Comprehensive OD Comprehensive OD InterventionsInterventions

Inamullah MahsudChapter 07

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“Getting the whole system in the room”. It is about the usefulness of getting all of the key actors of

a complex organization or system together in a team-building, future planning kind of session.

The rational for inviting all the key actors of a complex system to meet together is congruent with systems theory and an extension of assumptions underlying team building.

The organization is conceptualized like a total organization or several organizations in interaction.

If you get all the people with crucial interdependencies together to work on matters of mutual concern, so, good things can happen.

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Future Search Conferences. Marvin Weisbord has written extensively about future

search conferences One version of Weisbord future search conference model

consists of 4 or 5 half day sessions on the Past, the Present, the Future, Common Ground, and Action Planning.

People need no special training, orientation, vocabulary, or background to participate. They work in small groups, make reports to the whole, and join in whole group dialogues on what they are learning.

There is a vast literature documenting successful Future Searches.

The most common causes of failure are: ◦ Non-interdependent groups, issues on which most participants do not

wish to act, Key actors missing, allowing too little time for the size of the task Overactive/controlling facilitation.

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Beckhard’s Confrontation Meeting. It is a one-day meeting of the entire management of an

organization in which they take reading of their own organizational health.

In a series of activities, the management group generates information about it´s major problems, analyses the underlying causes, develops action plans to correct the problems, and sets a schedule for completed remedial work.

It provides a quick and accurate means for diagnosing organizational health, promotes constructive problem identification and problem solving, enhances upward communication within the organization, and increases involvement and commitment to action on the part of the entire managerial group.

The steps are on the next slide…..

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Beckhard’s Confrontation Meeting.1. Step 1: Climate Setting (45 to 60 Minutes)2. Step 2: Information Collection (60 Minutes) – small groups

of heterogeneous nature are formed. Boss and subordinate should not be in same group.

3. Step 3: Information Sharing (60 Minutes) – the small groups report back to the total group.

4. Step 4: Priority Setting & Group Action Planning (90 Minutes) – groups according to the functional departments of the organization.

5. Step 5: Immediate Follow-up by Top Team (60 to 180 Minutes) – only the top management team meets

6. Step 6: Progress Review (60 to 120 Minutes) – the top management team meets four to six weeks later to review the progress on implementation.

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Strategic Management Activities.  This is the development and implementation of the

organization´s grand design or overall strategy for relating to its current and future environmental demands.

According to Schendel and Hofer there are six major tasks that comprise the strategic management process:1. Goal formulation, 2. Environmental analysis, 3. Strategy formulation, 4. Strategy evaluation, 5. Strategy implementation ,6. Strategic control

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Appreciative Inquiry This is based on the assertion that the organization “is a

miracle to be embraced” rather than a “problem to be solved”. It is based on interviews and discussions in small groups or organization-wide meetings centering on such core questions as:◦ What have been the peak moments in the life of this

organization when people felt most alive in their involvements?◦ Who do staff members value most about themselves?

One of the most important aspects that the approach seems to generate is more attention by the consultant and the client organization to the strengths of the organization and its members.

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Survey Feedback.  It is the process of systematically collecting data about the

system and feeding back the data to individuals and groups at all levels of the organization to analyze, interpret the meaning of, and design corrective action steps.

This attitude or climate survey, coupled with a series of workshops involving work teams at successively lower levels of the organization, can be used to create action plans and change across a wide range of variables in the social, structural, goal, and task subsystems of an organization.

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Grid OD.  Developed by Robert Blake and Jane mouton. It’s a six phase program lasting from three to five years.

0. Pre-phase -11. The Managerial Grid2. Teamwork Development3. Intergroup Development4. Developing an Ideal Strategic Corporate Model5. Implementing the Ideal Strategic Model6. Systematic Critique.

This program is conducted by internal members who are pre-trained on the Grid Organization Development.

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Basic to the Grid OD program are the concepts and methods of the Managerial Grid, one dimension being the “concern for people” and the other dimension “concern for production”. The most effective managers/leaders are those who score high on both dimensions.

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Stream analysis It is a method useful in planning behavioral, structural, and

technical changes. Although complicated and somewhat difficult to use. „ Begins by identifying behavioral, technological, and

structural interventions that organization can implement as part of the OD program.

„ Helps the organization to diagnose and plan interventions over a period of time

„ Provides a graphical portrayal of the problems of an organization, examining the interconnections between the problems, identifying the core problems and allows for progress in implementing specific changes to plotted.

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Systems 1-4T.Management typology based largely on measures pertaining to leadership, organizational climate, and job satisfaction.

Using Survey of Organizations (a 105-item questionnaire), as well as shorter forms.

Linkert found that organizations were markedly different in terms of their characteristics:1. System 1 “exploitative Authoritative”,2. System 2 “benevolent Authoritative”3. System 3 “Consultative”4. System 4 “Participative”

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Schein´s cultural analysis.A particularly deep and difficult intervention

developed by Edgar Schein.It is complex and probes deeply into the

organization and is not for every OD consultant and every client organization.

Schein goes on to note that the client system “is fully involved in owning both the diagnosis and the interventions”. He further emphasizes that the role of the OD consultant is to provide the conceptual framework for the analysis and to “manage the process

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Trans-organization Development.  It is when consultants get “the whole system in the room“

and that system is conceptualized as involving several organizations (getting customers, suppliers, and union leaders together with organizational members).

Thomas Cummins:”not simply an extension of OD, but constitutes a distinct level of practice commensurate with the dynamics emerging at this higher level of social “system”. It is an important form of organizational change process for trans-organizational systems(TS´s). TS´s are comprised of business alliances, consortia, or “network alliances” formed for such purposes as coordinating services to the public, conducting joint research and development, exchanging technology, or gaining access to worldwide markets. Power and leadership are dispersed rather than hierarchical, and there may be wide fluctuations in commitment to the collaboration over time.

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