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Lesson#2
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OD A Unique Change Strategy
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OD: A Unique Change Strategy
Consulting to organizations can take many forms. For example, Edgar Schein
describes three consulting models:
i. Purchase of Expertise Model
ii. Doctor-patient Model
iii. Process Consultation Model In the
“purchase of expertise model,”
a leader or group
identifies a need for information or expertise that the organization cannot
supply. The leader hires a consultant to obtain the information and make a
report, often including recommendations for action. Example would be (1)
surveying consumers or employees about some matter, (2) finding out how best
to organize the company after a merger, or (3) developing a marketing
strategy for a new product. This is a typical consulting approach that is
widely used. In the
“doctor-patient model,”
a leader or group detects
symptoms of ill health in some part of the organization, and calls in a
consultant who diagnoses the situation, identifies the causes of problems
and then, like a physician, prescribes a cure. Examples would be calling in
“the doctor” to examine (1) low morale at a particular plant, (2) being over
budget and behind schedule on a major project, or (3) a highperforming
manager who suddenly becomes a low-performer. This too is a well-known,
traditional approach to consultation. In the
“process
consultation model,”
the consultant works with the leader
and group to diagnose strengths and weaknesses, identify problems and
opportunities, and develop action plans and methods for reaching desired
goals. In this model the consultant assists the client organization in
becoming more effective at examining and improving its own processes of
problem solving, decision-making and action taking. This third model,
typical in OD, encourages greater collaboration between clients and
consultants, engages the resources and talents of the clients, and
strengthens clients’ abilities to improve their work processes. Examples
would include working on any of the previously mentioned problems, but using
a collaborative, participative,
you-can-figure-out-the-right-answer-yourselves approach. An organization
development consultant typically suggests general processes and procedures
for addressing problems and issues. The consultant helps the clients
generate valid data and learn from the data. The OD consultant is an expert
on process-how to “go about” effective problem solving and decision making.
Thus, OD differs substantially from traditional “expert” models of
consulting in its overall approach. Likewise, OD practitioners have
different goals and focus on different targets compared with other
consulting models. Here is a list of “primary distinguishing characteristics
of organization development”
1. Change:
OD is a planned strategy to bring about
organizational change. The change effort focuses on the human and social
side of the organization and in so doing, also intervenes in the
technological and structural sides.
2. Collaborate:
OD typically involves a collaborative
approach to change that includes the involvement and participation of the
organization members most affected by the changes. Participation and
involvement in problem solving and decision making by all levels of the
organization are hallmarks of OD.
3. Performance:
OD programs include an emphasis on ways
to improve and enhance performance and quality.
4. Humanistic:
OD relies on a set of humanistic values
about people and organizations that aims at making organizations more
effective by opening up new opportunities for increased use of human
potential.
5. Systems:
OD represents a systems approach concerned
with the interrelationship of divisions, departments, groups, and
individuals as interdependent subsystems of the total organization.
6. Scientific:
OD is based upon scientific approaches to
increase organization effectiveness. While the six characteristics,
described above, describe organization development, let us add another means
of identifying OD.
An OD Program is a long-range, planned, and sustained effort that unfolds
according to a strategy.
The key elements here are long range, planned and sustained, and strategy.
Let’s look at each one independently: Long-range:
The
reason for OD practitioners and theorists conceptualizing OD programs in
long-range terms are several. First, changing a system’s culture and
processes is a difficult, complicated, and long-term matter if lasting
change is to be effected. OD programs envision that the system members
become better able to manage their culture and processes in problem-solving
and self-renewing ways. Such complex new learning takes time. Second, the
assumption is made that organizational problems are multifaceted and
complex. One-shot interventions probably cannot solve such problems, and
they most assuredly cannot teach the client system to solve them in such a
short time period.
There is a long-range time perspective on the part of both the client system
and the consultant in OD program. Both parties envision an ongoing
relationship of one, two, or more years together if things go well in the
program. A one-short intervention into the system is thus not organization
development according to this criterion even though the intervention may be
one that is used in OD efforts.
Planned and Sustained effort:
OD involves deliberately planned change, as contrasted with system “drifts.”
Unlike an innovative project or program it is generally not limited to a
specific period of time. To implement OD, an organizational subsystem – such
as a Department of OD – is created and charged with the specific
responsibility for planning, managing, and evaluating the continuous process
of organizational self-renewal. Members of such a subsystem act as inside
change agents or OD development specialists … and usually link with outside
consultants to carry out their mission. The essential concept is that some
fraction of an organization’s resources is devoted to continuous
organizational maintenance, rebuilding, and expansion. Such a concept is
familiar to managers in the field of plant maintenance but is much less
widely known and accepted in the maintenance of the human organization.
