"That Was Great!": More High Impact Exercises For Teaching Or Consulting On Organizational Change
A two-hour interactive Academy of Management Annual meeting PDW workshop in Boston, Friday, August 3, 10:15AM - 12:15PM
Sheraton Boston Hotel – Independence West
Do you teach, research, or have an interest in organizational change?
For the eighth consecutive year, we offer a PDW to provide a forum for educators, researchers and consultants to showcase high impact methods for teaching organizational change in its many contexts (undergraduate, EMBA, MBA, corporate training, consulting). The workshop covers high impact classic and contemporary exercises that receive very positive responses in change programs. Two key features underpin this workshop:
- The workshop has a "hands-on" approach where participants get to experience, in part, the actual exercise or activity being undertaken.
- The teaching philosophy underpinning the workshop is a "multiple perspectives" approach which assumes that a variety of approaches, assumptions and methodologies may be employed to explore the many areas associated with organizational change.
Presenters will introduce their exercise, provide the audience with a short, hands-on sampling of it and the method for debriefing it, and will provide more detailed take away notes.
1. Gary Wagenheim (Simon Fraser U.) will present Stringing Together Communication – an experiential activity that focuses on a fun highly interactive group exercise to facilitate learning about communication patterns. He will use the exercise to help participants learn how patterns they create reinforce or break-down barriers that shape meaning and exert influence on behavior. Participants will have the opportunity to experiment with their own group communication, discuss communication patterns, and explore the exercise's potential for classroom or client use.
2. Susan Adams (Bentley University) and Tony Buono (Bentley University) will present An Exercise for Prioritizing Change Goals. The exercise engages participants in clarifying and understanding the goals of change-related projects, prompting them to fully examine the underlying values and rationale that drive the change and its outcomes. The exercise begins with an identification of a particular organizational change and moves through an examination of the values underlying the change goals, the tradeoffs involved, and why some goals are valued more than others, pushing participants to better understand exactly what it is they want to achieve.
3. Matt Minahan (Matt Minahan and Associates) will present an activity often used with organization teams and adaptable for classrooms titled Improving Working Relations. The exercise uses a couple of structured worksheets in which participants record notes for interchanges and record what they hear during the exchanges and what they can do about it. Such reporting brings to the surface work-related issues, interpersonal issues, style discussions, expectations and feedback. In the last round of reporting, pairs attempt to make agreements they can publically share as to what they will do differently and how it can help the team performance.
4. Therese Yaeger (Benedictine University) presents the experiential exercise entitled Conflict among Generations Experiencing Change. This activity challenges participants' perceptions and biases toward different age groups in the workplace and/or classroom. Generational conflicts can cripple organizations, cause turnover, and diminish team productivity, yet we often are unaware how members from the other age groups receive and process our messages and information. This session helps participants learn the importance of how we approach change efforts, who is involved, one's unconscious age discrimination, and how, as academics we may even pre-judge our students based on their age (both young and older)..
Susan Resnick West (U. Southern California) and Sara McClelland (U. Southern California) will present The Ball Game. Designed to have participants "feel" what it's like to be in a continuously changing organization with "too many balls in the air", this exercise is easily debriefed to illicit a discussion of critical aspects of change including communication, work design, "on boarding" and leadership. Susan will share her experiences adapting this activity for on-line education.
5. Gavin Schwarz (U. New South Wales), Richard Dunford (U. Sydney), and Ian Palmer (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) will lead all presenters in a discussion of How to Effectively Debrief High Impact Exercises focusing on outcomes for organizational change teaching and consulting.
No pre-registration is neccesary to attend the session.
For information on the session contact organizers Gavin Schwarz (g.schwarz@unsw.edu.au), Ian Palmer (Ian.Palmer@rmit.edu.au), or Richard Dunford (R.Dunford@econ.usyd.edu.au).