GIODN is pleased to welcome Dr. Peter Norlin for this special speaking engagement on Developing a Personal Theory-of Practice. Join us to learn together!
Wherever we work and whatever we do as OD consultants, our professional perspective, our design choices, and our contracting decisions will all inevitably reflect our own, personal theory-of-practice. It’s a fancy name for the framework all of us build internally to understand, integrate, and organize our professional experience. What we think we know about people, what we believe is important for learning and change, and how we use ourselves in this moment as we practice OD is a part of this framework that we assemble over time–and that we use as a professional GPS that is always on, yet is often tacit and invisible to us. Fortunately, it’s also a vital resource we that can use when we work with clients, so one of the challenges we all encounter as OD practitioners is first, acknowledging that our professional influence and effectiveness are always determined by our current theory-of-practice, and then, learning how to access its power and how to use it to achieve the greatest impact. In this conversation, we’ll talk about 1) how to identify and explore your own, personal theory-of-practice; 2) how you might best frame and articulate it for your current professional needs; and 3) how you might then use it with clients to help you with some professional heavy lifting.
Professional Bio:
Over the last 35 years, Peter F. Norlin, Ph.D., been the Executive Director of the OD Network; an internal consultant-leader in two for-profit settings, USF&G Insurance and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maryland; the principal in two independent consulting practices, GreenLeaf Associates and ChangeGuides; a partner in Dannemiller-Tyson Associates; and an instructor in three universities. He’s also had professional work experience in military, health care, not-for-profit, customer service, financial services, pharmaceutical, and family business systems. He’s now currently using this experience as a professional OD coach and shadow consultant. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is also a professional member of the NTL Institute.