12manage

12manage is a free knowledge portal that summarizes over 400 management methods and theories and explains over 1.500 management terms. This portal is categorized into a dozen management disciplines, including change, communication, decision-making, leadership, and more. Besides English, 12manage is available in 12 other languages.

Resource Link: http://www.12manage.com

A Resource Guide for Hosting Conversations That Matter at the World Cafe

The World Café is an easy-to-use method for creating a living network of collaborative dialogue around questions that matter to the real-life situations of your organizations or community. In this beautifully illustrated booklet, Juanita Brown collaborates with Nancy Margulies and the World Café Community to articulate seven guiding principles for people to use to host their own Café. Learn about the thousands of people on five continents who have experienced the World Café, a model for setting up the ideal Café for your group, the roles of the hosts, crafting powerful questions, Café assumptions and etiquette, and more.

Resource Link: http://www.theworldcafe.com

A Safe Place for Dangerous Truths: Using Dialogue to Overcome Fear & Distrust at Work

Annette Simmons, Group Process Consulting. Amacom, 1999.

Too often, speaking the "truth" is perceived career suicide. Yet truth-telling is desperately needed if we are to move past current levels of frustration and disillusionment. Dialogue is a way for a work group to get "un-stuck" when frustration and apathy threatens forward progress. Annette Simmons will explore some of the dangerous truths currently sabotaging the wordplace, the risks and rewards of truth telling, and the art and practice of creating a place safe enough so that "truths" do not deteriorate into blame sessions, scape-goating, or hopelessness. Genuine dialogue is a way to turn dangerous truths into shared responsibility.

Resource Link: http://www.groupprocessconsulting.com

Action Dialogues: Meaningful Conversations to Accelerate Change

Debbe Kennedy, Global Dialogue Center. Berrett-Koehler Press, 2000.

Meant to be used as a part of Debbe Kennedy's Diversity Breakthrough! Strategic Action series, this is a simple pack of 52 glossy cards, each isolating specific roadblocks that organizations commonly face when looking to launch a diversity initiative. The first, for example, reads, 'Our leadership team does not reflect our stated commitment to inclusion.' Another reads, 'Resistance to change keeps diversity out of reach.'

AI Annotations

AI Annotations is a place to create a conversation ?– an exchange of ideas and practices - among the co-owners of Appreciative Inquiry Consulting and with others who are on the journey of exploration and collective understanding of Appreciative Inquiry. Loretta Donovan, Roberta Peirick, Loretta Randolph, Tony Silbert and Sandy Wells make up the AI Annotations blog team as of 5/07.

Resource Link: http://aiconsulting.wordpress.com

AiList: Appreciative Inquiry Discussion List

This listserv, hosted by Jack Brittain, is a forum for individuals interested in learning more about the practice of Appreciative Inquiry. The list has nearly 800 subscribers from all over the world. To subscribe, go to http://lists.business.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/ailist or send a message with the word 'help' in the subject or body to [email protected]. To submit, send messages to the list manager at [email protected].

Resource Link: http://lists.business.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/ailist

Alternative Dispute Resolution for Organizations: How to Design a System for Effective Conflict Resolution

Allan J. Stitt. Jossey-Bass, 1998.

Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) is a rapidly growing field, due to its popularity as an alternative to long and expensive lawsuits. ADR involves resolving disputes of any kind outside of the judicial system, through negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and other processes. This book is for people who work within organizations and are involved in disputes themselves, or for people who are required to deal with or resolve disputes. It covers how to set up a dispute resolution process in an organization.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471642959.html

Americans for Informed Democracy's Organizers Toolkit - Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World

Thomas Friedman's bestseller The World is Flat argues that advances in technology are leveling the global competitive playing field and reshaping the challenges and opportunities faced by the next generation of entrepreneurs. U.S. entrepreneurs now compete more directly with businesses around the world, while working more cooperatively with foreign businesses and labor to manufacture and deliver their products. What does the changing global landscape mean for socially responsible global entrepreneurship? What are the challenges? What are the opportunities? Americans for Informed Democracy is bringing town hall style discussion of these questions to universities across the U.S. through its Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World initiative.

Resource Link: http://www.aidemocracy.org/entrepreneur.doc

Antioch University - Ph.D. in Leadership and Change

This is a distinctive, intensive-residency, doctoral program that combines faculty-mentored, individualized learning in the student's area of professional interest with a challenging interdisciplinary core curriculum. The focus of the program is on understanding and leading organizational change.

Resource Link: http://www.phd.antioch.edu/Pages/APhDWeb_Program/overview

Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is about the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations, and the relevant world around them. In its broadest focus, it involves systematic discovery of what gives "life" to a living system when it is most alive, most effective, and most constructively capable in economic, ecological, and human terms. AI involves, in a central way, the art and practice of asking questions that strengthen a system's capacity to apprehend, anticipate, and heighten positive potential.

