Dialogic Organization Development

2Introduction to the Practice of Dialogic OD

Gervase R. Bushe and Robert J. Marshak

To help introduce the practice of Dialogic OD we begin with two stories about how each of us stumbled into it in our practice. First, Gervase:

The first experience I had that I would now call Dialogic OD was with Charlie Seashore in 1987. My partner had asked him to work with our client, the more than eighty professionals of the quality department at Chevrolet/Pontiac/GM of Canada (CPC) divisional headquarters. Charlie asked them to self-organize into the following four groups, in whatever way each of them defined themselves: parents, grandparents, children, and black sheep. He then asked each group to take a turn sitting in the center of the room, talking about ...