Russell Wright's PPP

Meeting Summary

We started the meeting looking at The Parable of the Sadhu by Bowen H. McCoy. Russell then had as form into small groups to discuss the following two questions:

• Did they do the right thing?

• In OD terms, what happened?

After a lively discussion in groups a plenary revealed a diverse set of responses to the first question covering multiple moral vantage points. The second question was of equal interest and the larger group worked together to sort out the known from the unknown and the behavioral details of the story. Then Russell had us sort out the details of the story in terms for the environment, the organization and the individual. There we analyzed the dynamics of the story and talked about how this related to organizational life.

Eventually some asked who is the Sadhu? The answer Russell says is Corporate Social Responcibility. Then he shared an excerpt from Reinventing Organization Development titled, "Take the Tubes out of Grandma" which was a story of brain-dead person with a strong heart. Grandma is visited by an old friend in the hospital, the narrator, who doesn't recognize her. As the RN and the guest go about the business of determining if this person on the bed is indeed his associate, the RN begins running down a list of what the patient did for a living -a long list- then finishes saying, "If you ask me she ODed on something." The allegory brought a smile to several faces.

Russell makes the argument that OD is not dead it is the new Sustainable Management. He went through several definitions of OD the made the argument that OD and Sustainable Management at the same thing replacing behavioral science for ecological science. He argued that the value of OD is bringing sustainable to life. He cited Environmental Capitalism to argue that the value and event capitol imperative to go green is real and bearing down on organizations. The new thing, sustainable management needs all the tools and models for change action research, survey feedback, systems thinking, et cetera. What is missing, he says is the research to prove OD tools are effective in greening organizations. We could be doing that research….

Contact Info

Russell Wright

Argosy Seattle

206-283-4500

About Russell

Russell had been practicing in managment training and OD for 25 years before joining Argosy University, he trained and consulted for multiple organizations including the U.S. Navy, State Government of Utah, Motorola, Accenture, Shell Oil Company, Exxon, Chevron and Schlumberger. Russell has also spent 14 years in academia teaching, conducting research and consulting in areas such as Knowledge Management, Organization Effectiveness and Design, Business Strategy, and Entrepreneurship. Russell has taught in the graduate business programs of the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign, Group ESSEC in France, the University of Southern California, Pepperdine University and the University of Utah.  Russell holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Business Administration from the University of Southern California, a Masters of Organization Behavior (MOB) from Brigham Young University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Brigham Young University.