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A festival where big ideas meet real-life applications

Why is this our 2024 theme?

So much is happening in the world of work right now; it’s exciting and inspiring and daunting at the same time. There is no shortage of radical thinking and sage advice for responding to the new challenges.  But how do we take these big ideas and convert them into practical and impactful changes in our organizations? This is the theme of our 2024 conference: converting bold new thinking into practical actions that have positive impact.

Keynotes (and more to come)

A thoughtful conversation about the future of our field informed by recent learnings in our global, dynamic environment.

 

Session

Amy Kates will share Kates Kesler’s experience in scaling to a practice of 150 organization designers and embedding the methodology into Accenture, a global firm with over 700,000 employees. She’ll show how they rapidly accelerated practitioner development while staying true to the principles of our discipline. Join us in a thoughtful conversation about the future of our field informed by recent learnings in our global, dynamic environment.

Bio

Amy Kates is co-founder of Kates Kesler Organization Consulting. Accenture acquired Kates Kesler in 2020 and Amy’s focus over the past four years has been to build a global team of 150 practitioners all using Jay Galbraith’s Star Model.

Amy was first introduced to ODF when Kathy Molloy invited her to attend the conference in Salem in 2003. Amy and Kathy co-chaired the 2006 conference in Charleston and Amy was a board member in the mid-2000s. She has attended and presented at many of our events and has ensured her firms have been regular conference sponsors.

Amy is co-author of five books on organization design with Jay Galbraith and Greg Kesler. Amy and Greg’s latest book is Networked, Scaled, and Agile: A Design Strategy for Complex Organizations (Kogan Page, 2021). She is currently helping the Accenture team write a new book on the common design challenges large companies face. She is also the host of the LinkedIn learning video course on organization design.

In addition to consulting, Amy has been a visiting fellow to the government of Singapore and has taught at Cornell University and the Danish Technical University. She currently serves as a board member of Educate!, the largest education social enterprise in east Africa, and is building a farm-stay guest house in Rwanda.

Practical insights and experiences on how organization design and change work together and with culture to help organizations become agile

 

Session

Organization design is both a description of strategies, structures, and processes and a process for creating and aligning these features.   Design and change become the same thing when the pace of technological and social change and the frequency of reorganizations increases. At the same time, organization agility and culture change remain two of the big ideas begging for real-life applications.

Despite the increasing agreement on the definition of organization agility, there is much less clarity about how to become an agile organization. Specifically, culture’s role in becoming agile remains confusing in practice. Is culture the target of change? Is culture a constraint to transformation? Could culture be a facilitator of change? In this presentation, I will share practical insights and experiences on how design and change work together and with culture to help organizations become agile.

Bio

Dr. Christopher Worley is the Research Professor of Management at Pepperdine University’s Graziadio School of Business. He is a recognized leader in the field of organization agility, organization development, and organization design. Prior to Pepperdine, he was the founding Strategy Director at the Center for Leadership and Effective Organizations at the NEOMA Business School in France, a Senior Research Scientist at USC’s Center for Effective Organizations, Chair of the Academy of Management’s Organization Development and Change division, and Director of the Master of Science in Organization (MSOD) program at Pepperdine University. He received the McGregor Award from the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and Pepperdine University’s Luckman Distinguished Teaching Fellowship. Dr. Worley is co-author of The Agility Factor, Becoming Agile, Management Reset, Built to Change, Integrated Strategic Change, co-editor of two volumes Organizing for Sustainable Effectiveness series, and co-author of seven editions of Organization Development and Change.

Join us at the historic

The St. Paul Hotel

350 Market Street
Saint Paul, MN 55102

Twin Cities in Minnesota

Click here to reserve your room with code 5120046

or call the hotel directly – 651-292-9292.
reference 
ODF Festival of Org Design

Conference Rates  – $159/nt + tax
(based on availability thru 04.08.2024)

The hotel does not have their own lot but does offer valet parking
or there are nearby garages


Property is 9 miles from Minneapolis-Saint Paul Int’l Airport

There are a number of options for transporation from the airport to the hotel – learn more here

Call for Presenter Proposals

We received a record number of Presenter proposals for our 2024 Annual Conference

Submission Deadline was October 20, 2023

How You Fit In:  We are looking for passionate practitioners, trailblazers, and provocateurs who can engage our conference participants in diverse conversations and experiential learning.

Session leaders should adopt the format that best inspires, educates, and connects participants.

Read the full Call for Presenter Proposals

If you prefer to use an editable .doc to prepare your submission, click here to download

We want you to be creative and adventurous in your proposal design, however features that will grab our attention include:

  • The application of truly bold ideas to real-life situations
  • A practitioner focus, with practical takeaways (e.g. tools, methodologies, worked examples)
  • Highly interactive sessions
  • Case studies delivered by or with the client or end-user
  • Co-learning sessions that leverage the knowledge in the audience
  • Sessions that work for an in-room audience

Our volunteer Peer Review teams have started the process to vet the proposals

Conference Ticket Types

2024 Conference Ticket

EARLY BIRD PRICING UNTIL MARCH 1 2024 This ticket includes full registration to the ODF 2024 Festival of Organization Design in St. Paul, MN | May 7 – 9, 2024 This ticket does not include the cost of the hotel. Please see the info on our venue, The St. Paul Hotel, on our 2024 Conference Page for hotel booking and discount information. BONUS: This ticket will allow you to nurture your connection with the global org design community with one year of European ODF’s Monthly Curated Content Newsletter (CCN), your dose of the freshest org design content. We hold a monthly virtual peer conversation, “Global Org Design Trends” to dive deeper into the articles. You will also have access to EODF’s “Members-only Knowledge Repository” and other member benefits. * Important note. These benefits are offered via membership with our partner association European ODF. The ticket gives you one year of EODF membership, valued at ~$55. After the conference, we will send a code and instructions; you must register separately.

Sale!

$1,495.00

Student Registration: 2024 Conference Ticket

Student Registration: For student pricing, please register utilizing your student email address (if possible). This discounted ticket includes full conference registration and all other perks. See full price ticket description for full details.

$495.00