Organization Design: Seizing Opportunity from Crisis — a Forum for Leaders, Practitioners and Educators — Tacoma Conference a Success!
Organization Design Forum concluded another successful conference April 23, 2009. Held April 21–23 at the Hotel Murano in Tacoma, the conference brought together more than 80 organization designers to explore how organization design enables success or failure in turbulent times.
The three day conference opened with a session by Michael Goodman from Applied Systems Thinking. His engaging presentation reinforced how "systems thinking" is especially important to design work during difficult times. Michael drew from his work with Peter Senge on systems thinking as well as his vast experience consulting to major global organizations such as British Petroleum, Hyundai Corporation, and Saudi Aramco Oil. Reflecting on the importance of systems thinking, attendees then selected from three concurrent sessions to hear targeted case studies of redesign at American Family Insurance and Permanente Medical Group or learn more about scenario planning for designing in turbulent times. The first day concluded with the ever-popular and intriguing Stu Winby of the Sapience Group presenting on high performance, collaborative networks.
Day two of the conference revolved around a theme of designing the corporate center organization. Jay Galbraith, of Galbraith Management Consultants set the tone of this theme with his presentation sharing examples of corporate design options from real cases. Two sets of concurrent sessions largely focused on case studies of corporate designs either in progress or recently completed. Participants then moved to the Museum of Glass to enjoy a presentation by Clare Petrich, Port of Tacoma Commissioner and Lauren Walker, City of Tacoma Councilmember. Clare and Lauren welcomed ODF Conference attendees to the "Jewel in Tacoma’s Crown", the Museum of Glass and shared Tacoma’s own design journey transforming itself from lumber town to thriving port and vibrant city. Their presentation was followed by a cocktail hour, gala dinner hosted by Nationwide Insurance and an open tour of the Glass Museum featuring works by Tacoma’s own glass artist, Dale Chilhuly.
Closing day brought all the themes together through the collaboration of Dick and Emily Axelrod - the Axelrod Group, Julie Beedon - Vista Consulting, and Jake Jacobs and Ian Paterson - the Winds of Change. This diverse group shared the floor to present "Look Out Not Up: Leading Organizational Design and Change in Turbulent Times". Their session proved to be an exciting and thought-provoking close to the three days in Tacoma.
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