Evolving work and globalization with the Center in the 1990s
Gryskiewicz describes how his work with the Center for Creative Leadership evolved into the 1990s. On the one hand, he focuses on his goal to finish his book, <cite>Positive Turbulence</cite>. On the other hand, Gryskiewicz describes his role with the Center's steady globalization.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Stan Gryskiewicz, January 15, 1999. Interview S-0017. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
Let me take you back a moment. I want to ask another question about
doing the book. What was it like to take on this project and to spend a
couple years with that as your principle task in front of you?
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
-
Well, the problem was it wasn't my principle task. And I also
in the middle of that took on the responsibility of global for the
Center. They wanted me for that role and I really felt like my
experience had set me up in a way that other people weren't
paying attention to our global partners or even our chance to reach out
and have a footprint globally. The next step I saw was really Asia. And
let me give you a context for this. In '89, I was part of the
committee to decide Europe and where in Europe. So now it's
'98-99 and we're doing the same thing about Asia.
So if we don't start talking about it now, we're
going to be left out. So it took us eight years to finally get money
coming back from Europe. Maybe we could speed it up. What did we learn
from doing that that could speed up the process? I know one of the
things we're doing much better this time is connecting in
with the right people. We decided what part of Asia to go to and we
connected with the right people in that part of the world.
It's like we're connected to and I'm
keeping my fingers crossed, to a major ambassador named Tommy Kho who is
an ambassador at large to Singapore, active in the U.N. He authored the
Treaty of the Seas. It's like if we had gone into Brussels
the equivalent being connected to Jacques Chirac back then. So we hope
we can speed up the process. We know
that's how it works over there. We're hooked up
to the right organizations that are similar to ours, researched-based
organizations over there that are non-profit. So we've done
our homework and we're hoping that we can learn from our
lessons learned of going into Europe will help us into Asia. So that was
going on at the same time of the book but I don't think, Joe,
that I am the kind of person that could just sit down and write a book
with nothing else going on. The only thing that finally got me shook up
and scared was deadlines.
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
Sure.
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
-
And then finally realizing that if I don't get this done,
I'll never get it done. So carving out significant like four
week times with nothing else to do. I'm not sure I could last
more than four weeks with doing that but I did that twice to get to this
point. And I'm pleased with the piece that finished. It
won't come out—I was just looking at e-mail that
said it may not come out until the end of June. My fault. If I had
gotten in last November, it probably would have been out by May or so,
but it's finished. I'm going to miss a major
conference called American Society of Training and Development but
that's my fault. But so the book really is me, my career,
where I think the field is going and my statement as a 52 year old
who's been in the field for 30 something years, 30 years.
That's what its statement is about. I did it knowing my
style. I think the global stuff—I'm working with a
good group now. Meena Suri-Wilson who's from India and
who's lived and did her Ph.D. here and been in the states and
did her Ph.D. at Chapel Hill and did her undergraduate out in one of the
colleges out in California, one of the small ones out there in Berkeley.
And I have another couple of good staff members here who are getting us
to help the organization think about Asia and more structure in a more
structured way. So how am I going to spend the next part of my career? I
hope it's being able to react to or have the public react to
the book and to the dialogue I started. I would love to see my work with
AMI and all this other stuff, officers of innovation in organizations
practice positive turbulence which is the name of the book. That kind of
stuff, I would love to see that kind of foothold. I think I was the
first person to bring structured creativity to Japan. That was an
interesting thing. Who knows, maybe ten years from now we'll
really have had a foothold there and I'll have some kind of
an impact there. I'm hoping also that the global stuff will
take off for the Center. We're doing the beginning work.
Five, six years from now, the Center will be known in Asia.
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
Is the institutional [unclear] in place?
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
-
Yeah. My sign was that I presented what it would cost and the executive
committee said, "Let's talk about this."
And we had a four hour conversation and they said okay. So we kept the
money [unclear] . And as you can imagine,
most of it is travel. Some of it is going to be relationship building.
- JOSEPH MOSNIER:
-
It's hard to measure the return sometimes.
- STAN GRYSKIEWICZ:
-
And I just have to keep reminding them of what—and I have to
do my lessons learned from the past are the better job with internal
connecting into people so it's not seen as something
that's off to the side, an appendage that can be cut off. But
we have our—the other thing that's working for me
is we have our clients dragging us globally. Our clients are there
already. And part of our reputation or how we're seen is are
you a global company? I don't know, are we? But
we're working in Singapore. We've got 12
associates around the world. Yeah, we are. So we just need
to—so part of that is working for us, that our client base is
working for us and this notion of being able to say that we are a global
company is working for us. So that's what I see happening
over the next couple of years.