Category Archives: Meetings

 Is Change Management the New OD?  What’s the Connection and Who Cares?

Program:    Practitioners of these two disciplines view them in a variety of ways — from completely independent to overlapping to complementary.  Some may see one as a subset of the other.  But how do our clients look at the services we offer?  Do they care more about the nature of the services or the results?  At this luncheon meeting the panelists and the audience will explore multiple perspectives on CM, OD, and other alphabetic acronyms TBD.

Two panelists recently attended the international ACMP (Association of Change Management Professionals) conference and will comment on the advancement of Change Management as a profession.  Our goal for this discussion is to forge a broader understanding of how clients are viewing our various disciplines through the broad lens of “change”, and especially how we can foster synergy between CM and OD from both the client and practitioner perspective.

[ Did you notice we said “luncheon meeting“?   This is a new format for OD Network meetings that we will use periodically to reach a broader audience in the DFW area.  See details below. ]     

Panelists:   Cindi Cunningham, Pete Sorenson, Jim Jameson, and Betsy Winkler.    (See BIOs below.)

(Please join our LinkedIn Group if you haven’t yet done so, and comment on the discussions.)  

Panelist BIOs:    

Cindi Cunningham  is an OD Consultant supporting American Airlines’ Airport Services and Cargo organizations as Leadership Development Program Coach. In a prior role, she served as an Organizational Change Management Specialist supporting the project team now building the PSS technology replacement for Sabre. Cindi is skilled in organizational assessment, employee engagement, process improvement, change management, and leadership development. She has also led customer-centric organizations in other travel and hospitality companies.

Peter Jay Sorenson, CMC  is an external consultant who focuses on designing well-crafted organizations that combine getting work done and achieving outcomes with being positive environments for people who work.  He is currently working with several energy related companies on critical performance issues in high consequence environments.  Pete is known for his ability to see the big picture, make sense of messes, and lead teams in resolving complex issues.   

Jim Jameson  supports technology adoption through proactive change management to improve project success rates.  His goals include improved ROI on IT related projects while fostering a culture of collaboration, learning, and innovation.   Jim’s focus on the people side of technology change is intended to broaden the perspectives of business users and teach them to work in new ways in response to a change in their tools or ‘environment’.

Betsy Winkler  has been working as a business consultant and change leader for 20 years. She previously led the Change Leadership Center of Excellence for PepsiCo, and is a Change Leadership speaker at the 2011 Organization Development Network national conference. Her experience includes working with many multi-national companies on large, complex change and communications programs to drive business value. Betsy’s work in organization development encompasses employee engagement (such as surveys and action planning), as well as designing, developing and implementing global reward and recognition programs.

Healing the Organization – Strategies for Post RIF Recovery

Facilitator:  Judy Benavides, SPHR — an HR Business Partner with experience in Financial Services, High Tech, and Defense Contracts.

Program:  As organizations navigate a landscape marked by competitive pressures, global supply chains, outsourcing partners, and technology innovations, it seems that Reductions in Force (RIFs) have become a common strategy for “rightsizing” the workforce.  But what is the true impact of a RIF?

Join the OD community for an interactive discussion of productive options for a path forward in this challenging environment. Together we’ll explore the leadership strategies that build organizational agility, empower employees, and reduce systemic codependency. We’ll discuss our role in aligning OD interventions and HR practices with the “free agency” that is required in today’s workplace.

(Please join our LinkedIn Group if you haven’t yet done so, and comment on the discussions.)  

Facilitator Bio:    

Judy Benavides is an HR Business Partner working in the defense and aerospace systems industry. She has partnered with leaders through major culture change and organizational transformation. Judy’s career has included HR Business Partner and Leadership Development roles at Fidelity Investments, Placemark Investments, and CoreLogic. She brings a passion for talent development and leadership with a practical results driven approach.

Judy holds an MBA with a concentration in Human Resource Management from the University of Dallas. Judy has an SPHR certification and is certified as a Human Resources Strategist by the Human Capital Institute.

