Organization development is an exciting field from the perspective of the brand that it carries. When, you hear or utter the term, “O.D”, ears pick up and fellow professionals look at you with new respect in their eyes.
In spite of such a brand that OD enjoys, this is a tool which is seldom used by organizations.
The few initiatives that have been taken have either resulted in failure or minimal success. The amount of effort required to make OD initiatives successful has not been realized. Everybody wants to eat the cake but nobody wants to put in the effort to make it sweet and value adding.
Triggering any change is easier said than done. The entire system rebels against new initiatives. Most of the time, it is not even rebellion, it is plain inertia. Newton’s law of motion is applicable even in the context of Organization change, “Everything continues in its state of rest or motion until some force acts on it.”
For organizational change, enormous force and persistence in application is required.
Let’s examine the experience of an OD initiative which resulted in minimal success..
A leading software organization wanted to surface and address organizational issues. A questionnaire was prepared for the purpose. It consisted of statements which utilized the Likert scale(strongly agree to strongly disagree) & open ended questions related to organization strength, weaknesses and issues that needed to be addressed.
The questionnaire was filled up quite enthusiastically by everybody. The analysis was done and the conclusions were presented to the entire group on an LCD screen.
Then the problems began………
Small groups of personnel stated, “we do not agree with those findings”.
Another group said, “The statements in the questionnaire were unclear”. This threw up doubts regarding the efficacy and validity of the questionnaire.
The OD exercise would have ended right there, had it not been for the data in the open ended questions.
The validity of the responses to the open ended questions, could not be doubted because the responses were consolidated without any changes.
The issues that needed to be addresses and the opportunities for improvement were given to the groups to address. Each group presented its solution to the organization issues taken up.
The organization leader gave his feedback to the solutions presented and selected the ones to be implemented.
Everybody was very happy that finally organization issues had finally surfaced and were being addressed.
The implementation was not worked out in detail and the responsibilities were not fixed.
The result was that the entire effort got wasted except for some perception expansion of the organizational personnel, which may have impacted their day to day managerial actions.
In fact, the intervention could have had an opposite impact to the one intended. Rather than solving organization problems, it could have triggered an additional problem of a negative mindset against OD interventions in the organization.
What do we learn from this experience?
If an organization wants to do an OD intervention, it needs to be mentally ready to put in an enormous amount of energy. An OD intervention should not be considered to be a one shot, quit fix activity.
A fundamental understanding of OD and what it entails among the organization personnel is fundamental to its success. A lock- in into the training paradigm is a sure recipe for failure. Utilizing the training mindset for an OD intervention will not work. The OD intervention does not end after the analysis has been done .That is where it starts. However in most cases the training program ends after the class-room experience. Therefore the entire focus as well as the quantum of effort required is fundamentally different in an OD intervention as compared to a training program.
The implementation plan without a responsibility matrix will never take off.
Subsequently, what happens is that nobody wants to discuss whether anything was implemented. When implementation comes up for discussions, everyone is little embarrassed and somehow the implementation plan gets pushed off the agenda. This is because everyone subconsciously realizes that the effort required is huge.
Thus, it slowly shifts to the bottom of the pile of files. Thus, after a couple years, a brave soul opens the file. By that time, the team leader has changed and the brave soul is told, “This is outdated data, it can not be used anymore”.
The OD intervention disappears without a whimper “What is the use of going through all that effort, if this is going to be the outcome?”
Even if implementation occurs, it requires regular follow up and reviews. The OD intervention needs to be undertaken as a project. Thus, everything that is entailed in project planning and execution needs to be an integral part of the OD intervention.
Another key learning from this experience is the danger of using internationally accepted research scales such as the Likert scale in the diagnosing instrument. These scales may be considered valid in organizational and action research circles but to those personnel, who are not exposed to these instruments, they may not be perceived as reliable.
It is prudent to use open ended questions, along with scales which are especially designed for the type of questions asked and the type of industry in which the organization is functioning. The acceptability of such diagnostic instruments is decidedly more. Academic validity does not ensure practical acceptance.
Taking into consideration, the enthusiastic involvement of all organization personnel in the exercise, it is heartening to note the inherent power in the approach and the field. There is potential here, which can be perceived and felt. However, poor application and a lack of a clear understanding of what it entails and achieves, is resulting in the effort put in by a lot of personnel going down the drain.
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