Organisation Development Assignment 1

Organization Development Assignment 1

General Model of Change:

There are 4 stages in the General Model of Change: 1) Entering and Contracting 2) Diagnosing 3) Planning and Implementing Change 4) Evaluating and Institutionalizing Change

Explanation: 1)

Entering and Contracting:

This step basically defines whether an OD practitioner will go ahead down the road to plan a certain change or not. Entering involves the initial step of gathering data. Under this step the OD practitioner will try and understand the client’s reason for appointing him. He then will try and gather data about the organization to get a higher level of understanding. He will also understand the reason for change and then pose some recommendations regarding certain problems or point out the results of some constructive enquiry. Contracting further is the collaborative work of the OD practitioner and the client. The client needs to work with the person appointed in order to give some consent at the initial stage and

then walk down an agreed path. In this stage the OD practitioner as well as the client has to have complete clarity regarding their roles in the process of change. Based on these findings the practitioner will also prepare a proposal involving future change activities, employee duties, resources required and it can be negotiated to the best suited requirements.

2)

Diagnosing:

This is one of the most important steps of this process. It involves gathering, analyzing and feeding back data to the organization. The focus is on understanding the organization’s problems, what the causes and the effects of those problems are, and / or understanding the positive elements of the organization. Diagnosing can happen at three levels i.e. Organizational level, group level or individual level. Diagnosis becomes increasingly complex as we move from individual to organizational diagnosis. The analysis and feedback process is collaborative, ensuring continued use and ownership of the data and the results of the diagnosis, by the client. That means that although the OD practitioner would typically design the data analysis process to maximize involvement and skills transfer. The analysis process might include the consultant making some preliminary conclusions, but the real conclusions about the meaning of the data, which will be used to plan the interventions, should be done collaboratively with the client.

3)

Planning and Implementing Change :

Based on the diagnosis, the OD practitioner and organizational members now, together, design the interventions that would drive the change. The interventions should be based on the results of the diagnosis, and should be aimed at resolving the root causes of the problems, or at developing the most prominent strengths of the organization. There are four major types of interventions – and these can be applied to any of the three levels – Organizational, Group or Individual. 

Human Process interventions



Human Relations interventions



Techno-Structural Interventions



Strategic Interventions

4) Evaluating and Institutionalizing Change: Finally, the change should be evaluated against two major criteria:



Was the implementation successful?



Did the implementation have the required results?

If the answers to the above two questions are both positive, then it is time to institutionalize the change, through reinforcing knowledge and performance, and continuous reinforcement of the values that underlie the change until normative and value consensus has been reached.

Skills and Competencies of a Skilled OD Practitioner: 1) Interpersonal Skills: The OD consultant needs to be able to enter into an organization, and begin to create relationships that will enable him to grasp the perspectives of organizational members, understand the organization and see how organization members see themselves and the organization. He has to maintain these relationships, in the process of often working with quite sensitive data and situations. To do this, he needs to be able to establish trust and rapport with the key clients as well as the rest of the organization.

2) Intrapersonal Management The OD consultant works with information that is often fast changing, complex and ambiguous. He has to continually make decisions regarding the relevance of large amounts of data to the organizational situation and / or problem. To do this, he has to know his own values and biases, and know how to put these aside and adopt the organization’s values and bias es when

working with this data. The above process of working with data, interpreting and making decisions, as well as adopting organizational values and norms in this process, requires fast continuous learning, continuous adjustment and a high sense of innovation. A balance between emotions and rationale helps the practitioner to notice issues that are not always empirically obvious. This all can be highly stressful. The consultant needs to know and understand the toll that this can take, and manage his own stress to prevent burnout.

3) General Consultation Skills: The OD practitioner should have a thorough knowledge of the diagnostic models that are available, their strengths and their weaknesses, and to which situations they should be applied. He should know how to guide the process of taking the information from a diagnostic process, interpreting that and forming valid and reliable conclusions, in order to select appropriate interventions, and modify those interventions for the specific situation. He needs to know how to evaluate the both the success of the implementation and the effect of the implementation on the required outcomes, and be able to lead the process of making adjustments to the change process based on the feedback findings. Finally he needs to know and understand the principles of institutionalizing and needs to be able to know and identif y when a change process is complete and institutionalized. Most importantly, one of the fundamental differences between the OD approach and other change management approaches is that the OD consultant needs to have specific skill and experience in transferring the knowledge and the skill of doing all of the above, to the client organization – thus enabling the client organization to drive its own development in the future.

4) OD Theory The OD practitioner must have a thorough grasp of the various theories underlying OD, and must be especially strong in the interpretation of this theory and using it in practical applications. The practitioner should understand the planned change model and know how the various steps are integrated and impact on each other. Action Research knowledge and application ability is a fundamental competence that underlies almost all OD interventions. The positive approach, which reflects trends not only in business, but in psychology and medicine and other disciplines, is a critical element of successful OD. This creates the difference between simply focusing on solving one problem after the other, to pro-actively creating a better future.

The practitioner needs to know what available interventions are out there, what they do, where and how they are applicable, what their strengths and weaknesses are, and how to modify them. Evaluating and institutionalizing change is fundamental to making lasting improvements and understanding the theory of effective evaluation and implementing interventions that lead to long term institutionalization, is critical. Finally, the OD practitioner must understand his own role and position in all of the above, and understand the implications of that role and position.