AN OVERVIEW OF OD INTERVENTIONS

MODULE 3

Beckhard defines Organization Development (OD) as "an effort, planned, organization-wide, and managed from the top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization's processes, using behavioral-science knowledge."

In essence, OD is a planned system of change.

• Planned. OD takes a long-range approach to improving organizational performance and efficiency. It avoids the (usual) "quick-fix".

• Organization-wide. OD focuses on the total system.

• Managed from the top. To be effective, OD must have the support of top-management. They have to model it, not just espouse it. The OD process also needs the buy-in and ownership of workers throughout the organization.

• Increase organization effectiveness and health. OD is tied to the bottom-line. Its goal is to improve the organization, to make it more efficient and more competitive by aligning the organization's systems with its people.

• Planned interventions. After proper preparation, OD uses activities called interventions to make system wide, permanent changes in the organization.

• Using behavioral-science knowledge. OD is a discipline that combines research and experience to understanding people, business systems, and their interactions

• Action Research is a process which serves as a model for most OD interventions.

• French and Bell describe Action Research as a "process of systematically collecting research data about an ongoing system relative to some objective, goal, or need of that system; feeding these data back into the system; taking actions by altering selected variables within the system based both on the data and on hypotheses; and evaluating the results of actions by collecting more data."

The steps in Action Research

Entry• This phase consists of marketing, i.e.

finding needs for change within an organization.

• It is also the time to quickly grasp the nature of the organization, identify the appropriate decision maker, and build a trusting relationship.

Start-up and Contracting

• In this step, we identify critical success factors and the real issues, link into the organization's culture and processes, and clarify roles for the consultant(s) and employees.

• This is also the time to deal with resistance within the organization. A formal or informal contract will define the change process.

Assessment and diagnosisHere we collect data in order to find the opportunities and problems in the organization .For suggestions about what to look for, see the previous article in this series, on needs assessment .

This is also the time for the consultant to make a diagnosis, in order to recommend appropriate interventions.

Feedback• This two-way process serves to tell what we found out,

based on an analysis of the data.

Everyone who contributed information should have an opportunity to learn about the findings of the assessment process (provided there is no apparent breach of anyone's confidentiality.)

This provides an opportunity for the organization's

people to become involved in the change process, to learn about how different parts of the organization affect each other, and to participate in selecting appropriate change interventions.

Action planning• In this step we will distill recommendations from the

assessment and feedback, consider alternative actions and focus our intervention(s) on activities that have the most leverage to effect positive change in the organization.

An implementation plan will be developed that is based on the assessment data, is logically organized, results- oriented, measurable and rewarded. We must plan for a participative decision-making process for the intervention.

Intervention

Now, and only now, do we actually carry out the change process.

It is important to follow the action plan, yet remain flexible enough to modify the process as the organization changes and as new information emerges.

Evaluation

• Successful OD must have made meaningful changes in the performance and efficiency of the people and their organization.

We need to have an evaluation procedure to verify this success, identify needs for new or continuing OD activities, and improve the OD process itself to help make future interventions more successful.

Adoption.

After steps have been made to change the organization and plans have been formulated, we follow-up by implementing processes to insure that this remains an ongoing activity within the organization, that commitments for action have been obtained, and that they will be carried out.

We must recognize when it is more productive for the client and consultant to undertake other activities, and when continued consultation is counterproductive. We also should plan for future contacts, to monitor the success of this change and possibly to plan for future change activities.

Separation.

OD PROCESS

DIAGNOSING THE SYSTEM, ITS SUBUNITS AND PROCESS

Diagnostic activities

Activities designed to provide an accurate account of things as they are which are needed of two reasons first is to know the state of the things or what the current state is, second to know the effects of the actions taken or know the consequences of the actions taken.

• For each of the major targets in an organization, the typical information desired and common methods of obtaining the information are given.

• The OD practitioner may be interested in all these target groups or in only few of them; he or she may work with one subsystem during subsequent phases.

• Frequently, the improvement strategy calls for concentrating on different organizational targets in a planned sequence.

Dimensions to consider in Diagnosis

• Timing• Extent of participation• Confidentiality• Individual-anonymous vs. group• Pre-selection of variable vs. emergent selection of variables• Developed, validated questionnaire vs. interviews• Data gathering analysis• Isolated event vs. long term strategy• Nature of target population• Type of technique used

Classifying OD Interventions

Diagnostic Activities

Fact finding activities designed to ascertain the sate of the system the status of a problem; the way the things are available methods range from projective devices to more traditional data collection methods like interviews, questionnaires survey etc.

Team building Activities

Activities designed to enhance the effective operation of system teams.

These activities focus on task issues such as the ways the things are done the skills and resources needed to accomplish tasks, the quality of relationship among the team members or between members and the leader, and how well the team gets its job done.

Intergroup Activities

Activities designed to improve the effectiveness of interdependent groups that work together to produce a common output.

They focus on joint activities and the output of the group as considered as a single system rather than two subsystems.

Survey feedback Activities

Activities that rely on questionnaire surveys to generate information that is then used to identify problems and opportunities. Groups analyze the data regarding their performance and design actions plans to improve or correct problems.

