Conference Speaker Profile - Ralph Wood  
 
Ralph Wood

Biography: Ralph was born a mechanical engineer. After attending Brown University for three degrees in this discipline, Ralph held positions with GE (Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Corporate R&D, Liaison Scientist for several business units), with West Virginia University (associate director of Concurrent Engineering Research Center; senior consultant for Center for Entrepreneurial Studies and Development; and senior member of Leadership Center for Economic Development), and finally with UTC (director of Product Development and Manufacturing and Management of Technology Departments; director of Achieving Competitive Excellence, Corporate Quality and Manufacturing).

Ralph currently consults with and teaches businesses about quality and productivity improvement, and he is an adjunct professor of these topics at the National Graduate School. To this Forum Ralph offers over forty years’ experience in the innovation of technology and methodology, including system thinking, for more productive products, processes and organizations. Over his career he has been involved in a number of organizational transformations, not all of which, unfortunately, were successful. Before retiring from UTC Ralph was a motive force behind UTC’s Operations Transformation initiative, which is still underway with the involvement of over 200,000 people.

Presentation Title: Coming to Emotional Acceptance: A Key to Transforming from My Space to OurSpace

Abstract: Why do transformations fail to gain sustained momentum? Of the myriad reasons discussed in the literature and most likely known to you from your own experiences, I want to focus on the role of emotional acceptance – the acceptance by an individual, at a gut or even spiritual level, that the transformation’s value proposition affords a better alternative for this individual than the current state. Lacking emotional acceptance, most people, if they even board a transformation train to a new destination, soon exit.

In this discussion I will take the perspective that “coming to emotional acceptance” is a learning process. Using an action-learning model and observations about adult learning, we will explore together some major dimensions of emotional acceptance and how to educe it in a transformation endeavor.

 

 

   
       
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