"Is the world better off because your organization is in it?"​
Dr. Lindsey Godwin

Last week I spent three days at the Organization Development Network conference without leaving my desk in Bend. The last session ended the day before I flew to Scotland. I struggled to make time to tune in with prepping for an international trip and, well, life. But it felt important to show up. I've been in this field for 35 years and I serve on ODN's board. I know these rooms, even the virtual ones. And yet I came away with one question I haven't been able to put down.

It came Friday morning. Dr. Lindsey Godwin reminded us that OD was radical from the beginning, and then she touched on where the word comes from. Radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. The people who built this field went to the roots: whose knowledge counted, who got to help design the future, and whether human development belonged at the center of organizational life.

Then she put the question up on the screen.

Is the world better off because your organization is in it?

This is the question that drew me to the field and prompted me to leave my social work Masters to pursue this odd little field, organization development.

I had worked with a group of Union Carbide executives back in the 1980's who were on station during the world's worst industrial disaster on Bhopal, India in 1984 that impacted 500,000 people. These leaders were asking themselves that question as they grieved and planned forward from a tragedy their company had caused.

It's a harder question than the ones I usually ask. For years I've asked leaders whether their people are thriving, whether the culture enlivens, whether the work is good. Those questions matter. This one goes underneath all of them.

That same morning, ODN announced a partnership with Net Impact, a global community of students and young professionals who want their careers to do some good. Together we'll launch a leadership certificate in early 2027 that puts the tools of our field in the hands of the next generation.

Now this is good news. The people Net Impact serves are the ones who will be walking into your interviews and onto your teams over the next ten years. They won't wait for an engagement survey to ask Lindsey's question. They'll ask it across the table before they say yes. If they don't like the answer, they'll ask it with their feet.

When I wrote Fit Matters, meaning was one of the six elements of work fit, sitting right beside the job, the culture, the relationships, the lifestyle, and the money. I suspect that for this generation, meaning is the one they check first.

So if you lead people, this is your future workforce telling you what they'll hold you to. And if you do this work alongside me (coaching, consulting, HR, OD), this is our chance to hand down what we know before we're done using it ourselves.

Here's my question for you this week. Is the world better off because your organization is in it? And if a 25-year-old asked you that in an interview tomorrow, what would you tell them?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

Stay human,
Moe