Education and Training Activities

Activities designed to improve individual skills, abilities, and knowledge.

Several activities are available and several approaches possible.

Technostructural/ Structural Activities

Activities designed to improve the effectiveness of organizational structures and job designs.

The activities may take the form of experimenting with new organization structures and evaluating their effectiveness in terms of specific goals or devising new ways to bring technical resources to bear on problems

Process Consultation Activities

• Activities that help the client to perceive understand and act upon process events which occur in the client’s environment.

• These activities perhaps more accurately describe an approach a consulting mode in which the client gets insight into the human process in organizations and learn skills in diagnosing and managing them.

Grid Organization Development Activities

Activities Developed by Blake and Mouton, which constitute a six phase change model involving the total organization.

Internal resources are developed to conduct most of the programs, which upgrading individual skills and leadership abilities, then to intergroup relations activities.

Later phases include corporate planning for improvement activities. Finally an evaluation phase assessing change in the organization culture and looking towards future directions.

Third Party Peace Making Activities

Activities conducted by a skilled consultant to help two members of the organization to resolve their conflicts.

Coaching or Counseling Activities

The activities that entail the consultant to help define the goals learn new behavior to achieve more with better means.

Life and Career Planning Activities

Activities which enable the individuals to focus on their life and career objectives and how to go about achieving them.

Planning and Goal Setting Activities

Activities that include theory and experience in planning and goal setting, problem-solving models, planning paradigms ideal organization versus real organization discrepancy models, and the like.

Strategic Management Activities

Activities that help key policy makers to reflect systematically on the organization’s basic mission and goals and environmental demands.

Organizational Transformation Activities

Activities that involve large scale system changes; activities designed to fundamentally change the nature of the organization. Almost everything about the organization is changed.

The six box model

The six box model

• Another diagnostic tool is Marvin Weisbord’s six-box model, a diagnostic tool or frame work published in 1976, and still widely used by OD practitioners.

• This model tells the practitioner where to look and what to look for diagnosing organizational problems.

Weisbord’s identifies Six Critical Areas

• Purposes- What business we are in? What is the core business?

• Structures- How do we divide the work? How the authority is delegated?

• Rewards- What are the areas of functionality that have rewards?

• Helpful mechanisms-Do the company has adequate coordinating technologies?

• Relationship- how is the conflict managed in the organization?

• Leadership-Where things must go right if the organization is t be successful?

Beckhard’s Confrontation Meeting

A face-to-face discussion among two or more people or team in conflict, for example between team mates or between an athlete and coach.

It involves

• Working with the whole system in the room.• People gather in heterogeneous groupings to

consider future possibilities. • After sharing, promises for actions are made

and some management priorities selected. • At the end of the day, management will

respond to these actions. • This is then accompanied by a follow-up

discussion in a few weeks’ time.

Confrontation meeting is an activity which allows entire management group, composed of individual from all levels of the organization to take a quick reading on its own health and within matter of hours to set action plan for improving it.

This activity is based on the following aspects

• Experience with an action oriented method of planned change.

• It involves the entire in a joint action-planning programme.

• The meeting can be conducted several times with one morning and one evening session involving only two or more hours out of usual working days.

Benefits of Confrontation meetings

• Direct communication is improved

•  Morale of employees increased.

•  Better work culture.

•  Improve inter department human relationship

•  Get solutions on day-to-day problems.

The basic elements of the Confrontation meeting are

Climate setting

It requires one hour. In the very beginning, the top executive communicates to the entire management group his objectives for the meeting and his concern for and interest in open discussion and problem facing

Information collection

• The entire group of employees is divided into small heterogeneous units consisting of seven to eight participants.

• If there is top management group it meets as a separate unit. No boss and subordinates are placed together.

• Each unit consists of participants from each functional area.

Information sharing

Each unit's representative writes his unit's entire results on a sheet paper, which is displayed at a meeting hall.

Meeting leader provides some major categories in which all the data from all the sheets can be classified

E.g. If there are 100 items, the possibility is that these can be classified into 8-9 groups involving heading such as communication difficulties, problem with top management etc.

Priority setting & grouping planning.

• The entire group engages itself in a 15 min general session.

• With the meeting leader the participants go through the raw data on the duplicated sheets and assign a category number to each element of data.

• People assemble in their functional natural work units in for one or more hours.

• Thus HR members drawn from all level assemble in one unit, in technical another and so on.

Organization action plan

• Total group is assembled in a general session. Each functional unit reports its commitments and plans to the total group.

• Reports and enlists the items which its members believe the management team should deal with first.

• Top management is required to react to this list and make commitments for action where needed.

Immediate follow-up by top team

Top management team is required to meet immediately after the completion of the confrontation meeting to plan first a set of follow up action which is to be taken

Progress review

• Confrontations can be negative, exacerbating conflicts, especially if participants are angry and express that anger in hurtful accusations.

• However, if conducted thoughtfully, with consideration for the feelings and situation of other people, confrontations can be useful in helping to identify and solve problems.

THE ENDTHANK YOU

Copyright MONOJIT BHATTACHARYA 1BI06MBA20

2007-08