OrgDev with Distinction

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

How do you move from HR into Organisation Development - and what changes when you start working less transactionally and more with the organisation as a system?

In this episode of the OrgDev Podcast, Garin Rouch and Dani Bacon are joined by David Patrick, Organisational Development Lead: Leadership and Change at Dorset Council, to explore his journey from HR into OD and what that transition has taught him about the practice of organisation development.

David began his local government career as an HR Assistant and has since worked across HR systems, employee relations, organisational change, leadership and OD. In this conversation, he reflects on how his understanding of OD has developed, what he had to let go of from more traditional HR practice, and what it takes to work effectively in a large, complex public sector organisation.

We explore what day-to-day OD work actually looks like inside local government, how a small OD team decides where to focus its energy, and how practitioners create space for thoughtful, longer-term work in environments that can feel fast-paced and reactive.

The conversation also looks at the distinctive challenges of practising OD in a political and highly governed system, including major organisational change, mergers and restructures, competing demands and the ongoing question of what an organisation really needs from its OD practitioners.

For anyone considering a move from HR into Organisation Development, already making that transition, or trying to understand what good internal OD practice looks like, this is a practical and honest conversation about building an OD career from the inside.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

What if strategy wasn't about predicting or controlling the future, but about helping organisations make better decisions in the face of uncertainty?

In this episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we're joined by Dr Matt Finch for a fascinating conversation about rethinking strategy, building foresight and navigating an increasingly uncertain world.

We explore why strategy needs to be a living process rather than a document produced every few years, how scenario planning can help us challenge our assumptions, and why thinking about the future shouldn't be reserved for specialists.

Matt shares some wonderful metaphors, including an island of relationships surrounded by a sea of uncertainty, and the OD practitioner as a midwife rather than a parent. We also explore the emotions, identities and hidden dynamics that influence strategic decisions, the importance of knowing where to intervene, and how to recognise opportunities when things don't go to plan.

Along the way, we discuss what it takes to work with discomfort, develop the judgement to improvise and help organisations build their own capacity to navigate uncertainty.

About our guest

Dr Matt Finch is a strategy and foresight practitioner working with organisations, governments and communities around the world. He is an Associate Fellow at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford, where he teaches scenario planning, and brings experience spanning strategy, negotiation and facilitation across the public, private and not-for-profit sectors.

Explore Matt's work and resources

Since recording our conversation, Matt has published The Galway Questions, a practical, accessible approach to strategic foresight developed through his work at the University of Galway. It offers 16 questions to help individuals and organisations challenge their assumptions, explore possible futures and make more thoughtful decisions today.

Read The Galway Questions (free PDF):
https://www.universityofgalway.ie/media/collegeofartssocialsciencescelticstudies/schools/geographyarchaeology/geography/Dr.-Matt-Finch---The-Galway-Questions.pdf

Read more about the thinking behind them:
https://mechanicaldolphin.com/2026/09/24/launch-of-the-galway-questions/

Explore Matt's website and other work:
https://mechanicaldolphin.com

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

Practical lessons on organisational change, change leadership and making transformation stick.

Organisational change is rarely as straightforward as change management models suggest. Even well-intentioned transformation can create uncertainty, resistance, loss, competing priorities and unintended consequences.

In this session from the Org Dev Live conference, Dr Aidan Harney, Jules Siegel-Hawley and Valerie Yeo explore the realities of leading and supporting change in complex organisations. Drawing on their experience in organisation development, leadership, culture and large-scale transformation, they share what leaders and practitioners often underestimate, where change efforts g
et stuck, and what genuinely helps people move forward.
The session explores the human side of organisational change, including resistance, loss, leadership behaviour, culture, communication, involvement and the conditions that help change become sustainable rather than short lived.

Expect real examples, honest reflections and practical ideas for leaders, HR professionals, organisation development practitioners and anyone responsible for making change happen in complex, fast-moving organisations.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

Most organisation development work focuses on what we can see: structures, behaviours, processes, strategy and culture.

But some of the forces shaping organisations sit beneath the surface — in relationships, patterns, loyalties, tensions and dynamics that people can often feel without being able to clearly name.

In this episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we’re joined by Dr Ty Francis to explore systemic constellations and what they can reveal about individuals, teams and organisations.

Drawing on more than 25 years of work in transformation, coaching and organisational development, Ty explains how constellation-informed approaches can help make hidden organisational dynamics more visible, particularly in complex or difficult situations.

We discuss how systemic constellations differ from more traditional OD and coaching approaches, what they can reveal about relationships and organisational systems, and how leaders and practitioners can work with what is happening beneath the surface rather than focusing only on what is immediately visible.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

We’ve started the process of editing and releasing the recordings from OrgDev Live 2026 and in this session, Dr Jean Boulton explores what complexity thinking means for how we understand organisations, make decisions and approach change in uncertain environments.

