Kaliopi and I were sitting at the Vietnamese café for the ODA drinks when Sarah Kirkby came over to say goodbye. She said, “This is my second ODA event. The first was online. I’m so happy I flew down from Sydney. Everyone is so welcoming.”
That was the overwhelming feeling I had at the ODA conference too: Openness, conversation, and a willingness to invite people in.
I was at last year’s conference, so it was good to arrive back at the community hub. There is a comfort in familiarity. I knew I was in for a good time.
Steve Hearsum was our keynote. His iconoclastic ideas snapped us to attention. Fixability is a myth. No silver bullets. Functional collusion. Business schools will be razed to the ground (or did he say ‘should be’?).
At morning tea, Steve told me he saw himself as conversational scaffolding, like the bamboo kind you see in Hong Kong: flexy, fast to build, quick to tear down. That’s a good way to describe his session. He challenged us. The exercise we did to reveal our shadow side was unsettling and insightful. I loved how he referred to the big consulting firms as finders, minders and grinders.
His presentation reminded me of my days working with Dave Snowden in the IBM Cynefin Centre. Dave’s complexity-informed intellectual gymnastics often left me inspired, confused and unsettled. Steve’s version had a greater dose of humanity. His final suggestion? Dance more.
The image that will stay with me from Mel Norris’ talk on culture change was her skipping across the stage as she told the story of getting surgeons on board. One hour wasn’t enough. I felt Mel had so much more to share about the two massive culture change projects she corralled into existence. One in a hospital. The other a research organisation. Both with about 5,000 people.
One insight that leapt out was how Mel created an evaluation capability from day one so she could report on progress with data. A powerful tool to influence change.
You could tell Mel was a consummate facilitator. Her instinct was to engage us in activity and conversation. But time was against us. Still, we got to feel the issues a little in our chats.
The last session I attended was Tiffany Gray on AI. I loved her opening: “Are there any questions?” And people did have questions. In answering them, Tiffany created a sense of informality and showed her deep expertise. It was inspiring.
There was one challenge in this session. The diversity of experience in AI made it hard to pitch at a level relevant for everyone. I had questions about how agents worked, but it wasn’t a how-to session. I did like when we got into the societal shifts that AI might trigger.
I didn’t make it to the DEI talk by Bree Gorman, but we could hear them getting highly engaged in the corner of the room. The hubbub had energy.
Peter Canny, Jan Heckscher and Yope Vagenas did a great job getting everyone connected, setting up the sessions and helping us reflect on what we’d just experienced. That’s one of the things I love most about the ODA Conference. Time. Time to digest. It’s a beautiful thing.
~~ Shawn Callahan, ODA Member