Montreal, Quebec in October 2005
From STS Roundtable
STS/RT, INC. ANNUAL MEETING: MONTREAL, QUEBEC, CANADA October 19-22, 2005
An informal social hour welcomed members and guests to the Montreal meeting of the roundtable, held in Montreal, Quebec in the Fall of 2005. On Thursday morning, after welcoming comments and an exercise in getting reacquainted for attendees, we turned our attention to Looking at our World from a Futurist Perspective. Kimon Valaskakis (Professeur-honoraire de Sciences Economiques at the University of Montreal; President of the Club of Athens – Global Governance Group; Board Member and Senior Fellow at FUTURIBLES INTERNATIONAL; and Senior Advisor G8 Research Group) led this session dedicated to the exploration of global change and future trends. Dr. Kimon Valaskakis is internationally recognized as a leading futurist with demonstrated expertise in five areas: global governance, international development, Canadian federalism, technology strategy, and forecasting and planning methodologies as applied to business and government. He has pursued four converging career paths: he has been an academic (he holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University and a French law degree, and has taught at the University of Montreal and other universities in Canada and Europe), an executive (he headed the GAMMA INSTITUTE, an international think tank specializing in forecasting and planning studies), a consultant (former Chairman of ISOGROUP CONSULTANTS), and a diplomat (former Canadian ambassador to the OECD). After lunch, a panel on Organizational Alliances, including Jean Newmann (Tavistock Institute, London, England) , Thoralf Qvale (Work Research Institute [AFI], Oslo, Norway), and Max Ogden (Foundation for Sustainable Economic Development, University of Melbourne, Australia) opened a discussion about the role and importance of organizational alliances in today’s global economy; group discussion about the implications for us followed the panel presentations.
After the panel, we turned our attention to looking at work from around the world. We opened with a briefing about current STS research and practice in Israel brought to us by Yoram Mitki (Senior Lecturer, Ruppin Academic Center, Israel). Next, Kevin Boyle (Boyle and Associates, Corvallis, Oregon) introduced an emerging partnership between the United Farmworkers and the states of California, Oregon and Washington to jointly develop skills and competencies based on diverse commodities and career ladders. This was the first time that agriculture had ever had this sort of industrial documentation and development in the US, and is one arena of emerging socio-technical systems work. Finally, Anli Ataov (Ph.D. student at the Action Research Program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology) discussed her work on a large-scale action research project in urban planning in Kocaeli, Turkey. Each of these presentations focused on cutting edge issues for STSers, and challenged our thinking about the future.
Friday opened with a business meeting for the Roundtable, after which we were introduced to People Change Management within CIBC. Harvey Kolodny (Professor Emeritus of the Rotman School at the University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada) presented the work on which he and Sheila Legon (Senior Consultant, CIBC) have collaborated on People Change Management at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, CIBC. The presentation focused on project management and people change management, two technologies that are increasingly important to organizations as they experience pressing needs to respond to rapidly changing environments. While both technologies address managing change they have not been well integrated and are not designed to complement and coordinate with each other. This presentation described the very significant accomplishments of one organization in taking the initiative to coordinate and integrate project and change management.
After lunch, in our 'Walk and Talk series", Max Ogden (Foundation for Sustainable Economic Development, University of Melbourne, Australia) led a group and a focused conversation to explore cutting edge work being done by unions in New Zealand. Specifically, he updated the group on the latest from CTU & EPMU, both of which are developing strategic plans for a range of industries. Eli Berniker (Professor, Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma, Washington) led a group and a focused conversation about alliances with groups such as the Ecological Economics organizations, which are represented all across the globe. Eli recently participated in the US Society for Ecological Economics Conference and reports that there is great interest in our kind of work! Other interest groups were self-forming around issues that arose during the meeting or in informal conversations.
After the fresh air in the 'Walk and Talk" session, our colleagues Dick Axelrod (The Axelrod Group, Chicago, IL, USA) and Carolyn Ordowich (STS Associates, Princeton, NJ, USA) helped push our thinking in a session titled The Trans-Organizational Boundaries Project. At our last meeting in Chicago, we had explored issues related to new work systems design in a variety of ways. At the end of that meeting, we defined our new work systems design as "demand-centric self designing work systems", which are characterized by multi-directional communication, trust, integration, coordination/linkages, cooperation, collaboration, cross-boundary (levels, function, culture), interdependency/connectivity, and improvisation. We also agreed that we would each do some homework to further our thinking about “demand-centric self designing work systems”. First, we agreed that we would find "technologies" (in the form of articles, books, or groups/people we can align with) that are successful with the above characteristics. Second, we agreed to identify what 'natural people' feel about working in this kind of context - their concerns, issues, feelings - in the form of statements or short anecdotes. The homework assignments were placed on the Distance Manager (our collaboration intranet). Dick and Carolyn agreed to aggregate the information that came in and lead this discussion in Montreal.
On Saturday morning, we opened with an exercise in Visioning for the Roundtable. This session, led by the Stewards, built on what we had learned during this meeting to explore who we are and where we are going, with the intent of developing both a long term vision of our organization and specific action plans for accomplishing that vision. That work continues. We ended the meeting with a fascinating look at STS Practice and Thinking in Canada. Bert Painter (Modern Times Productions, Inc., Bowen Island, British Columbia, Canada) presented a synopsis of two cases, one involving a national railway system, that illustrated (in a recent video) the "double helix" of labor relations and organization design, and secondly, a case of customized IT (information technology) and knowledge work design in a public insurance company, that highlighted the benefits and future potential of socio-technical approaches to IT. The meeting was adjourned with high acclaim for its content and learning value.
