Director of Organizing for Development an International Institute

Bill's professional experience began as an overseas manager for British Overseas Airways Corporation. An unexpected discovery while working in Rome’s Fiumicino Airport - he made Fiumicino the best performing of all the airline's stations in less than six months, at no cost and without management control - set him off on a life long search to uncover the principles behind such high levels of performance. He obtained an MBA at Indiana University and then a Ph.D. at the Wharton Graduate School of Business where he studied under Drs. Russell Ackoff and Eric Trist.

While in the private sector he worked with the overseas subsidiaries of multinational companies to help them meet their growth and development goals. It was the innovative nature of his practical work, an approach that integrated management development, with business planning and organization development that drew the attention of the World Bank to his work.

The World Bank, in 1978, requested him to apply his thinking to the design of the organization and management of large scale, complex development projects. His consulting with the Bank produced the [link]AIC process - a more holistic way of designing and organizing and development programs and projects. He trained more than 200 Bank staff in the process. [link] The process as interprdted by the World Bank is reported in the Participation Sourcebook as an exemplar of an overarching framework for large systems change.

Since then, he has been perfecting the implementation of the AIC process ( appreciation, influence and control) through application in all major cultures and at every level of the organizational hierarchy, from village development to management and organization development through to the design of national systems for development. In 1988, he helped found [link] Organizing for Development, an International Institute and in 1997 founded [link]ANS - AIC Natural Systems a consulting company devoted to the AIC process.

Bill has found ways to reduce what is known about whole systems thinking, power relationships and organizing processes into their very simple, practical and powerful essentials. He and his colleagues have found effective and dramatic ways to organize and train large groups of people in a short period of time to draw out the best of the human spirit and create conditions for committed acti