Organization 21C: Someday All Organizations Will Lead This Way

Dick's Brilliance as a “Designer of Social/Organizational Process”

When I became a staff intern and later staff member at NTL, I had many occasions to work with Dick in planning the labs. Of all the staff members with whom I worked, none could hold a candle to Dick when it came to inventing exercises and designing the flow of a day or a week in terms of the arrangement and pacing of training groups, lecturettes, larger group exercises, free time, and various other kinds of assignments that made the labs powerful learning experiences. I now realize 40 years later that this skill of designing social and organizational process is a critical management skill and that, in fact, most managers are woefully lacking in it. Particularly weak is our ability ...