Changing Conversations

Abstract

So pervasive is instrumental management thinking, with its emphasis on the sunny uplands of an imagined future organizational state (reaching a goal; achieving change; becoming something new), that it is a rare phenomenon to discover its opposite: an organizational practice that is rooted in the reality of the present in which we already find ourselves.

This chapter describes and examines the most developed example of an engaged, active-responsive organizational practice that I have so far encountered.