Cabahug: Organizational Development - Process of Improving Organization

WE MIGHT sometimes wonder why organizations change from time to time. Leaders with business acumen recognized that the business landscape of today is quiet different from yesterday. Today's business is more dynamic, unpredictable and keeps on changing. This is the reason why changes in the work methods and processes, and values of the workforce must be continuously improved so that the organization can move ahead of competition. This process is what we call an Organizational Development or simply OD.

According to Richard Bendhard, OD is an effort planned, organization wide, and managed from the top, to increase organization's effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization's processes, using behavioral-science knowledge.

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OD program involves a client and a consultant. The consultant will accurately identify organizational needs, provide diagnostic evaluation by means of; data gathering, interview, focus groups, organizational surveys, analysis of documents and observations. Then an intervention plan is recommended to top management and the strategy for its implementation. This is quite similar to a doctor and a patient. The doctor will diagnose not only a specific part of the body but the entire body of the patient, and then recommends appropriate medicines for curing the different ailments found from the patient.

The diagnostic part of the program examines organization areas, like; organizational goals and structure, information flow, decision-making, leadership, cooperation among departments, evaluation of organizational effectiveness, motivational systems, employee work motivation, and training needs. Analyzing an organization is a very sensitive job.
The successful assessment of organizations reveals information that, if not used properly, can cause social conflicts because the information collected is not only about the organization's structures and processes, but also about people and the relationships among them.

The key elements of an OD are long-ranged, planned, and a sustained effort between the client (internal agent) and the OD consultant (external agent). Both parties should envision an ongoing relationship of probably one, two or more years together if things go well in the program. A one-shot intervention into the system is thus not an OD, even the intervention may be one that is used in OD efforts. For example if your company conducts a one week T-group (T for training) experience for system members. This does not constitute an OD if the T-group was the only intervention of the program because as we mentioned in our definition, OD is an organization wide activities that needs various forms of solutions.

The reasons why OD practitioners and theorists conceptualized the OD programs in long-range terms is that because the organizational problems are multifaceted and complex. Changing a system's culture and processes is quite complicated - that is why long-term approach is needed if organization wants to effect a lasting change.

The most difficult part of the OD program is the intervention scheme. The goal of the consultant is to teach the client to diagnose and solve problems and take corrective actions. The responsibility for improvement and change rests in the individual members of the organization that needs to change, not some outside agent. In other words, "learning how to learn" is the desired outcome of OD interventions. The unique character of the nature of OD intervention is the intent that the client system becomes proficient in solving its own problems - present and future - by itself. This is akin to the ancient Chinese proverb that says: "Give a man a fish, and you have given him a meal; teach a man to fish, and you have given him a livelihood."

The consultant's role is generally that of a facilitator, not an expert on matters of content. He/she acts primarily as a question-asker, and secondarily as an answer-giver. However, the consultant is both expert and directive on matters relating to the best ways to facilitate/enable the client group to approach, diagnose, and solve its problems. In organizational development, it is this expertise that the clients expect from the consultant - the expertise to offer the clients effective ways to work on problems, not answers to problems.

It was Kurt Lewin who originated the concept of OD in the late 1940s which became popular in the 1970s onward. Lewin was a personality theorist, a social psychologist, who wanted to improve the organization through behavioral science knowledge and application. Since OD is about change, Lewin conceptualized change as a three-stage process. First, unfreezing the old behavior; second, moving to a new level of behavior; and lastly, freezing the behavior at the new level.

Organizational development (sometimes called organizational effectiveness) can improve individual performance, create better morale, increase organizational profitability, and offers a variety of methods to strengthen the human side of organizations to the benefit of both the individual and the organizations. OD is growing and its approach and methods are already applied throughout the range of today's organization.

OD is a critical managerial tool that offers a set of basic tools available to any managers and members of the organizations who want to improve goal achievement.

Today's managers need to know what OD is and how to use it before the second OD generation called Organizational Transformation (OT) will eventually sidestep OD.

It is now very important that you will give impetus on the OD program so that in the future you will be the one to conduct the program inside your organization. And perhaps, you may also try to diversify in the future by having your own OD consultancy department tasked primarily to help business organizations in our country with monetary consideration as secondary.

A good understanding of Organizational Development has great practical value for present and future managers and leaders.

(You may send your comments or suggestions to the writer at e-mail:
archietim@yahoo.com and cell No. 09266468591)