Fiby Francis, a previous Masters in People and OD participant and valued Roffey Park alumnus. During an incredibly deep and rich conversation, Fiby opened up about his journey throughout the MSc. He offered us an invaluable and raw account of what it took to manage his working life whilst remaining dedicated…
Google’s Year in Search 2022 revealed recently that the most searched for term was Wordle with Ukraine, the death of Queen Elizabeth II and cricket in the top five terms. We also searched for Johnny Depp and Top Gun, looked up how to grow garden roses and mushrooms, checked out breeds of cats and recipes…
Over breakfast recently I heard Kate Raworth on Radio 4’s Today programme critiquing the government’s now abandoned growth-based economic policy. It reminded me how much I enjoyed reading her book Doughnut Economics which exhorts politicians – and the rest of us – to ditch the tired old economic theories that simply don’t reflect reality anymore…
Since 1946 Roffey Park Institute has been at the forefront of training provision for the workplace, offering a raft of programmes to develop individuals, teams and organisations. Learning has changed considerably in recent years, with students seeking more flexible methods of teaching and input. This has been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, and at Roffey…
The field of organisational learning is unique in the sense that it is very unlikely we will ever reach an endpoint or a halt in development and rethinking. Rather, it is a fluid concept continuously reshaping and moulding to suit individuals as well as groups of learners. The scope for change and development through organisational…
Many years ago, I had the dubious pleasure of regular run-ins with a senior academic colleague. We’ll call him Professor X. The rows we engaged in were generally good-natured – they became a kind of game – but were also very serious: they concerned the nature and function of ‘assessment’. Each semester we’d go through…
It is all well and good describing and explaining what dialogic practice is and how it differs from other models of conversational learning. Naturally then, the next step is how we can put this model into action and transform the culture of an organisation using dialogic practice. What Does Culture Mean? To begin with, culture…
As human beings we innately crave that winning feeling and we significantly enjoy the gratification we take from our assumptions being correct. These general instincts limit our methods of learning as they encourage debate, a narrow and competitive form of discussion that usually ends with a winner and a loser and little in between. The…
It was only a matter of time before the natural progression of the status quo workplace life coincided with the rapid rise of technology and it took the COVID-19 pandemic to act as the catalyst to facilitate change. Almost overnight we were forced into the unknown as suddenly working from home became the norm. Although…
As an OD Practitioner or Consultant have you ever wondered about what musical instrument might represent you best? I suspect not. But I would encourage you to take a couple of minutes and think about it. Maybe you’d choose to be a harp. A harp may symbolise the traditional, melodic, quiet, and uncommon (let’s face…
