Lifetime achievement award presented to Ken Craddock

Ken Shepard:   For the first time, the Society has decided to institute a Lifetime Achievement Award. And tonight we've decided to start with the person who I believe made all this possible.    I have a lot of gratitude ....

Don Fowke Get crack pleasure tonight to present the first Global Organization Lifetime Achievement Award to Ken Craddock. These awards are given to recognize unique achievements beyond what is normally expected, reflect consistent effort over a period of time, and are often, but not always, done within a volunteer framework when the recognizing organization cannot possibly compensate the individual for what he or she has accomplished. These criteria describe Ken's contributions well. An accessible body of research and experience is fundamental for the success of any new discipline. It is the generative factor that stimulates interest in new research and attracts attention. When new courses are designed in universities, it is especially critical for requisite organization. In 2000, Ken Craddock recognized this need and set about to build that foundation. Since then, he has developed and written six editions of the Requisite Organization Annotated Bibliography. The document has grown from 194 pages in 2002 to 2219 pages in 2014. Each edition includes an introductory essay describing the development of the fundamental concepts and their spread both globally and intellectually. The Ro Annotated Bibliography has provided a ground for the researchers, teachers, advocates and students of Ro and practice cases for businesses. It is a unique record of the past and a powerful springboard to stimulate future growth. Ken has also been a teacher, counsellor and advisor. His thesis, Requisite Leadership a Model of Organization Effectiveness, was written on Ro at Columbia University in 2002. He has advocated for coursework in Ro, both teaching and developing curricula at the graduate, undergraduate and high school levels. He has been an advisor and a mentor to graduates on their dissertations, theses and studies often as an uncompensated resource. In response to their solicitation, he has developed a movie series as an aid in the classroom to introduce Ro concepts at these levels and as an introduction to business. He has written an online series of articles on Ro leadership, cognitive and work levels and Hoshan canri. He has contributed chapters and articles and to books and writer, author, friend and critic. In essence, over more than a decade, he has invested himself in building the essential publicity available resource that all professional organizations must have and in facilitating the work of others as they draw on that resource by this Lifetime Achievement Award. We congratulate and thank him for that work and George Weber will make the presentation.

George Weber  Thank you very much, Don. So on behalf of the Global Organization Design Society, the award reads Lifetime Achievement Award presented to Kenneth Craddock for 20 years of significant achievement in management science and organization design, exemplified by compilation and evaluation of research and practice of Requisite Organization theory and principles. Dated August 3, 2014, here in Palisades, New York. So I am honoured to present this to you, Ken.

Ken Craddock First off, thank you for the board and thank you very much. And thank you, Don, Ken and George. Thank you very much. Elliot didn't put this together, and didn't make a scrapbook, which is what this fills in the gap in there. A lot of people see it as a research project. It's a grand race for future research, that's true. But it's also intended to help consultants because underneath your golden tongues are going to be you now have research you can cite. You can look through the bibliography, and keyword searches if you want, and it will help as a consultant, it'll help you do the consulting. On top of that, I put together some ways in which you can use movies that are very popular, and I'll have it out this fall. But I put together a blog with about five movies on it which you can get at the website. Basically, you can start a conversation with the person sitting next to you on the Pellet plane or wherever, and you can movies such as You've Got Mail or Margiekal or The Godfather or even The Wizard of Oz. Okay, everybody has seen these movies, but you should see them yourselves very quickly, recently, and so that you can then quote them. You have no idea what the other person is going to remember from that movie. But does giving the diploma to the straw man give him brains? So thank you. Thank you very much. Oh, by the way, Shakespeare knew about levels also, and he put it in Caesar Augustus. He put it in the website on Anthony and Cleopatra, the scene of the Sousair. He describes levels exactly and also in Macbeth. So Elliot Jackson is not the only person to have seen levels. They're there. They're around always. Thank you.

Ken Shepard I need to show you one other thing related to Ken Craddock.

Speaker E If you look at the work that Ken has done, it's obviously monumental. The depth and breadth of the research he's done have been a major contribution to the area. To me, though, I think his greatest contribution has been in the narrative that he's written around it, which shows all the links between reckless organization and the other so-called popular theories of management. For many years, it was thought that Arwell kind of stood on its own and had kind of a fence built around it. And yet when Ken did his work, he showed all the other works in the field of management that had clear ties to the work of Billy Jackson, Wilford Brown and others, even though they weren't explicitly there. And to me, that's probably the major contribution that Ken has made amongst the others. So I offer Ken my sincere congratulations and thanks for what he's done for this very important field.

Owen Jacobs Well, I am really honored to be a part of Ken's award ceremony. I've known him for several years as a result of our mutual RO work. And during that time his annotated bibliography has grown from a pretty useful resource to an almost overwhelming compilation of RO history and experience. It's just really an extraordinary storehouse of information and wisdom. Every great civilization and every recognized science stands on a foundation of compiled wisdom and experience. Those foundations eliminate the need for rediscovery of the past, and they free up the energy and imagination that we need to grow and improve. It's just really hard to imagine progress without them. Ken's discipline and devotion to his work have given us just such a foundation. It's a magnificent foundation. Ken, thank you very much. I wish I could be there with you to enjoy this moment.

Ken Shepard So when I chatted with Ken C. about this, he said, how's it feel now? I said, Now I can put my feet up. And I said, well, there may be a few things we would like you to do with us. And so he agreed to take his feet down off the Otoman, and he has agreed to continue to support research by academics and graduate students and to counsel them. He has agreed to continue supporting consultants and organizations in their work. He has agreed to continue supporting anyone who wants to teach in universities and developing curriculum and so forth. In addition, he has done all of this work on the print media, on the print documentation. We have a lot of video resources. He has agreed to help us radically improve our website by reviewing our resources and tagging the so we get good search. We're going to drastically improve the website, drastically improve its speed, its search, and now the quality of the content. And he agreed then to write blogs and articles pointing to outstanding research. So we have these special birds of a feather tables, and Ken would host one for academics on research, and one for people who want to use his research in their consulting organizations or in their teaching. So Ken is here and would love to talk to you. He's connected by Skype Worldwide and will do coaching. And so he agreed not to put his feet up and will continue to be with us. So thank you very much, Ken.