OREGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT

Traditionally, OD has been recognized as a discipline which emerged from social psychology. However, as a discipline develops, it needs to lengthen its branches and absorb from different fields which can add value to it and further its objectives. Furthermore, as a discipline is applied, new issues are thrown up and new learning happens resulting in the discipline’s transcending of traditional boundaries.

This is what is happening with OD. It is breathing away from its traditional moorings in the social psychological area and is belonging to develop a new and more valuable place for itself in an organizational setting.

Let’s examine the transitions of this field on the basis of its success and failure pattern in its endeavor to add value to organizations.

A Government organization entered the field of OD by hiring an OD consultant for doing survey feedback. The consultant followed a text book approach. He collected data from all members of the senior management team and also through focuses group interviews. He also deployed a questionnaire to collect individual response data from a cross section of organizational personnel.

The consultant diligently analyzed the data and presented it to the senior management team members.

Dissatisfaction of decades of lack of upward communication and an ivory tower attitude emerged in cascades of negativism towards the organization and its leaders.

The organizational personnel spoke out in strength against bureaucratic processes and the hijacking of HR policies by senior management personnel.

The consultant did the job of analyzing, synthesizing and categorizing data.

As the consultant was presenting the data, there was strong resistance from the senior management team members.

The “Survey Feedback Report” became a political document to downgrade the leaders. The “Performers” as well as the “Initiators” of the OD exercise suffered while the “Non-performers” became the aggressors.

The “Survey Feedback Report” did not yield any positive organization development outcome. It only had negative political fallouts. Thus, a lot of effort was put in with no impact.

Such OD failures become important steps on the learning ladder. They yield important learning points.

Some of the key learning points that emerge are:
• 1. The data collected should be evenly balanced between qualitative and quantitative data.

  Both these kinds of data have their weaknesses. It is only in combination that they become potent especially when they throw up patterns about the performance parameters.

• 2. There needs to be briefing of all senior management team members when the OD intervention is laundered. The buy in of all the SMT members is important for the success of the OD intervention.

  This reduces the forces of resistance to the OD interventions. It also creates alignment among senior management members regarding the objectives and the process of the OD intervention

• 3. The framework of the OD intervention should focus the intervention on enhancing organizational performance. If it is focused on only social-psychological change, it is not only inadequate, it also raises questions about the OD intervention’s relevance to a business organization.

An often repeated statement against OD intervention is that they are good to do things but impractical and would not impact the organization’s effectiveness in any manner.

In order to make the OD intervention relevant, it needs to identify and assess the organization on performance parameters, key organization processes, competencies, SMT activities as well as mindsets.

After incorporating the framework, an organization deployed it to enhance the performance of its sales personnel.

This was an interesting application of the OD framework since it was not focused on the entire organization but to one set of organizational personnel.

When the collected data was presented to the national sales management team, there was a remarkable level of seriousness in the air.

The National sales manager took immediate action with respect to an inadequacy in the incentives system of the sales personnel.

A comprehensive system of diagnostics makes the data difficult to ignore.

The process gaps and competency gaps which emerged got addressed and the process innovations which got generated were examined for application.

The successful practices adopted in our part of the working were replicated in other regions.

These actions had a direct impact on the functioning and performance of the sales force.

That is the hallmark of a potent OD intervention. It impacts organizational functioning and performance.

When OD is practiced in such a manner, the relevance can be judged by the lack of rude comments and the seriousness of action planning and execution that results.

Which leader does not want to enhance performance?

If an OD intervention can enable the leader to influence performance, there is no shortage of time for it.

It is only when it is perceived to be an activity in isolation that there is resistance to it.