DC Area OD Practitioners CoP — Follow the Lines, Not the Boxes: Mapping the Social Architecture Where Change Takes Root (03 Dec 2026)

Fri, 04 Dec 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Follow the Lines, Not the Boxes: Mapping the Social Architecture Where Change Takes Root

When a client reaches for the org chart, OD practitioners can offer a better question: who do people actually turn to when the formal channels don't work? The answer reveals an organization's social architecture, the web of relationships, trust, and influence where work actually gets done and where change either takes root or withers.

In this interactive virtual session, Dr. Liz Scott, author of The Ripple Effect, moves from why reorganizing rarely fixes the culture to how to work with the networks that do. Participants will map a real client system and locate the connectors, problem-solvers, and culture carriers already shaping it. They'll practice bringing those people into a change effort before it launches, not after it stalls.

Come ready to draw, annotate, and work in small breakout groups. Have pen and paper and a current or recent client in mind.

Participants will leave able to:

Shift a client conversation from "what's the right structure?" to "who do people actually turn to?"
Run a quick, low-tech network scan using five diagnostic questions.
Identify the connectors, problem-solvers, and culture carriers in a client system, and know how each one spreads or stalls change.
Build a "starting lineup" of the five to seven people to engage in the first thirty days.
Use a one-page network mapping template with their next client.

Presenter — Dr. (Liz) Elizabeth Scott

Dr. Scott is the founder and CEO of Brighter Strategies, a women-owned organizational development firm that serves nonprofits, associations, and mission-driven organizations. For nearly two decades, she has helped leaders make their organizations' relational dynamics visible and actionable, working at the intersection of network analysis, culture change, and leadership development. She holds a PhD in Human and Organizational Systems and is the author of The Ripple Effect: How Social Sector Leaders Transform Organizations Through Relationships, which shows how lasting change spreads through relationships, not mandates.

DC Area OD Practitioners CoP — Frontline Workers and Lewinian Change (07 Jan 2027)

Fri, 08 Jan 2027 00:00:00 GMT

Frontline Workers and Lewinian Change

The front-line workers are the people doing the physical work, directly serving the customers, writing the code, providing social services to a targeted population, etc. Lewin's action-research validated that involving people on the front lines is the key to successful and sustainable change, whether within organizations or in pursuit of broader social change. The how of his model is simple and effective, yet rarely practiced by management or even OD practitioners. The presenter will cover the how and the why, using case studies from his most recent book, Leadership and the Frontline Workforce: Lessons from the Targets of Change.

What you'll take away:

Change the way Lewin wanted it practiced
True stories of moving from polarization to collaboration
Applications to organizational and social change

Presenter — Gilmore Crosby

Gilmore is an organizational development practitioner, author, and professor of social science at the Leadership Institute of Seattle (LIOS). His work centers on applying the methods of Kurt Lewin—the founder of modern OD and group dynamics—to leadership, change management, and team performance. Crosby's career began in 1984, building on his father Robert P. Crosby's OD practice, which dates to 1953 and to Lewin's immediate circle of students and collaborators.

Planned Change: Why Kurt Lewin's Social Science Is Still Best Practice for Business Performance, Change Management & Human Progress lays out the argument that animates Crosby's work: that Lewin's methods remain the most reliable foundation for change. While embracing the past, Crosby experiments in the present, conducting T-group learning in organizations, online T-groups, and various uses of new technology, including AI. His mission, inspired by Lewin’s, is to help create a better future for humanity—by keeping Lewin's social science alive and in active use as a practical instrument for social and organizational change.

CBODN upcoming events

DC Area OD Practitioners CoP — Follow the Lines, Not the Boxes: Mapping the Social Architecture Where Change Takes Root (03 Dec 2026)

DC Area OD Practitioners CoP — Frontline Workers and Lewinian Change (07 Jan 2027)