Contact:  Judy.benavides@yahoo.com    214-676-4455

Organization Assessment:
From Aye to Zed 

Facilitator:  Ed Savage, Manager of Training and Development for L-3 Communications

Program:  Need to do an organization assessment?  Uncertain about how to go about it or looking for tips to improve your toolbox?  Join Ed Savage as he shares 30 years of learnings on organization assessments. Find out the simple and the complex, the broad and the deep, and some greats and goofs. Talk with Ed and the rest of the OD experts at the next DFW OD Network meeting June 14th.

PS: Do you have a current need to assess an organization? Send Ed a brief context and he will choose one of your real-world challenges as a case study for the evening.  So keep those cards and letters (oops, emails) and Linked-In comments coming!

(Please join our LinkedIn Group if you haven’t yet done so!)  

Facilitator Bio:    

Dr. Ed Savage  is the Manager of Training and Development for L-3 Communications Mission Integration Division in Greenville, TX — a 5,000 employee aerospace business. Ed has 30 years working leadership development and organization change in Fortune 500 businesses. He has conceived, designed, developed, and delivered leadership and organization change initiatives of all sorts domestically and internationally. Ed holds two graduate degrees from Pepperdine University, a doctorate in Organization Change, and a Masters in Organizational Development (as well as a BS in Management) from Sacred Heart University. He earned professional certifications of Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) and Registered Organization Development Consultant.

Contact:   Edward.W.Savage@L-3com.com    903-457-6078   903-453-7425 (Blackberry)

We ‘Like’ It!
 The Impact of Social Media on OD and Learning

By:  Rick Palmer, Director of Training and Organization Design at The Beryl Companies,  and  Tammy Preble, Sr. Instructional Designer at RadioShack.

Program:    Chances are you are involved with social media.  Maybe you keep up with friends on Facebook, search for business or job leads on LinkedIn or put out the occasional tweet.  With the emergence of social media, much attention has been focused on its impact on marketing and entertainment. While social learning has existed long before social media, a growing body of knowledge is demonstrating its potential to facilitate learning across organizations.  Our program will engage participants in the discovery and sharing of social learning best practices and how it can be leveraged to influence employee growth and change in organizations today.

Your exploration of social learning can begin prior to our May program.  Pay close attention to our LinkedIn Group over the next few weeks for the start of our social learning scavenger hunt.  If you are not a member of this LinkedIn group, please join!

Handouts:      Presentation        Icebreaker  (‘Bingo Card’)

Facilitator Bios:    

Tammy Preble is a Sr. Instructional Designer with an M.Ed in Learning & Instructional Technology from Arizona State University. Last year, she received her Certified Professional in Learning and Performance (CPLP) certification from ASTD. Tammy is currently designing a social learning solution for RadioShack’s District Manager training program. She is passionate about designing learning that is just enough and just-in-time to help people to do what they do best every day.

Rick Palmer is the Director of Training and Organization Design at The Beryl Companies. He has held leadership roles in training, operations, quality assurance and human resources and has consistently demonstrated success in the education, insurance, hospitality, financial services and healthcare industries. Rick also serves as President-Elect for the Fort Worth/Mid-Cities Chapter of the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) and is the host of the chapter’s podcast. Rick holds an MA in Speech Communication and a BA in Psychology, both from Southwest Texas State University. He is passionate about helping people build great careers.

“Positive Deviance: Imagining Extraordinary Performance and Organizational Change”

By:     Dr. Jude Olson, Senior OD Consultant & Executive Coach at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company  and  Lorea Belle Seidel, Director of Organizational Effectiveness at Southern Methodist University.

Program Description:      For our April meeting Jude and Lorea will lead a discussion on Positive Psychology and how it can inform OD work.    Her presentation will  primarily draw from a book by Kim S. Cameron, Jane Dutton and Robert Quinn entitled Positive Organizational Scholarship – Foundations of a New Discipline and an article called “Your Company’s Secret Change Agents” by Richard Tanner Pascale and Jerry Sternin.   

