Category: Changing Board Members’ Listening

As the Interdevelopmental Institute (IDM) enters a new era, it wants to communicate what it has learned and what, based on its learning over nearly 20 years, it can now deliver to CEOs and Boards. Find out how the Institute's main methodology, called Constructive Developmental Framework (CDF), addresses contemporary issues such as the digital transformation of businesses in all of its facets. Take note of the critical realism CDF tools embody (thanks to Roy Bhaskar's work on a dialectical ontology), and IDM's critical theory practice that now provides a new home for Frankfurt School insights just in time ... Sincere thanks to the international community of students who have made IDM widely known through their own work over many years! A New Beginning at IDM Read More...

This article of 2000 deepens Argyris’ notion of theory-in-use by recourse to empirical findings of the developmental sciences. It defines "consulting" based on this deeper notion. The article teaches a lesson still not learned in consulting: that theory-in-use has to do with levels of mental growth, both cognitively and social-emotionally, cutting through all "competence models". Consulting is redefined as  the interactive design of interventions that take the level of mental growth of organization members and of their culture into account, equally in start-ups. Theory-in-use itself [what people actually do in organizations] is seen as comprising both a structural [social-emotional] aspect, referred to as individuals’ level of evolving self, and a procedural [cognitive] aspect, represented by individuals’ level of complexity handling. Their integration and unity demystifies "consciousness" as well as "leadership".  In the process, the Developmental Structure/Process Tool (DSPT) – since 2005 referred to as CDF, Constructive Developmental Framework -- is introduced as an instrument of  evidence-based consulting and coaching. CPJ #2, 2000.   Read More...

In this new book (to appear in 2016), addressed to CEO's, board members, and members of executive teams, Otto Laske takes an in-depth look at his Constructive Developmental Framework as a culture transformation instrument. The book focuses on organizational discourse culture as the lever by which fundamental changes come about when engaging with new forms of one-on-one and peer-listening once these are grounded in systemic dialectical thinking and an ability to "read" social-emotional meaning making in company discourse. In the tradition of consulting work based on CDF, culture transformation effects transpire in all areas of crucial important for company flourishing and breakthroughs: level of innovation, strategy design, talent management, peer-to-peer interactions in groups and teams, and the definition of new business models. The book delivers insight into the human operating system supporting holocracy. While "active listening" has been much emphasized in coaching, hosting, and DoJo4Life work, structured listening in terms of CDF is not only active but DEEP. It is deep because it is focused on joining two aspects implicit in every communication: the level of speakers' social-emotional meaning making, and the level of making cognitive sense of the world and handling its complexity. As shown in the book, both... Read More...