This book explains practical culture change based on engaging frontline workers and citizens in real engagements including at aluminum fabrication and bauxite refineries, social service agencies, and citizen engagement projects. Just as history has traditionally been written from the view of the victors, so leadership and management theory has been written from the point of those on top. A noted exception was Kurt Lewin, who deeply identified with people in all walks of life, and demonstrated through research that the most reliable approach to increase productivity and morale is to engage everyone in any system in generating solutions and implementing them.
Lewins method includes training in basic skills, such as conflict management, and alignment of the authority structure to support action at all levels, especially those on the front lines of work or of social change. He called this training-action-research. The authors of this book have practiced a Lewinian approach for the past 70 years and over two generations. Three generations as the family was deeply influenced by the blue-collar wisdom of William Crosby (1896-1975) who was an hourly worker in the rail yards of Pittsburgh.
This book teaches by blending in the voices of men and women like William, telling stories from frontline workers who have experienced the good, bad, and the ugly of being targets of change at the bottom of systems. The idea for this book came initially from another blue-collar man named Cotton Mears (1956-2019). Cotton was a pot room tender in Alcoas Warrick, Indiana, an aluminum smelter, one of the toughest jobs in the plant, when Robert P. Crosby first arrived to help change the culture. Cotton was a union steward and described himself as an attack dog, willing to fight for anything his union colleagues wanted him to. It was a revelation for him to realize there was another way. He took it to heart, and spent two years in Alcoas Corporate Leadership Program. It was unique in many ways but perhaps especially in that it included hourly workers mixed right in with management personnel. By the end of the program, he was on a journey to create true collaboration at Warrick and in other organizations, applying Lewinian methods from the unique perspective of his blue-collar roots, a perspective he never lost. Cotton intended to write this book, and when Robert Crosby said he was thinking of writing a book from the workers perspective,
This book explains practical culture change based on engaging frontline workers and citizens in real engagements including at aluminum fabrication and bauxite refineries, social service agencies, and citizen engagement projects.
Chapter One: View from the targets
Chapter Two: Lewinian organization
development (OD)
Chapter Three: Alignment and the front lines (SATA)
Chapter
Four: Before and after - A Union VP meets Lewinian OD
Chapter Five: A
blue-collar OD guy An electrician meets Lewinian OD
Chapter Six: A
blue-collar Jamaican
Chapter Seven: The blue-collar wisdom of William Crosby
Chapter Eight: A blue-collar OD guy Cotton Mears
Chapter Nine: Examples
from my fathers lifetime of OD work
Chapter Ten: From conflict to
collaboration A true T-group story
Chapter Eleven: Involving the front
lines in a social service agency
Chapter Twelve: Behavioralizing culture
goal clarity, role clarity, decision clarity and feedback
Chapter Thirteen:
Conflict utilization
Chapter Fourteen: Implications for leadership Appendix
A: The Interpersonal Gap meets Toltec wisdom Appendix B: Behavior description
quiz (DEI version) Appendix C: The PINCH Model (article by Mark Horswood)
Appendix D: Managing conflict in community development Appendix E: Sponsor,
Agent, Target, Advocate (SATA) Appendix F: KRID (Adapt/Adopt) Appendix G:
Cotton Mears flipchart visual aids Bibliography
Gilmore Crosbys mission is to help create a better future for humanity. He believes the most reliable means for doing so is to apply and spread the wisdom and methods of Kurt Lewin. Crosbys credo is asserted in the title of his book: Planned Change: Why Kurt Lewin's Social Science is Still Best Practice for Business Results, Change Management, and Human Progress. He is concerned that the OD profession is distracted by beliefs such as that the human condition has significantly changed (VUCA) and by the search for what is new. Crosby asserts that most of what passes as new is more hype than true substance. Instead, Crosby advocates that change agents from all walks of life would be wise to learn and apply Lewins universal theory of social science, including concepts such as group dynamics, group decision, the social construction of reality, re-education, field theory, change as three steps, and the democratic principles of leadership. When integrated, these concepts form a systemic approach that can be applied by hourly workers, community organizers, and PhDs alike.
Crosbys career dates back to 1984, following in the footsteps of his fathers OD career, which traces back to 1953 and Lewins inner circle. While embracing the past, Crosby experiments in the present, conducting T-group learning in organizations, online T-groups, and various uses of new technology and social media. His most recent book, Diversity without Dogma, applies Lewinian social science to addressing racism and any form of prejudice.