Jude will focus on Appreciative Inquiry, Appreciative Coaching and Positive Deviance approaches in this framework, referencing her Lockheed Martin project on Leadership Summits as a real world example.

Lorea will introduce the Thin Book on Appreciative Inquiry by Sue Hammond as a resource and will facilitate ‘practice’ in the room.

Bring your imagination and experiences with positive phenomena in your own workplaces to share . . .  

Resources – Reading List and Websites    <– Click for more  

Presenter Bio:      Dr. Jude Olson is currently Head Coach and Senior Consultant in Organization and Leadership Development with Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Fort Worth, Texas.  She has been recognized for bringing innovation in consulting with senior management on major culture change initiatives, knowledge management, collaborative teaming and executive coaching.  She also supports LMC in building corporate capability for strategic change and executive coaching.

Prior to joining Lockheed Martin in 1997, Jude spent six years with Drake Beam Morin, Inc., an international consulting firm specializing in career transition and corporate restructuring activities.  As a Senior Vice President and Regional Consulting Partner, she marketed, managed and consulted on change projects within a variety of industries. She has been an organization development consultant for Mervyn’s corporate headquarters in California and an independent consultant in Texas.  She has served on the adjunct faculty for the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University and the University of Texas at Dallas teaching Organization Management and Organization Development.

A native of Pennsylvania, she earned a B.S. in Journalism and M.Ed in Counseling Psychology from Temple University; and a Ph.D. in Human and Organization Systems from Fielding Graduate University. She published in the Elsevier book series on Complex Collaboration (2004) and “Inventing the Joint Strike Fighter—Applying Appreciative Inquiry to Collaborative Startups” in the OD Practitioner Journal.  Her most recent publications include a chapter in the 2008 Jossey-Bass book, “The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams: A Toolkit for Collaborating across Boundaries.”  She is a frequent presenter at the Academy of Management annual meetings and joined the Organization Change and Development Board as a Scholar-Practitioner industry representative from 2007-2010. She most recently has been a guest lecturer in Canberra, Australia for Queensland University of Technology on Complex Program Leadership for their Executive Education and EMBA programs.   

Lorea Belle Seidel, M.Ed., SPHR is Director of Organizational Effectiveness & Associate Director of Human Resources at Southern Methodist University.
Learning is a lifelong theme both personally and professionally for Lorea. At Texas Tech University, she earned a bachelor’s degree in Public Relations and Marketing followed by a Master’s degree in Community Counseling. During graduate school, she became fascinated with human behavior within the world of work and focused her counseling doctoral studies on organizational behavior. She draws upon this diverse educational background in addition to her experience in human resources, career and personal counseling, business and non-profit management to provide oversight for a variety of programs at SMU.
Lorea is responsible for the Organizational Effectiveness team and additional cross-functional teams that provide staff and faculty with professional development opportunities, new employee and manager orientation, internal consulting, employee relations counseling, leadership coaching services, employee recognition programs, work-life services, and wellness programming. Internal consulting services may include strategic planning, graphic facilitation, organizational design, systems improvement, and change management. Recently, Lorea has begun exploring how the emerging body of research connected with positive psychology can be applied to support the development of a high performing and highly-engaged work culture. Lorea’s areas of expertise include leadership coaching, interpersonal communications, creative thinking tools, employee engagement and retention strategies, performance management, personality and work-style assessment, priority management, team dynamics, and career development.

[ This was the  LinkedIn Event ]      April 12, 2012

 “Human Capital:  Creating a Collaborative Culture” 

By: Monica Sudomir, Director of Change Management – Medsynergies, Inc.

  >> See a 90 second video preview!