Alongside each session, we’re also creating a short two-page takeaway summary - not as an attempt to reduce a rich 50-minute conversation to a handful of neat answers but as a way of capturing some of the ideas worth holding onto, reflecting on and trying in practice. Jean’s includes seven takeaways, one reflective question and one simple action to experiment with.  You can access that here:

https://distinction.live/orgdev-live-2026-resource-hub-day-2/

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

What does it take to create a space where people can think clearly, independently and well?

In this episode of OrgDev with Garin & Dani, we speak with Maryse Barak, a member of the global Faculty of Time to Think, about the power of the Thinking Environment.

We explore why the quality of people’s thinking is shaped by the conditions around them, and why attention, equality, ease and powerful questions matter so much in leadership, coaching, facilitation and organisational life.

This conversation is about listening more deeply, interrupting less, and creating meetings and conversations where people can think for themselves with greater clarity, courage and independence.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

What does it really take to create large-scale organisational change that lasts?

In this episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we speak with Paul Tolchinsky - pioneer of Whole-Scale™ Change, cofounder of the European Organisation Design Forum (EODF) and one of the most influential voices in large-system transformation and organisation design.

Drawing on more than four decades of experience, Paul shares lessons from working with organisations around the world to accelerate change by engaging people at every level of the system. We explore socio-technical systems thinking, participation and engagement, organisation design, and why sustainable transformation depends on involving the whole organisation - not just senior leadership.

From his early work redesigning manufacturing systems at General Foods to shaping the evolution of Whole-Scale Change approaches, Paul reflects on the experiences, ideas and turning points that have influenced his thinking and what still matters most in organisation development today.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

Why do so many transformation and change programmes fail to deliver in practice – even when the strategy looks solid?

In this episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we explore why organisational change breaks down during execution, and what leaders, HR and organisation development practitioners can do to make change actually stick. We look at the gap between strategy and reality – from leadership alignment and decision-making to the lived experience of change across teams.

If you’re leading transformation, working in HR or OD, or responsible for delivering change, this episode offers practical insight into how to execute change more effectively and sustainably.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

In this episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we’re joined by Rick Buccheri, an organisational development practitioner based in New York, to explore conflict, collaboration and the real work of change. Drawing on his experience in organisational consulting and conflict resolution, Rick shares how tension shows up beneath the surface of teams - and what it takes to engage with it productively.

We discuss why conflict is often avoided or mishandled, how power and responsibility shape workplace dynamics, and what leaders can do to create the conditions for more honest, effective conversations. Rather than seeing conflict as something to eliminate, Rick reframes it as a capability - one that organisations need to develop if they want to work through complexity and deliver meaningful change.

If you work in leadership, HR or organisation development, this episode offers a practical perspective on how to navigate conflict, strengthen collaboration and support teams to take responsibility rather than defaulting to blame.

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch

We'd love to hear from you so send us a message!

How do leaders handle endings well - and why do so many organisations rush past them?

In this episode of the OrgDev Podcast, we speak with Lizzie Bentley Bowers and Alison Lucas about one of the most overlooked aspects of leadership and organisational change: endings.

Many organisations focus on launches, growth, restructures, mergers and new strategies. Far less attention is given to what is being left behind - projects ending, team changes, role loss, leadership exits, funding cuts and organisational transitions.

We explore why poorly handled endings can create uncertainty, grief, resistance, disengagement and hidden disruption. Lizzie and Alison share practical insight on how leaders can guide people through endings with clarity, care and honesty - helping organisations move forward without damaging trust, morale or performance.

If you work in leadership, HR, organisation development, change management or culture transformation, this episode offers practical ideas for handling transition and creating stronger beginnings.

Topics covered
Leadership during change
Organisational endings
Restructures and transitions
Employee trust and morale
Communication in uncertainty
Culture through change
Why endings shape beginnings

Wish you had a handy recap of the episode? So did we.

That’s why each week in our Next Step to Better newsletter, we’re sharing From Pod to Practice – a 2-page visual summary of each episode designed to help you take the learning from the podcast and into your work.

You’ll get:
 ■ Key insights from the episode
 ■ A reflection prompt
 ■ A suggested action

Sign up now to get From Pod to Practice delivered to your inbox each week: https://distinction.live/keep-in-touch/

About Us

We’re Dani and Garin – Organisation Development (OD) practitioners who help leaders and people professionals tackle the messiness of organisational life. We focus on building leadership capability, strengthening team effectiveness, and designing practical, systemic development programmes that help you deliver on your team and organisational goals. We also offer coaching to support individual growth and change.

Find out more at www.distinction.live 

We'd love to connect with you on Linked In:
linkedin.com/in/danibacon478
https://www.linkedin.com/in/garinrouch