Organization development

I put more of the purpose and strategic focus into the business.

create our narrative about OD and the services that get communicated externally.

Love innovation.

That's been a strong theme in my work and in the work of our company forever.

So innovation in terms of filmmaking, which Karen has mentioned constellations, which I've been involved in for 25 to 30 years and particular OD tools that we've developed like a standpoints board and And I guess I've got a particular interest in the development of our coaching services, the leadership development services, and learning and development generally, whereas my business partner and friend, John Riley, is the other half of our director team.

has more of a focus on facilitation and corporate away days.

So that's kind of a bit about us and my focus within the range of services that we present in these really interesting times, right, where there's massive organizational disruption.

And I think like most of my colleagues and the people I supervise, we're kind of teetering on the edge of seeing what direction OD takes going forward.

I'm Angela Tate, the founder of Tate Consulting, a people operations, HR, and headhunting firm.

We have been in business for about four years, and I actually started my career in sales for about a decade, transitioned over, got my master's of science in organization development from Pepperdine University, and really became an entrepreneur at first, did some coaching and workshops and Traveled around the world working with different business owners on all sorts of things, from mission vision values to hiring to just anything you can think of that's inside a business.

And then moved from California to Arizona and got into recruiting and then HR.

And then I started my own company four years ago, and it's been... exciting and challenging and all of the things, as I'm sure a lot of your listeners can relate to as fellow business owners.

Hmm.

And what led from the shift from finance into organizational development?

Um, I, I was working for 20 odd years.

Towards the end, I was-- I found myself actually, mm, building a lot of teams, actually, unconsciously.

Yeah

...

I'm fascinated by your background in organizational development, and it comes from a, a place of an awareness that coaching is around change, and that, um, I've heard it said, and to some extent I agree, that no change, no coaching.

And one imagines that the process of organizational development is fraught with systemic change at scale, and it's fascinating to hear you talk about how your experience of working with leaders one-to-one led you to beginning to explore coaching.

Jonathan is a Naval Academy graduate in ocean engineering who spent 24 years as a Naval aviator and then served as a flight instructor and a Chuck pilot.

After the Navy, he went into financial services and then into learning and Organizational Development, where he was a VP of Organizational Development at JPMorgan Chase.

He's also taught leadership and decision-making at the Naval War College since 2010.

Jonathan holds a DBA in Organizational Leadership, a master's from the Naval War College.

And while I'm not sure that anyone knows for sure, What I do know is there is a continuum of people being excited beyond belief to those being terrified at the prospects of what AI is going to bring.

One thing I do know for us in OD and HR, it's going to be a huge transformation.

And today, Joyce and I, we lean in to Bill Bridges and his words of wisdom from 30 years ago to see if it still applies in terms of guiding us through this biggest transition in most of our lives.

So come on in, grab a snack.

There's not much power left to

that group of people, is there?

I mean, that's an OD goal.

I had a big word in mind and it went away.

So it started as psychology and sort of helping organizations and people.

And then I went to Teachers College Columbia, and I learned all about the kind of OD approach and social systems, and the use of data and ... kind of Kurt Lewin and, you know, data drives change, and that is a fundamental principle that I've had all the way from my early, early days to even what we do now with our consulting work, right? It's like data-driven change for individual group and, and orgs, and that's a second big one.

And then the third one I'd say is we learned this from Warner, Warner Burke, who was our mentor and our boss for a number of years, that our approach is normative.

We believe in having a normative approach to the work we do.

You know, the purpose of work is to help people achieve their goals, and organizations exist because they make a profit, not only to make a profit.

So that's where that sort of normative perspective comes in, and I think when we studied under Warner and then when we worked for him, that was very much sort of the mindset that he inculcated into us.

And we used to joke, OD, because that's what we were, organization development practitioners, we were the Jedi Masters of HR, right? The people kinda saying, "Use the powers and the force for good." That was always a big underpinning o- I think of our belief system-

Mm-hmm