Driving organisational change starts with conversations. Ajoy Datta interviewed.

In this week’s episode, Ajoy Datta talks to us about organisational change, leadership development, and policy, advocacy and influencing. Ajoy tells us about promoting change within an organisation with a focus on difference and diversity. He focuses on an “unconventional” approach which highlights the complexity in working relationships and makes space for emotions. Working alongside people to unlock their knowledge and transform their conversations is part of the action learning approach for organisational change that Ajoy speaks about. When thinking about decoloniality, this approach means interrogating the ways in which coloniality is being reproduced in daily life.Ajoy is a freelance consultant specialising in two areas:The first is organisational change and leadership development: Here he works with leaders, teams, organisations and networks taking an approach which combines psychodynamics, systems and complexity. The second is policy advocacy or influencing. Here he informs, designs and evaluates work to influence policy and practice drawing on studies of the policy process, political economy approaches and outcome mapping.If you’re interested to find out more about Ajoy’s work, take a look here:Personal website: www.ajoydatta.com (soon to be updated)Linkedin and TwitterShorter articles about organisations, policy influencing, partnerships can be found on the following platforms:Substack | Medium | OTT Longer form publications can be found on ResearchgateRelevant resources:Chris Mowles has blogs on medium and wordpressUniversity of Hertfordshire's Complexity and Management CentreVideo showing a murmuration of starlings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dedVszDI9aE Doing DevelopmentDifferently and Thinking and Working PoliticallyTheory as Liberatory practice by Bell Hooks: https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/yjfem4&div=6&id=&page= Systems psychodynamics thinking: https://tavistockconsulting.co.uk/approach-systems-psychodynamic-thinking/Rewire: a book by Chris Yates and Pooja Sachdev about tackling diversity: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Rewire-Approach-Tackling-Diversity-Difference/dp/1472913981