The future of organizational development

This article highlights how play and playfulness can help us to prepare ourselves and our organizations for the future. Many people in organizations experience their business environment as dynamic and unpredictable while it is unclear what the future will be. In this context change as a rational and planned process is an illusion. When the business environment is ambiguous and uncertain the traditional methods of planned change no longer work. In uncertainty change in organizational life concerns a collective search process in which players focus on the future in organizational networks. This article provides an insight into the meaning of play in organizations and how playing together helps us to prepare for the future. Change as collaborative play is contrasted with planned change. The article concludes how professional playfulness may help us in a future that is unpredictable.