Alert : Outbreak of Organisational Development Disorder

It’s been a while since I’ve posted on Govloop. Been hugely busy. It’s good to be back.

My good colleagues Bec Gallen and Michelle Nutting and I were exploring the following questions a couple of weeks ago:

How could we encourage discussion of the palpable resistance to social media within public service agencies? This discussion came about as, despite the projects going on around the place, the experience for most public servants is quite different.

The next question we explored is how could we make that discussion one step removed. And just as important, how could we make it fun.

What we came up with is a world of Blockerbots, Connecticoms, Megablocker, Organisational Development Disorder (ODD) and Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt (FUD)

We would like to share that world with you. Feel free to build on these ideas and create workshops around them. And if there are any budding artists out there it would be great to see some ODD Artwork.

Would be cool to look at developing an iPhone app to have fun while evaluation their organisation. Beyond our skills unfortunately, but something modelled on the excellent approach of the PTSD app springs to mind.

Who says social media and Gov 2.0 can’t be fun!

Steve, Bec & Michelle

The ODD Briefing

Symptoms

Organisation Development Disorder (ODD) is the defensive reaction of many corporations and government departments to the natural and human shift towards social media apps.

Symptoms include, but are not restricted to IT and non-IT measures that create an environment of fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). In short, connection aversion.

Causation

Intelligence indicates that ODD is being spread by Blockerbots. The sole purpose of Blockerbots is to eradicate social media apps by cutting off their connection with people (social media is people).

Blockerbots thrive in status hierarchy systems (see corporation and government departments). This legacy system and its advocates are doing everything they can to survive what they see as a social media attack.

We know that Blockerbots come in groups and clusters exist throughout corporations and government departments. That they are well coordinated suggests the existence of a central control system. This system is as yet unseen and is code named Megablocker.

Apart from Michelle’s an extensive Google search failed to find any reference to Blockerbots, Connecticoms and Megablocker. They have remained hidden – Until now.

Conflict

Social media apps are being generated by Connecticoms. Connecticoms have a symbiotic relationship with people and are social in nature.

Your mission

Identify Blockerbot business rules. What guides their behaviour? This understanding is needed in order to either reprogram them or remove them.

Identify where Megablocker resides within corporations and government departments. We need to understand what motivates Megablocker so that we can take steps to re-program or re-educate this entity and end the production of Blockerbots.

Develop business rules to enhance the performance of Connecticoms. The goal is to create a social media and people friendly environment that is ODD and FUD free.

Collaborate with your colleagues to carry out this mission. To halt the spread of ODD we must support the Connecticoms to convert or remove the Blockerbots. If we fail we will end up living in a very odd (and sad) world.

Postscript

Organisational story telling is a powerful instrument for change. Sharing your experiences of Megablocker, Blockerbots and Connecticoms will help eradicate ODD and FUD.

Disclose, Disseminate, Disarm

Alert : Outbreak of Organisational Development Disorder by steve davies, Michelle Nutting, Bec Gallen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.