ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

OD is about moving the organisation on by taking deliberate, planned steps to create an environment that will enable staff to understand and deliver the organisations objectives.

OD involves both 'hard' and 'soft' issues. The 'hard' issues for OD are strategies and policies, structures and systems. The 'softer' issues in the main are developing appropriate skills, behaviours and attitudes, culture and a style of leadership that will enable the organisation to achieve optimum performance. Both the 'harder' and 'softer' issues of OD need to be addressed to avoid conflict between goals and needs.

TRANSFORMATION STRATEGY Content

People

Process

All three areas must be integrated into one unified transformation effort that moves an organization from where it is today to where it chooses to be in the future.

Organizations that take a piecemeal approach and separate their organizational and technical changes (content) from their human and cultural changes (people) fail dramatically

The OD Process

When there is a Problem recognised :

The CEO may contact an OD expert to discuss the situation. The OD expert would then collect information form the

organisational units using questionnaire, interview and observation.

The data is analysed and prepared for feedback The expert meets the managers and presents the findings

( feedback) The group then ranks the problems in order if their

importance

The OD Process

With the guidance of the consultant the group discusses the difficulties, identifies the underlying causes and explores possible solutions.

The role of the OD expert is that of a coach facilitating the process.

Subgroups are established to deal with the specific issues The meetings end with an agreement on a changed strategy The specific interventions may include a change in the

organisational structure , a more effective procedures for handling customer complaints and the establishment of a team with the responsibility of implementing a cost reduction program.

The OD Process

The group agrees to meet again to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of the OD efforts.

OD becomes a continuous process – planned , systematic and focused on change – that aims at making the enterprise more effective.