Organizations are not easily or quickly transformed. The available evidence
suggests that in large organizations two to three years of OD effort is
typical before the completion of serious and self-sustaining change. In
addition, it must be borne in mind that an organization is never transformed
permanently. Instead, institutionalized, built-in OD functions must
continually be involved in facing the dilemmas and vicissitudes of
organizational renewal. There is, however, a point that is a source of some
confusion. When some good management practices are taking place in an
organization without an OD program – for example, a manager has worked out
effective ways to manage team and inter-group culture and processes – is
that organization development? We do not think so. OD practitioners try to
inculcate good management practices in organizations, that is, they try to
help organization members learn to manage themselves and others better. But
many managers and many organizations are competently managing their affairs
without help from organization development consultants and OD programs; what
they are doing would not be called OD even though they may be using some
techniques found in the OD technology. OD practitioners did not invent good
management practices; OD practitioners are not the sole source for learning
good management practices; and finally, the term organization development is
not synonymous with the term good management.
Strategy:
OD programs unfold according to a strategy. A
part of the planned nature of OD programs almost always involves an overall
strategy even though the strategy may be only dimly obvious and articulate,
and even though the strategy may emerge and change shape over time. (From
our experience, the more viable OD efforts have a fairly clear and openly
articulated strategy.) Consultants and clients develop overall goals and
paths to goals on organization development programs, and these guide the
programmatic activities. It is preferable and usual for the strategy to be
developed out of the diagnosed problems of the client system, the client
system’s desires and capabilities, and the consultant’s capabilities and
insights into client system needs.
The OD consultant establishes a unique relationship with client system
members:
Probably the most fundamental differences between organization development
programs and other organization development programs are found in the role
and behavior of the consultant vis-à-vis the client system. In OD the
consultant seeks and maintains a collaborative relationship of relative
equality with the organization members. Collaboration means “to labor
together” – essentially it implies that the consultant does not do all the
work while the client system passively waits for solutions to its problems;
and it means that the client system does not do all the work while the
consultant is a disinterested observer. In organization development,
consultant and client co-labor. A second distinguishing feature of the
consultant-client relationship is that it is one of relative equality – the
two parties come together as relative equals, each possessing knowledge and
skills different from but needed by the other. The client group is
encouraged to critique the consultant’s program and his or her effectiveness
in terms of meeting client system needs and wants. In OD the consultant’s
role is generally that of a facilitator, not an expert on matters of
content; the consultant acts primarily as a question-asker, and secondarily
as an answer-giver. The consultant’s role is often described as nondirective
and that is partially true, but the rationale behind this nondirective
posture is less well understood. The OD consultant role rests on three
beliefs. The first belief is simply an affirmation of the efficacy of
division of labor and responsibility: let the consultant be responsible for
doing what he or she does best (structuring activities designed to solve
certain problems); and let the client system do what it does best (bring to
bear its special knowledge and expertise on the problem and alternative
solutions). The second belief is derived from the question: Where is the
best solution to this problem likely to be found? In situations where the
consultant is an expert role, the answer to the question is that the best
solution is in the consultant’s head due to that person’s education,
experience, and expertise. Both clients and consultant believe this. In
organization development situations
where the consultant is playing an enabling and facilitating role, the
answer is that the best solution is in the heads of the client members and
the challenge is to structure situations to allow it to become known. The
third belief is that the responsibility for changing something rests
ultimately in the client system members, not in the consultant. Therefore
the members of the client system must “own” the problem and the solution,
and that is best done when they generate both the problems and the
solutions. This belief no doubt rests on Lewin’s conceptualization of “own”
and “induced” forces. Lewin believed, and demonstrated, that an individual’s
own forces toward a particular behavior were more powerful in determining
the behavior than forces/motives/pushes induced by some outside agent. 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 organization 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.
The nature of the intervention differentiates OD from other improvement
strategies:
OD consultants fashion, conduct, or cause to happen, interventions –
structured sets of activities and events in the life of the organization
designed to achieve certain outcomes. As indicated in Fig (definitions of
OD), the nature of these interventions is that they are reflective,
self-analytical, self-examining, proactive, diagnostically oriented, and
action oriented. Further, they focus on the organization culture and its
human processes. OD consultants try to inculcate diagnostic skills,
self-analytical skills, and reflexive skills in organization members, based
on the belief that the organization’s members must be able to diagnose
situations accurately in order to arrive at successful solutions. But there
are several additional beliefs in this statement. Diagnosis and
self-reflection are necessary skills to have for problem solution – that is
a belief of OD consultants. But who should possess those skills? “The client
system members,” answer OD consultants; “me,” answer expert consultants.
This is a key difference in the OD prescription. Another belief involved
here is the belief that both the problems and the solutions to the problems
abound in the client system members. Teaching the client system to diagnose
and solve problems and take corrective actions is the goal of the OD
consultant. The overriding goal is that the client system members learn to
do it themselves. This tenet derives from nondirective therapy notions
suggesting that responsibility for improvement and change rests in the
individual (organization) that needs to change, not some outside agent. This
is supported by most discussions of normalcy and maturity in psychotherapy
that include the patient’s ability to solve problems, adapt effectively, and
cope effectively as criteria for a healthy organism. Many authors, including
Gordon Lippitt, speak of the organization “learning from experience,” and
the OD literature suggests that “learning how to learn” is a desired outcome
of OD interventions. This is what is being discussed: that the client system
becomes expert in self-examination, diagnosis, and corrective action taking.
