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Organization development is really about the pursuit of human development. It is just that we have chosen to pursue this interest in human development in the venue of organizations, in collective, communal, work getting done contexts. This creates a fault line, a stress fracture in the field. For organizations and human development are not natural allies.

The word organization is the construct of an engineer. It is about bringing predictability, consistency and control into the world. It is a problem-solving phenomenon. The engineer’s gift to the world is their love of tools and methodology. It offers the promise of a well functioning material world.

The word development is the construct of a healer. It is about bringing discovery, feeling and humanity in the world. It is a relationship phenomenon. The healer’s gift to the world is their love of consciousness and the texture of experience. It offers the promise of love.

Bringing these two worlds together is the work of organization development, and this is no easy task. Especially in a world that values efficiency over experience and economics over human values.

What is tragic is the predominance of either the engineering instinct or the healing instinct. We become lost when we believe that either exists in the absence of the other. To pursue consciousness, which is the methodology of healing, alone is to live in a world that does not work. We can become isolated, ungrounded, and lost in our imagination with the result that the material world remains an un-constructed dream.

If we care only about economics and efficiency, we live in a world where consciousness and care are discounted and treated like a luxury. The result is the abuse of power. The sacrifice of human development for the sake of economic and material expansion. Strip malls, smart bombs, and the worship of shareholder value.

In the beginning of OD, we were tilted towards relationship and self-awareness. The T-group was the methodology, where all structure, leadership and order was removed in service of the self-awareness and crisis that filled this space. Now it may be we are tilted towards a methodological materialism, where we focus on business language, "systems" thinking, large group methodology, where concrete practical results are the sole measure of value.

My response to this unsolvable dilemma is to simply stay focused on the present moment as the only possibility where engineering and healing can co-exist. Where both the strength of the material (its efficiency) and the aesthetic form of the material (its affirmation of the value of being human) can be cared for. Much of what we really do is gather in rooms and speak and listen to each other. Organization and human development merge at these gathering points, which might be called social spaces.

OD then can be considered a competency in the design of social space. Its contribution is to create containers where the elements of social space are conducive to a reunion of economics, engineering and human development. The elements of social space are such things as the room itself, how people were invited, how we are seated, the quality of the questions that conversation is organized around, the distribution of air time, the legitimization of dissent, and the appreciation of gifts.

When we design the social space right, power is widely distributed, thinking and reflection are valued, accountability is chosen not enforced, and useful work gets done. And when we really understand the value of social space, we will decide that it is finally the rightful task of managers, politicians and those in charge. Then we will get about the task of teaching them all that we know, and organization development will no longer be a discrete profession, but simply a way of thinking about the world where the heart and the hands act to support each other.

The above article appeared in the March 2002 issue of OD Network's e-zine PRACTICING and is posted here with permission from OD Network.