Appreciative Inquiry Commons

The AI Commons is devoted to the sharing of academic resources and practical tools on Appreciative Inquiry and the rapidly growing discipline of positive change. The site is hosted by Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management. Appreciative Inquiry is the coevolutionary search for the best in people, their organizations and the relevant world around them.

Resource Link: http://appreciativeinquiry.case.edu

Appreciative Sharing of Knowledge: Leveraging Knowledge Management for Strategic Change

Tojo Thatchenkery. Taos Institute Publishing, 2005.

True knowledge sharing in organizations occurs less regularly than most of us think. What can be done to help create a system in which people share the internal "know-how" unique to each organization? In this contribution to change management, Tojo Thatchenkery describes a brand new methodology called Appreciate Sharing of Knowledge [ASK] and provides a step-by-step tool kit for anyone interested in knowledge management.

Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader: How You and Your Organization Can Manage Conflict Effectively

Craig E. Runde and Tim A. Flanagan. Jossey-Bass, 2006.

Becoming a Conflict Competent Leader combines research, conceptual models, practitioner experience, and stories that highlight the core conflict competencies. The book underscores the importance for leaders to develop the critical skills they need to help them, their colleagues, and their organizations deal more effectively with conflict and move their organizations forward.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787984701.html

Building Communities of Practice: A Summary Guide

Prepared for INK ABM/URP, Ethekwini Municipality (South Africa) by Pioneers of Change, 2005.

This 16-page handbook provides simple lessons for creating vibrant cmmunities of practice. The guidebook is based on a research project on ten diverse international case studies of Communities of Practice in the public sector, ranging from Canada to India, from Brazil to Scotland. The intention with this guidebook is to provide a quick summary and practical sense of Communities of Practice and their potential, and how to go about cultivating them effectively.

Resource Link: http://pioneersofchange.net/services/CoP%20Handbook2.pdf/download

Built to Change: How to Achieve Sustained Organizational Effectiveness

Edward E. Lawler, III and Chris Worley; Foreward by Jerry Porras. Jossey-Bass, 2006.

In this groundbreaking book, organizational effectiveness experts Edward Lawler and Christopher Worley show how organizations can be ?“built to change?” so they can last and succeed in today?’s global economy. Instead of striving to create a highly reliable Swiss watch that consistently produces the same behavior, they argue organizations need to be designed in ways that stimulate and facilitate change. Built to Change focuses on identifying practices and designs that organizations can adopt so that they are able to change.

Resource Link: http://www.josseybass.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0787980617.html

Can the human being thrive in the work place? Dialogue as a strategy of hope

B. Wesorick and L. Shiparksi. Michigan: Practice Field Publishing, 1997.

An excellent resource for those working with groups which are new to dialogue. It includes strategies and stories that show ways to introduce and go deeper into the use of dialogue in the workplace.

Center for Collaborative Organizations

The Center for Collaborative Organizations, formerly the Center for the Study of Work Teams, is based at the University of North Texas and was created for the purpose of education and research in all areas of collaborative work systems. The Center officially incorporated as a nonprofit organization in 1992, although the first conference was held in 1990.

Resource Link: http://www.workteams.unt.edu

Center for Strategic Facilitation (CSF)

CSF is a partnership of consultants experienced in training, facilitation and organizational development, who collaborate to expand the use of participatory approaches and methods by individuals, organizations and communities. CSF is affiliated with The Institute of Cultural Affairs, a leader over the past four decades in promoting lasting positive change in communities, nonprofit organizations and businesses. They utilize a distinct and proven approach developed by the ICA called the Technology of Participation (ToP), and offer a number of trainings on facilitative leadership and group facilitation methods.

Resource Link: http://www.strategicfacilitation.com

Change Management Blog

This blog, hosted by Holger Nauheimer from Germany, is for change management facilitators and anyone interested in the subject. The concept of change management describes a structured approach to transitions in individuals, teams, organizations and societies that moves the target from a current state to a desired state.

Resource Link: http://www.change-management-blog.com

Change Management Toolbook

The Change Management Toolbook includes a broad range of tools, methods and strategies which you can apply during different stages of personal, team and organizational development, in training, facilitation and consulting. It is based on the wealth of tools and principles that have been provided by Kurt Lewin, Edgar Schein, Peter Senge, Arie de Geus, Robert Dilts, Virgina Satir, Bert Hellinger, Harrison Owen, David Cooperrider, Marvin Weisbord, Steve de Shazer - just to name a few - and many other great teachers.

Resource Link: http://www.change-management-toolbook.com