OD - van Rooyen

Reflection 19: Culture and Seeing small

Jan — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 06:51:40 +0000

Understanding Culture: The art of seeing small There are four somewhat unrelated, yet similar, perspectives on considering small things. The first is a biblical verse that states, “Catch the foxes for us, The little foxes that are ruining the vineyards, … Continued

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Reflection 18 – Culture as System

Jan — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 10:21:20 +0000

Systems thinking is a discipline for seeing wholes. It is a framework for seeing interrelationships rather than things, for seeing ‘patterns of change’ rather than static ‘snapshots.’ Peter Senge[i] It is often said that real understanding of a topic only … Continued

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Reflection 16 – Triad of Change Management Systems

Jan — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:52:07 +0000

Total Quality Management, Business Process Re-engineering, and Learning Organisation. Most organisations facing problems reach for an intervention. Fewer ask which kind of intervention the situation demands. Even fewer have a conceptual framework that would allow them to answer that question. The three … Continued

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Reflection 14 – Levels of OD (Functional vs Strategic)

Jan — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 07:18:04 +0000

Departmental or Strategic Organisation Development. Introduction Organisation Development (OD) has, since its formalisation in the mid-twentieth century, carried a persistent ambiguity of scope. In its most familiar guise, OD is a practice — a set of planned, human-focused interventions (team-building, … Continued

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Reflection 10 – Borrowed Risk

Jan — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:25:41 +0000

How the CEO Became an “Entrepreneur” and Why It Matters to the Rest of the Organisation Introduction Walk into any airport bookshop, and you will find a shelf of business memoirs whose titles, taken together, describe a particular self-image: the … Continued

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Reflection 9 – Laws of Nature, People, & Change

Jan — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 13:12:35 +0000

Laws of Nature, Their Relevance to People, Organisations, Systems, and Organisation Development. In this reflection, we focus on a few laws of nature from the exact sciences. Some of these will surface again in later reflections. The application of natural … Continued

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Reflection 5 – Change and Change Agents

Jan — Wed, 20 May 2026 07:00:39 +0000

Change, Strategy, Culture, and the Change Agent It has become a cliché to speak of the pace and degree of change in the 21st century – yet the observation is ancient. The philosopher Heraclitus (c. 540–480 BC) held that “on those … Continued

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