Planning, problem solving, and self-renewal are also mentioned as important
processes for the client system to be reflexive about. The same overriding
goal applies here: the client system members must learn to manage these
processes effectively by themselves. There is thus a unique character to the
nature of OD interventions: the intent that the client system becomes
proficient in solving its own problems – present and future – by itself. The
ancient Chinese proverb seems to describe the underlying rationale: ‘Give a
man a fish, and you have given him a meal; teach a man to fish, and you have
given him a livelihood.”
System improvement:
The emphasis of OD is on the system, rather than the individual, as the
target of change. In this respect the approach differs from “sensitivity
training” and “management development.” “System” may mean either an entire
organization or a subsystem such as an department or team of
teachers. The emphasis however is always on improving both the ability of a
system to cope and the relationships of the system with subsystems and with
the environment. Individuals, of course, often gain insights and new
attitudes during such improvement processes, but the primary concern of OD
is with such matters as adequate organizational communication, the
integration of individual and organizational goals, the development of a
climate of trust in decision making, and the effect of the reward system on
morale.
Reflexive, self-analytic methods:
OD involves system members themselves in the assessment, diagnosis, and
transformation of their own organization. Rather than simply accepting
diagnosis and prescription from an outside “technocratic” expert,
organization members themselves, with the aid of outside consultants,
examine current difficulties and their causes and participate actively in
the reformulation of goals, the development of new group process skills, the
redesign of structures and procedures for achieving the goals, the
alteration of the working climate of the system, and the assessment of
results.
The targets of OD interventions differentiate OD from other improvement
strategies:
The OD prescription calls for certain configurations of people as targets of
OD interventions – intact work groups, two or more work-related groups,
subsystems of organizations, and total organizations. Katz and
Kahn speak of “role sets,” the offices (positions) and people an individual
interacts with while performing role-relevant behavior in an organization.
They state: Each member of an organization is directly associated with a
relatively small number of others, usually the occupants of offices adjacent
to his in the work-flow structure or in the hierarchy of authority. They
constitute his role set and typically include his immediate supervisor (and
perhaps his supervisor’s immediate supervisor), his subordinates, and
certain members of his own or other virtue of the work-flow, technology, and
authority structure of the organization. Many of an individual’s values,
norms, and perceptions of organizational reality are derived from contact
with role-set members. Role enactment problems derive from interaction with
role-set members. A person’s immediate work group, immediate supervisor, and
immediate subordinates are immensely important factors for an individual’s
effectiveness in an organization. OD interventions concentrate on
work-relevant constellations of people in the belief that these groups have
inherent in them considerable power to determine individual and group
behavior and also contain many of the sources of organizational problems.
What goes on between units is also of vital importance in organizational
effectiveness. OD goes beyond intact work teams and also focuses on
enhancing key interdependences across units and levels. For example, data
are typically collected about the degree of cooperation versus dysfunctional
competition between the various units, and identified problems are then
worked on with members of the relevant groups present. Thus, intergroup
configurations are a second major target of OD interventions. A third target
of OD interventions is the organization’s processes and culture. In a sense,
OD is comprehensive long-term effort to collaboratively manage the culture
of an organization (since processes can be considered part of organization
culture). As shown in Figure 1, some of the authors mention culture and some
of the authors mention human and social processes as the targets of OD
interventions. Problemsolving, planning, self-renewal, decision-making, and
communications processes are identified as important processes. This focus
on culture and processes is simply a part of the bet/hypothesis/belief
system that OD consultants have: culture and processes are important
strategic leverage points in an organization for bringing about organization
improvement and change. Other consultants and practitioners make different
bets on the best strategic leverage points – the technology of the
organization, the structure of the organization, its design, and so forth.
OD consultants, because they are working with a behavioral science knowledge
base, focus on culture and processes. And the OD prescription suggests that
these two targets are important ingredients in the process of planned
organizational change.
OD consultants utilize a behavioral science base:
This is a characteristic of the practice of OD, but it is shared by many
different improvement strategies. The behavioral science knowledge base of
the practice of OD contributes to its distinctive gestalt. OD is an applied
field in which theories, concepts, and practices from sociology, psychology,
social psychology, education, economics, psychiatry, and management are
brought to bear on real organizational problems.
The desired outcomes of OD are distinctive in nature:
The desired outcomes of OD efforts are both similar to other improvement
strategies, and different from other improvement strategies. OD programs and
efforts are designed to produce organizational effectiveness and health,
better system functioning, greater ability to achieve objectives, and so
forth, as shown in some of the definitions in Figure 1. But some of the
definitions point additional desired outcomes: outcomes relating to a
changed organizational culture, to changed processes (especially renewal and
adaptation processes) and to the establishing of norms of continual
self-study and pro-action. Michael Beer lists the aims of OD as: “(1)
enhancing congruence between organizational structure, processes, strategy,
people, and culture; (2) developing new and creative organizational
solutions, and (3) developing the organization’s self-renewing capacity.’ It
is these self-renewal outcomes that seem particularly distinctive in the OD
process.
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