BAodn Style: Holiday Social

On December 12, a few students, OD practioners, BAodn Board members and friends gathered together to celebrate the holidays and the new year. The event was held at Ana Mandara restaurant in Ghirardelli square. An exquisitely decorated venue with Asian themes, couches, and international flavor. I arrived right at 5:30 p.m. as it began to rain. And was visually pleased to enter this wonderous place.

We came together to celebrate our passion for OD, and the conversation certainly had that flavor. I met some new people that I had not attended before. Most who attended were independent consultants. As I looked around everyone seemed to be converging into small groups and deep in conversation with others. My group was made up of two independent consultants, and one psychologist. The conversation turned lively as we began discussing the communication efforts of various fortune 500 companies, the role of OD in Corporate America and Seth Godin, marketing genious. We also talked about various books and interesting readings and of course a little about human nature and behavior. The best part of all turned out to be recruting my little group to write blogs in January-so look forward to some great writers with lots of experience in January. I invite others who attended to feel free to comment and share their conversations.

The appetizers were delicious as always and included chicken skewers with peanut sauce, bite sized turnovers, tempura shrimp, vegetable egg rolls and much much more. We stayed pretty late until about 10 p.m. One thing I have come to know about OD consultants and specially at BAodn that we do LOVE to socialize.

I am looking forward to the January 4th event with Linda Ackerman Anderson-how to REALLY succeed in large systems transformation. This is something I always wonder about. How successful and sustainable our the changes we implement? Hope to see you there and at other networking events!

Behind the Curtain: BAodn Board's Fall Retreat

The BAodn Board meets once per quarter to connect, support each other with projects, formalize strategic plans and brainstorm ways to support our member community. About a month ago Rani H. Gill and I volunteered to lead the retreat. We spent four weeks planning the agenda, planning the team building activities, the food and the content. Yes, if its a BAodn event, there has to be food!

We began by checking about the funniest costumes we ever or wore or saw. And continued the checking by connecting about an inspirational aspect of our life as well as a challenge that we were currently facing (non BAodn related). This helped us all learn more about each other, connect and bond as human beings.

We then moved on to review the Mission and Goals we worked on at the last retreat. We each had come up with a mission that described what we wanted to accomplish this year. Chanterria, BAodn President, took all our input and presented a proposed Mission. We gave feedback on the Mission. While this still needs to be tweaked a bit we present a rough draft for your information:

Mission:

BAODN is a community organization that supports a practicing local community of Organization Development professionals, consultants, and students. We provide opportunity for dialogue, networking, and exploration of the practice of OD through the use of social media, events, and continuing education.

2010 Goals:

1.    HSMC Transition

2.    Increase member benefit

3.    Create internship program

            4.    Understand and implement technology solutions to support initiatives

After the review of the Mission and goals, each of the board members presented their initiatives or projects. This served to orient everyone on all BAodn activities. This was also an opportunity for board members to request help from the Board on their initiatives and find ways to move forward. Items in the discussion were tabled as action items for smaller groups and or the monthly board meetings.

Initiatives

The technology & infrastructure initiative is to support board members and volunteers in sustaining the organization with appropriate tools and collaborative processes, to maintain and improve systems for members to access BAodn services, and to support the professional practice of BAodn members and the OD community by connecting people virtually with other people, knowledge, and resources.- Pam Davis

Volunteer recruitment is an ongoing activity to encourage involvement by members and potential members in BAodn programs and initiatives. BAodn is a volunteer run organization and relies on volunteer engagement for vibrancy and sustainability. - Katherine Kott

The internship initiative is designed to support the new and emerging BAodn mission and culture which focuses on being a community of practitioners as well as a community of net-workers. The initiative will unite professional and student volunteer practitioners to assist with our community organizations' ever changing developmental needs.   -Riley Sullivan

The purpose of the Action Learning Group (ALG) is “to provide an opportunity for managers/consultants to reflect on how they are going about their jobs and work challenges; as a result, to act in new and different ways and to assimilate new learning.” In effect, the three (3) existing BAODN Action Learning Groups function as supportive resources for Organization Development professionals seeking a safe space to explore, reflect and learn about application-based alternatives for their practice(s) from each other. - Diana Saunders

The Baodn Communications Director is responsible for managing broadcast based communications on behalf of the Board of Directors, Membership and advertiser's.  On-going initiatives include the monthly publication of Memberclicks, development and execution of the organizations communications strategy and the strategic development of the organizations messaging and positioning statements.  The communications director consults on the usage of technology and social media throughout BAodn.  Tactically, the communications director posts member events to MemberLinks and supports/contributes current topics posted on social media sites including, LinkedIn, BAodn blog and will provide support to Twitter and Facebook as those platforms are launched. - Jeff Harnois

BAodn Events are targeted to maximize member benefit and rebuild BAodn brand name and member satisfaction and loyalty by providing quarterly social networking and thoughtleader gatherings to increase interaction, dialogue, and collaboration among members and between members and BAodn. 

In the next 6 months, we hope to organize one event every month. Each time in SF downtown area on the last Wednesday of the month so that our members can arrange their schedule beforehand and travel more conveniently to attend the events. - Melody Chen

As Treasurer, my role is to be a watchdog over all aspects of financial management, working closely with other members of the BAODN Board to safeguard our organization's finances and to ensure that we remain a sustainable organization.  I act as an information and reference point for the Chair and other board members to:
1.) clarify financial implications of proposals
2.) outline our current financial status
3.) maintain and retrieve all relevant financial documentation

Best in the West (BITW)

We began with a history of Best in the West and some of the challenges in putting such a huge conference together with a small team of volunteers. We then moved on to brainstorming on how to make this event an easy, fun and worthwhile for all. We wanted to come up with ideas for the committee and something to make BITW a success and supportive of our members this year. We had a great time learning how to brainstorm ideas without censoring each other and allowing what ever was there to emerge. Certain themes emerged in our brainstorming which included:

1) Having a global and/or international component
2) Expanding the audience beyond what we typically call "OD" into other OD related fields
3) Connecting with other OD organizations and schools with OD programs
4) Use technology like Webminars, Videos, Twitter, etc to make BITW interactive
5) A focus on connection by including team building and networking activities (one includes having pictures and bios of everyone attending the conference)
6) Areas for OD learning
7) Topics that could be applied to work

Conclusion

We concluded the retreat by following in the footsteps of our presenters earlier this year Eddie Seashore and Michael Bloom, who closed the session with three words.  And here they are for your reading pleasure:

• Inspired, excited, optimistic
• Satisfied, saturated
• Excited, relieved, satisfied
• Energize, relieved
• Connected, satisfied, anticipation
• Please, fatigued, encouraged
• Refreshed, connected, hopeful
• Connected, curious, satisfied
• Grateful, optimistic, curious