Program Description:

The Challenge
o  Project manage the transition of several hundred IT employees from a not-for-profit health system to a for-profit IT outsourcing service provider in ten weeks
  –  800 IT employees across 3 states
  –  48 cultural and system disparities
  –  48 communication patterns/expectations
  –  27 benefit plans and payroll systems
  –  27 data centers
  –  Drug screening – Force Field Analysis

The Solution
o  How did we do it
§  Transformation plan
§  Transformation process  (Communication, Buy-in, Culture, Change)
§  Project team
§  Celebration/recognition

The Results
 o  What did we accomplish (measurable and non-measurable results)
       –  Post-transition project survey results – “the proof is in the pudding”
        –  Account start-up (sustain, standardize, stabilize)
        –  Two-year post-transition retention rate

Presenter Bio:   Monica Sudomir is director of change management for MedSynergies. In this role, she is responsible for planning the change management strategy and approach, conducting stakeholder/impact analyses, and developing communication and change management plans to support a variety of change initiatives across MedSynergies.

Ms. Sudomir has more than 15 years of experience in the areas of change management, employee engagement and transition management of employees acquired through outsourcing or company acquisition. She developed the employee transition methodology for Perot Systems, now Dell Services, which became a company best practice.

Ms. Sudomir also managed several employee transitions for Perot Systems healthcare group including a complex transition of more than 600 healthcare IT employees at 48 locations in 3 states.

As a trusted advisor and accomplished project manager, Ms. Sudomir was personally requested by Ross Perot, Sr. to edit and publish the revised edition of his autobiography, My Life & The Principles for Success. She follows the leadership principles and style of Ross Perot, Sr. and believes that listening and acting on the ideas of the people who do the work every day instills loyalty and a sense of ownership.

Naming Elephants: How To Surface Undiscussables for Greater Organizational Success

Program Description:         (Here’s the  linkedin event link for this meeting.)  
Dave Reazin will give an overview and facilitate a practitioner discussion based on ideas from the   Thin Book of Naming Elephants: How to Surface Undiscussables for Greater Organizational Success    by Sue Annis Hammon and Andrea Mayfield.

Link to PowerPoint Handout

Discussions will include practitioner experiences on:

1.  Naming the “elephants” of:
.     a. Success breeds hubris – the feeling of success is due to one’s brilliance
.     b. The normalization of arrogance
.     c. The Smart-Talk Trap

2.  How decision-making for organizational success was impacted by naming or not naming the “elephants”

3. Strategies to use to encourage others to name “elephants”

Session Presenter/Facilitator:    Dave Reazin is an Environmental Protection Specialist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – Region 6. He is a member of the Partnerships and communications Team and is involved in assisting staff adopt Adobe Connect 8 for conducting virtual collaboration and originating webinars. He also promotes energy efficiency practices at water and wastewater utilities.

His organizational development interests are in building high performing teams and organizational change using internet technology.

His academic background includes a Bachelors and Masters Degree in Geology from Indiana University and an MBA – Management from the University of Texas at Arlington.

AnnuaL 2012 Program Year Planning Session

Program Description: 
The DFW OD Network will be having their annual Program Planning Meeting. This is an Open Space Methodology where everyone is invited to bring cutting edge program ideas for 2012. We then will facilitate a process of grouping the ideas into program themes and then prioritizing the list of themes and suggesting possible presenters or teams of presenters to plan and implement these program ideas. This is a great opportunity to take an active role in the association’s Program Calendar for the year and have lot’s of fun doing it.

Session Presenter/Facilitator:
Gene Ruckle is program director of Leading in the 21st Century ay UT Arlington’s College of Business. He has spent the last three years developing and refining the concept for this program. While developing this idea, Ruckle met with a number of associates working in corporations such as Texas Instruments, American Airlines, Lockheed-Martin, Bell Helicopter, Thomas S. Byrne, L.L.C. and the Sammons Corp. These engagements underscored the true potential for a corporate sponsorship based leadership development program. Ruckle has an organization development consulting practice. He was formerly the director of the masters program in O.D. and change management at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is a graduate of the American University/NTL masters program in O.D.