As consultants, we studied a lot of sources about organizational culture and values and Brian Hall's Values Shift really stood out for the depth of insight and logic. Hall's book is rather dense and somewhat academic but readable. It is far more substantial than most pop management books, so probably of greater interest to OD consultants than to most managers. One of the things we liked about this work is its ecumenical nature: it attempted to draw on understandings of human development from various corners of the earth. If there is a drawback to the book alone, it might be that it is a fabulous tool to enable a values assessment but not as strong in talking about how to work with organizations and what to do with the assessments. Then again, I am not sure that kind of insight would be easy to distill into a book format. Studying the book changed the way we work with our clients. It equipped us a bit more to open up discussions of "what kind organization do we have now and do we really want to have in the future?" It was one of the inspirations behind the group process tool we developed called "The Map of The Organizational Journey" and Brian Stanfield credited it in the background article in Edges Magazine: [...] Read it.
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