OC & D

Somehow courses those are practical and application oriented never attracted me. When the topics like HRA Audit or competency mapping were proposed for my PhD thesis, I literally ran away from the place. Theoretical, imaginative and far away from the utility concepts mesmerizes me. That is the reason I had to struggle reading ‘7 habits of effective people’ and ‘how to win and influence people’. Though they are path-braking books, since they deal with absolutely practical ideas, I used to get bored. I read them just for the sake of reading them; otherwise people might consider me as an illiterate.

Recently the coordinator asked me whether I would like to teach “OC&D” (Organizational Change and Development). Light years back I had studied the course as a student, and the professor who taught me was brilliant and I have lots of respect for him. But I could not remember anything apart from writing an assignment for the course. So I opened the text book on the subject to find out what does it deal with, and in the first lesson it elaborates the theory of change according to Levin. In summary it says that the change process is “Freezing, Moving and unfreezing”, it sounded to me like “Getting up from the bed, eating and going back to the bed”. To explain this process they have given big diagram with all kinds of squares and circles.

What really shocked me was that I was under the impression that this course comes under HR area, now only I was told that it comes under OB area. I always thought that OB guys are direct descendants of Sigmund Freud, and conveniently I omitted B.F.Skinner as part of OB field.

So if I have to teach OC&D, first and foremost I had to change my mental block that practical things are important in life. Teaching how to walk or how to swim also come under serious academic disciplines. And one should not look down upon these realities of life. And I should remember that if complicated things can be made simple then it is also possible to make simple things complicated.