David R. Brubaker, Associate Professor of Organizational Studies. David earned a BS in Business Administration from Messiah College, an MBA from Eastern University, and a PhD from the University of Arizona, where he specialized in the study of change and conflict in religious organizations. David has trained or consulted with over 100 organizations, including in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe.
Since graduation from college in 1980 David served with several community development and conflict transformation organizations. These roles included Associate Director of Mennonite Conciliation Service and Assistant Director of Mennonite Central Committee’s Recife, Brazil program where he became fluent in Portuguese. David is the author of numerous articles on conflict transformation, both in organizations and internationally. He is also the author of “Promise and Peril: Understanding and Managing Change and Conflict in Congregations,” published by The Alban Institute and co-author (with Ruth Hoover Zimmerman) of “The Little Book of Healthy Organizations,” published by Good Books
Segment 1: David Brubaker
On this edition of the Doug Noll Show, we have with us David Brubaker. David’s journey began in 1986 when he entered the field of peacemaking. His interest in mediation came out of the experience that he had when he was a teenager and was working as a dispatcher for a trucking company. The teamsters declared a strike the year David was working with them and the very positive relationship that he had had with the truck drivers turned starkly negative during that strike. David realized there had to be better ways of resolving conflict. This gave him the drive to find alternatives and went to college and majored in labor management relations thinking he would go into the labor management field as a mediator but went into workplace and organizational development. David’s goal was to make the workplace a better place to spend time by improving the relationship between management and employees.
In this segment, Doug and David discuss workplace development and David’s international work. Organizational development is the same across the board no matter what part of the world you are in. People are people and there lies opportunity for communication development.
Segment 2: Congregational Disputes
David and Doug speak of Congregational disputes. These can often times be the most challenging disputes to mediate. Why? Because congregations are meaning making systems. This is the role of religion in every society. It helps us make meaning and because congregations are about meaning and identity, when individuals get involved, it touches the deepest areas of their lives and their place in the Universe. This often creates vulnerability and ego issues.
David approaches these conflicts in 2 ways. First, he makes sure he is listening so may understand the situation. Second, he develops teams with 5-7 members with variety members. By coaching the team of insiders, changes can happen within the congregation from the inside out.
Segment 3: Adaptive Change
Doug and David speak more about organizational change. Ronald Heifetz, author of “The practice of adaptive leadership” has a unique approach to organizational change. Basically, there is reference to technical change and adaptive change. The adaptive change is critical when there is a need for deep change to take place usually because the organizational environment is changing in significant ways and this has been seen across the country and through out the world. Since there have been changes in the broader social context and what Heifetz calls for the organizational leaders to “get off the dance floor” and to get up on the balcony so they can get the big picture and get the whole system. This way you can see what is working well and what needs to change for the good of the organization.
Segment 4: Fixing the problem within
In this segment, Doug and David take the conversation overseas. The Middle East is complete chaos and no easy solutions can be seen over there. There is some very distressing news in the Middle East and parts of Africa, Syria and Iraq and Libya in particularly. People look at these situations and they see the visuals and they think Islam is extremism but David personally does not that is the deepest cause of what’s going on. That is certainly one of the presenting issues but really what all of those situations have in common is that in every one of them there is a failed state. The government system has completely broken down. In the cases of both Iraq and Libya has something to do with international intervention and disposing the dictator and replacing with pure anarchy. The reason why organizational development is relevant that what we need to learn how to how to take what we have done with non profit and for profit organizations in this country and other counties and apply it to government organizations in other parts of the world. We need to strengthen government systems because it is the failure of government systems that leads to anarchy and it’s anarchy that leads these extremists groups to thrive. We need to strengthen the state so they can stand up to the extremists.
To listen to this fascinating show, click http://wsradio.com/030515-peacebuilding-organizational-development/