An overview of OST and its Services and Programs - products

OST standard and advanced products and services

Standard OST products and services

Search Conference

Ecological strategy development encompasses all aspects of an open system – the environment, learning, planning, and the system itself.

The OST strategic planning process for ecological strategy development is the Search Conference (SC). It is a highly effective and reliable method for participative, active adaptive strategic planning. It has the power to produce learning, planning organisations and communities committed to making their own futures.

By partaking in a SC participants learn about the SC process itself so that they can continue to adaptively change.

As an intensive, participative event the SC:

• Provides a strategic framework within which other improvement strategies can be integrated and aligned with overall strategic objectives;
• Explores changing market and industry conditions so that the plan developed reflects, and is responsive to, the changing environment; and
• Allows participants to plan the future as a collective, as well as defining each player's role in that future

Paricipative Design Workshop

Although the Search Conference creates understanding of how the environment and system fit together for the most desirable future, it is insufficient on its own to maintain active adaptation in the long term.  To do this the organisation must change its fundamental structure or design principle: it must change from a costly, rigid bureaucratic (Design Principle 1) structure to a highly responsive and productive participative democracy (Design Principle 2).

The key steps in this transformation process are:

1.       Pre-organisational health survey

2.       The Participative Design Workshop

3.       Post-organisational health survey

4.       The implementation of a skills-based pay and career path program 

OST Practitioners are trained to run the Participative Design Workshop (PDW) and to implement a pay for skills program. The pre and post survey analysis are undertaken by Dr Merrelyn Emery, although Practitoners have the opportunity to do this type of analysis if they’re willing to complete an advanced OST statistical course, as shown below.

The PDW training involves learning how to successfully change an organisation’s ‘DNA’ from design principle 1 to design principle 2. The PDW is the most effective and efficient process known today for creating participative democratic organisational structures centred on the empowered self-managing team where team members have a shared responsibility for meeting agreed outcomes. 

It is a coherent strategy whereby employees and managers within an organisation are given the concepts and tools to redesign their workplace using democratic principles. By pooling employee knowledge and initiatives for change, they themselves can redesign their workplace.

OST case studies confirm that the benefits of implementing design principle 2 structures are quickly translated to the bottom line. See ‘Testimonials’ below for some examples.

Pay-for-skills program

To support participative democratic design principle 2 structures SFP&D founding partner, AMERIN, has develop a skills-based remuneration program. This program is underpinned by a country’s National Competency Standards.

Business transformation simulation tool

This tool, developed by AMERIN, provides participants with a greater understanding of the PDW and gives them experience of ‘working’ in a participative democratic structure. The steps followed in the Simulation are exactly the same as those that would be applied in a ‘real life’ PDW process.

The Simulation has been used effectively in manufacturing and service sector organisations in Australia, New Zealand and North America. Participants experience profound insights into better ways of organising work and gain a thorough understanding of the change process involved.

OST unique designs

Having an understanding of OST processes and concepts enables one to produce unique OST solutions for system-in-environment or ecological challenges. The SFP&D development program is an example of an OST unique design.

ICT projects have benefited from unique designs too. For example, Telstra used OST concepts and modifications to OST products to help it win the 1999 Qantas supplier of the year award.

Other examples that have benefited from unique OST designs include:

• Mergers and acquisitions
• Difficult change management projects
• Risk mitigation planning
• Addressing broader issues such as climate change, etc.

SFP&D train-the-trainer program

Pratitioners qualified to run the standard OST programs can also be accredited to train organisational, educational, and community leaders to run the SFP&D OST program as explained in this website. Once trained, these leaders can undertake a SFP&D event for their particular organisation or community to develop plans to adapt to climate change and mitigate its effects.

Advanced OST products and services

Professor Merrelyn Emery offers an advanced OST course in theory and practice of making adaptive change. Those who complete the course can offer the following advanced OST programs, which can be used in standalone projects or for enhancing a Search Conference or a Participative Design Workshop.

OST-based market research

In turbulent an unpredictable environments it is essential to know why, not just how many people use a product or service in preference to another. OST-based market research produces this understanding as well as in which circumstances, and how particular products and services are used. It is vital to understand the relations between these phenomena for a sustainable future.

A key outcome of this research is detailed knowledge of the underlying segmentation of user markets. This information can be used as a guide to implement Search Conference action plans to meet certain strategic intentions.

OST personality test

The Open Systems Personality Testä (OSPTä) is a cost effective and simple to use test that can reliably and consistently identify personality defined as behavioural preferences. This means it can anticipate how an individual person will most probably behave in situations where they have a choice of behaviours.

Predicting individual personality has many benefits for organisations. For instance, the OSPTä has ready application in all forms of market research and has been used to help organisations:

• Build reliable personality profiles of their customer base;
• Better understand their market segments;
• Maximise their advertising effectiveness by knowing what type of advertisement appeals to a particular identified target audience; and
• Develop campaign slogans that are more attractive to a broader range of the population.

The OSPTä has other applications too. It has been reliably used to identify personality profiles for major occupational groupings as well as to differentiate those who passively resist change versus those who actively fight for reform.

Depending on the need, the OSPTä can readily identify personality profiles in a range of situations, from reactions to specific technologies and slogans to determining attitudes and behaviour toward change.

OST organisational health survey

This survey is a state-of-the-art organisational health diagnostic tool for isolating the people factors that create a culture of engagement, continuous innovation, and productivity. The diagnostic tool is designed to:

• Identify which people factors in a particular organisation are encouraging people to work together for mutual learning, and the achievement of high employee engagement and retention, motivation, and productivity; and
• Identify the factors that foster, as well as inhibit, the growth of creativity, systemic innovation and a healthy knowledge-sharing culture

Global trend reports

Information gleaned from the above OST products and services is used to produce global trend reports, which can range from identifying the changing values and expectations in the wider community affecting people’s buying decisions through to factors affecting mental health in the workplace. They provide valuable insights for:

• Strategic planners, policy makers, risk managers and marketing managers
• Change management initiatives
• New avenues to differentiate and
• Embryonic social changes that may evolve into opportunities or threats