Category Archives: Undiscussables

How to Have a Strategy for Change

Think of “strat­e­gy” as hav­ing a per­spec­tive, an agen­da if you will, about how things could be bet­ter. When I’m help­ing a man­ag­er think about what those things are for a depart­ment in a more or less tra­di­tion­al hier­ar­chy, I like to employ a kind of sys­tems map that illu­mi­nates dif­fer­ent aspects of the work […]

February 23, 2016 – 5:26 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Listening, Openness, Organizational Culture, Power, Transformation, Undiscussables | Comments (0)

Lessons in Snow

Late­ly, I’ve begun to think about the cul­ture of orga­ni­za­tions a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly than I used to. I once believed a medi­um or large size orga­ni­za­tion striv­ing to induce a major shift in the way things are done would have to do a great deal of ana­lyt­i­cal work, then set up and admin­is­ter rather large, […]

June 28, 2013 – 2:12 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Choices, Listening, Openness, Organizational Culture, Power, Trust, Undiscussables | Comments (19)

Things I Might Have Said

We all do it. Those after-the-con­ver­sa­­tion fan­tasies about what we could have said or should have said dur­ing the exchange. For some rea­son, one of those times has come up for me late­ly, one that involved a pre­sen­ta­tion I did years ago for a CEO peer learn­ing team, a small group of top exec­u­tives who […]

August 14, 2012 – 7:01 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Organizational Culture, Undiscussables, Wounds | Comments (8)

At the Water-Line

Hear me read this post. Many years ago I came across a remark­able mod­el, known as the cul­tur­al ice­berg. Devel­oped by Stan­ley Her­man of TRW Sys­tems in 1970, it describes some of the most impor­tant work­place dynam­ics that any of us could ever know about. The top part of the ice­berg rep­re­sents the vis­i­ble, formal […]

March 12, 2006 – 1:32 pm | By Dan Oestreich | Posted in Healing, Organizational Culture, Undiscussables, Wounds | Comments (13)