In the Organizational Development and Change division, our focus is on change and changing. Our values as a division suggest the critical importance of how change happens. Change carried out through inclusive relational processes - with input from multiple stakeholders at multiple levels of action - can be critical for building thriving organizations and communities. At this year’s meeting hosted in the heart of Scandinavia – where multi-stakeholder relationships are often used strategically to achieve sustainable outcomes – our focus on how change happens is particularly relevant. Our 2025 Distinguished Scholar, Dr. Sandra Janoff, has dedicated her career to developing methods to enable systems change through multi- stakeholder relationships at multiple levels of action to build thriving organizations and communities. In her address, Dr. Janoff will describe some of the multi-stakeholder challenges we face globally, and why ODC methods and theories are potentially so helpful right now. She will argue that ODC methods and theories are particularly helpful because they are informed by practice, and vice versa. Dr. Janoff will describe the work of Future Search and how its work is grounded in ODC methods and theories and enables a system to build its capacity to solve its complex problems. Sandra will conclude by suggesting where ODC might go from here, then open up for a lively discussion with and among participants, facilitated by Program Chair Jody Hoffer Gittell.
