A few weeks ago, I was honored to speak at a gathering
of organization development (the second OD in the title above) professionals on
the topic “Keeping OD Relevant in the Midst of Change”. As I was driving to the venue, I kept mulling
about how I was going to coalesce all these crazy thoughts I have had about the
practice of OD over the past 10 years that I have been practicing
the discipline in some form or other. Those thoughts have been across the spectrum ranging from “organization development is the answer
to all organizational ills” to “organizational development is completely
obsolete, outdated, and extraneous”. Disciplinary and professional schizophrenia aside, the continued relevance
of organization development today is definitely worth pondering and debating.
Wikipedia defines organization development as a ”planned,
organization-wide effort to increase an organization’s effectiveness and
viability. Warren
Bennis, has referred to OD as a response to change, a complex educational
strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values, and structure of
organization so that they can better adapt to new technologies, marketing and
challenges, and the dizzying rate of change itself.” Defined this way, it does seem like OD is the
answer to all organizational ills. It
also makes OD sound like an insanely theoretical, overly intellectualized set
of exercises focused on organizational self-revelation.
Me? I prefer to think of OD as building
organizational capability and capacity to adapt to change. Defined this way, OD can include a wide array
of strategies, tactics, disciplines, functions and processes. It includes people development, talent
management processes and procedures, change management, team effectiveness, designing,
selecting and implementing technologies, and organization design. Practitioners come into OD from a variety of
starting points – psychology, sociology, business, technology, human resources,
communications, even bio-technology, engineering, sales, and marketing. And regardless of the strategy, the tactics, or
the background, I’ve come to think all organization development professionals and
initiatives should have one objective and one objective only: increase organizational capability to adapt
to and embrace change, which, in turn, increases the likelihood the
organization will achieve its goals.
Sadly though, as I have worked with many different kinds of
organizations over the past couple of years, I have found that “traditional” OD has seemingly fallen out of favor. Many companies may have OD’d on OD over the past decade
or so and awakened with a “low return on investment” hangover. And now OD practitioners are trying to work
our way back into organizational favor. So how do we resuscitate OD? A few thoughts –
- LEARN THE BUSINESS. Knowing organizational behavior models, industrial
psych theories, and various motivational models is not enough. If you can’t simply and quickly integrate
these things into the daily money making activity of the enterprise, forget it. Often, this means simplifying – concepts,
models, language. It does not
mean being simplistic, however.
Organizations are complex systems.
Our job is to enhance the capability of these systems, not dumb them
down.
- SPEAK THE BUSINESS’ LANGUAGE. Corollary to the first point: drop OD speak, and use the language your
business uses. Process can be good if the outcome it achieves
helps obtain business goals. Process
for the sake of process is not helpful.
Therefore, we absolutely need to involve the business when we design
processes – development, performance management, etc.
- BECOME QUANT JOCKS and JOCKETTES: We need to learn how to collect, analyze, and
interpret all different kinds of data – HR metrics, business analytics, etc. –
to tell stories that enable better business decisions.
- ACCEPT THE ADVENT OF NEW TECHNOLOGIES WITHIN THE
ORGANIZATION. OD practitioners must
learn how employees are using Web 2.0 technologies both within and outside of
the organization, and put ourselves in a position to advise the business on how
to leverage them to enhance capability and adaptability.
None of the above is revelatory or revolutionary. The HR function has been batting these things
around for several years. Interestingly
enough, OD seems to have been largely absent from these conversations. Time to toss out the do-not-resuscitate orders and get OD back into, and leading, the discussion of strategic HR. After
all, that’s how OD originally sold itself to the business – as the strategic
practice that helps organizations build capability.
The business and OD challenge is remain relevant through renewal. Preferrably done before it becomes too late.
Great points Suzanne! When peers in HR still don’t know how to describe what you do in a coherent sentence, or even paragraph, it’s time to rethink this thing.
I discovered early on in my career that all the academia and theories I had picked up in OD school were best kept to myself and only practical, here and now solutions, spoken in business language were worth sharing with the business.
YES to this! And to Avi’s comments as well. I tried to affect change through ivory tower OD and, frankly, failed and failed and failed. Once I started proving my worth through practical, day to day, HR generalist work, people started listening to my covert OD-based solutions and ideas. I still really love to read about, persuade with, and produce results through, strong organizational design, but I definitely practice the Fight Club Rule so I don’t turn people off or sound like a know-it-all.
Suzanne,
As an OD practitioner and an AU/NTL MSOD grad, I agree. Well said! As the old OD adage says, a good OD practitioner should be working themselves out of a job. Our job as OD practitioners is to increase organizational effectiveness and facilitate sustainability. We can’t do this if we don’t remain focused and relevant.
I like the post! Keeping it practical shouldn’t be as difficult as we sometimes make it.
I am also an AU/NTL MSOD grad and I often wonder why OD work is so often the responsibility of a person or a department. To me, good OD practices and skills are critical for every manager to have in their repertoire. Our job should be to teach our leaders these skills!
Great article, Suzanne. I have always felt that many OD practitioners “OD” on their own Kool Aid and forget that the point is to support the business. I’ve always tried to take a non-doctrinaire approach to OD – let’s find solutions that work for this environment in this time in the organization;s history. It has served my employers and client companies well.