About Tom Gibbons
My full time working life started in an ice cream factory! Yes, I started out with a pretty sweet job. After 12 years of plant work, I spent 8 years in the company as the organizational development person. This turned into an OD consulting business (Pathways and Crossroads Consulting) which I ran for 20 years, some of that time also being the managing director and owner of Team Management Systems Americas. TMS Americas was around for 17 years and now here I am, running n of team!
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I've worked with lots of organizations and people over the years. Some really great people and organizations; and some not so much. A few of the things I've learned during that time that are important to me are:
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Teams and organizations are the patterns of interactions people have. If you want to change something, you have to change the way people interact.
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Organizations and people have fundamentally different purposes. These are often at odds with each other.
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Most mainstream organization theory, and actions stemming from that theory, does more harm than good.
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Most people want to do really good work.
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I decided to start n of team as a consulting business because no matter what organization you are in, or what that organization is like, the team you are on will be the primary source of meaning and contribution that you will have. That team can be a good place to be and I want to help that happen.
This image is from Algonquin Park in Ontario, Canada. A morning fog drifting across a calm lake. The landscape emerges as the day progresses. One of the things that is important to my work is complexity science. The science that explores emergent phenomenon. In organizations, emergence occurs through constant interaction between people.
Power is important in these interactions. Taking our day to day interactions seriously and recognizing no one can control this emergence is a critical step in playing the organizational game well.