Facilitating change #8 - Affecting the future

Planners in organizations set out with the intention of affecting the future in ways that are organizationally beneficial.  The same can be said about those leading and facilitating change. And it is the comments on "affecting the future" in my 1980 paper on organizational planning that I want to focus on here -comparing and contrasting these with my current thinking on the dynamics and facilitation of organizational change (see footnote).

On many occasions in this blog I have referred to the writing of Peter Drucker, much of it stretching back to the 1950s and 1960s. Many of his remarks still resonate strongly today. And Drucker's insights feature prominently in what is a relatively short chapter in the 1980 dissertation.  Interestingly, I used Drucker to illustrate my current thinking on 'time' and change - and its relationship to Ralph Stacey's notion of the "living present", in a mid-2008 post on this blog (The time machine of organizational decision making).

Pleasingly, then, there were few surprises when I re-acquainted myself with this section of the earlier paper.