OD Interventions Will Unlock Your Organization's Potential

OD plays an important role in building an organization and enabling continuous growth of its business and people. OD is a planned and structured process to remodify and build the systems, processes, policies, values and culture to align the organization with the emerging needs and changes in technology, market, human resources, culture, importantly human behaviors.

OD is a long-term process that requires the OD experts to be on lookout inside and outside the organization. The outer loop changes very fast especially to cope with technological changes and market driven trends having strong impact on the people and their behaviors, human skills, culture, business and future business prospects.

An organization is an open system that needs to be scanned and seen through the prism of business needs, alignment with the current market and business trends so that the business or non-business goals are achieved, effectiveness and efficiency ensured and business continuity is anchored to continuous improvement in the systems, values, human behaviors, marketing, customer service, client orientation and so on.

Experts’ views on OD:

Dale S. Beach an authority on HR wrote that OD is a complex educational strategy designed to increase organizational effectiveness and wealth through planned intervention with more focus on applied behavioral service.  

J I Porras and P J Robertson have corroborated this view by writing that OD encompasses a collection of planned change interventions, built on humanistic democratic values, seeking improvement in organizational effectiveness and employees well being. 

George R. Terry a management guru wrote that OD includes efforts to improve results by getting the best from employees, individually and as members of working groups.

 Warren G. Bennis a management consultant and author propounded similar view that OD is a complex educational strategy intended to change the beliefs, attitudes, values and structure of organizations so that they could adapt to new technologies, markets and challenges and the dizzying rate of change itself.

These experts have encompassed theory and practical side of OD in their very precise words and ideas by establishing the fact that OD experts have to be learning proactively through a research-based approach so that they could keep their professional and intellectual insights super active to check organizational pulse, tone and tenor.  

Salient Features of OD:

·       OD is an ever evolving, long term approach with planned interventions to keep improvising the business and organizational set ups involving HR, senior management, Boards, functional departments and systems.

• OD has strong linkage with the business objectives and senior management owns any planned or intended changes. 
• OD involves continuous research with focus on outer as well as inner loops, observing people’s behaviors, scanning the workplace cultures, systems and processes.
• OD needs people as change agents or champions of change and those could be external experts, senior managements, HR, key team members, senior managers, employees and people from focused groups.
• OD needs people to work together, collaborate, criticize and fix issues, implement and manage change together.
• OD needs diagnostic eye to see the symptoms of a problem, design a change or intervention, brainstorm to see all pros and cons and then go for implementation.
• OD needs to unlearn, relearn and implement and this has to be a continuous process.

Popular OD Models:  

I will briefly discuss the following OD models. Not necessarily these models are used by the OD experts and HR people, either same or an amended version could be practically used. 

Diagnosis of the problem, its symptoms and coming up with a solution needs to reframe these models, use individually or combined two or more with different aspects to be included in a final approach to address and solve a problem.

1.    Kurt Lewin’s Unfreezing, Changing and Refreezing Model

Lewin’s model leads to understand that before embarking upon a change, an organization needs to prepare well for change, motivated to change and integrated the change into behaviors of the organization. 

Three steps are involved in this model:

       i.          Unfreezing leads to discard the old behaviors, values, principles and habits to create space for fresh ideas and perspectives.

      ii.          Bringing new and fresh perspectives, systems, processes to replace the old ones. New attitudes, values and principles are introduced.

    iii.          Refreezing reinforces new values, systems and processes and implement those with an intention to continuously scan, evaluate, redesign and then implement.

2.  Larry Griener’s Model:

Change occurs in certain sequential stages. External stimulus pressurizes the management to initiate change process. In response, management is motivated to introduce change needing to remodify any systems, process or sub-systems. This entails change to go through stages sequentially such as diagnosing the problem, invention of a new solution, experimentation with new solution and reinforcement from positive results.

i.          External stimulus pressurizes the management to think of change in a sequential manner.

ii.          Stimulus on power structure leads to pressure the management to think of change followed by intervention, diagnose the problem, suggest a solution, experiment and then reinforce its implementation and continuity.

iii.          Reaction of power structure that leads to arouse an action, reorient and recognize internal problem, commit a new action, achieve results and accept new practices grounded into utter business reality.  

3. Leavitt’s System Model:

It is founded on the interactive nature of various subsystems in a change process. Normally there are four interacting sub-systems namely tasks, structure, people and technology. Due to their interacting nature, change in any one of the sub-systems tends to have consequences for the other sub-systems. Change in any one of the sub-systems can be worked out depending upon the situation. 

i.          Interactive subsystems in a change process - Tasks, Structure, People, Technology.

ii.          How these four subsystems interact with each other in a given situation, collate and collaborate so as to produce the desired results of intended change.

4.    Action Research Model:

French and Bell have defined action research as a process of systematically collecting research data about an ongoing system that relates to an objective, goal or need of that system. This data is fed back into the system. Action is taken by altering selected variables within the system based both on the data and on hypothesis, and evaluating the results of actions by collecting more data.  Searching of actions with an objective to help the organization achieve its goals is the essence of this approach. It involves continuous actions to find a solution to a problem.

Any OD model will need data to actually see the presence, intensity and impact of the problem. This enables to think of a solution grounded into real time business situations. 

After reviewing the aforementioned four models of OD, I will recommend to see the simplicity and complexity of the organizational problem and then apply one of these models to bring about a system or cultural change. I understand that not necessarily a model should be implemented as such, it can be modified by the HR experts to make it more suitable for their own change interventions.

Focused areas of OD interventions:

There could be as many areas needing OD interventions. I will briefly discuss a few in the preceding lines.

Individual focused interventions:

Such interventions revolve around career planning, career mobility, vertical and horizontal growth, promotions, career pathways, skills-based trainings, human behaviors related trainings, job redesign with focus on job enlargement, job enrichment, job rotation, job simplification, job role negotiations, leadership development trainings, formal and informal mentorships and coaching etc.

Group focused interventions:

Such interventions are aimed at changing the organization and its overall culture. Such interventions include employee engagement surveys, employee engagement activities involving planning and pleasure retreats, off site meetings, family get togethers, rewards & recognition programs, family well being initiatives, long term family benefits. Similarly, management by objectives (MB) leading to goal setting, implementing tasks, progress reviews, finding and fixing problems, achieving results together. Under Quality of Work Life (QWL), different interventions are introduced leading to employee well being like hybrid work arrangements, remote work, flexi hours, day care facilities, subsidized cafeterias, subsidized laundry services, pick and drop services, gym, reading corners etc.

Team building and motivation:

The interventions will revolve around mutual respect, recognition, effective communication, teamwork, collective decision making, democratic leadership and team management, two-way feedback, reverse mentoring, stretch projects, cross functional work arrangements, performance management through market driven monetary and non monetary rewards.

Above are just broader categories that are outlined to simplify and understand the OD process with strategic perspective in mind. HR leaders have to be very much conscious and proactive in terms of designing and implementing the OD interventions. It is how they can contribute to business growth through engagement with functionals heads, senior management, Boards to work on long term and planned OD initiatives.

Advantages of OD interventions:

OD interventions should be introduced in all types of organizations. Small organizations or companies may not need unless there is a business momentum going upward with business and financial growth. Still at small scale, it is advisable to think small and less costly OD initiatives so as to help the team grow, keep the employees motivated, enable them to think of long term stay and work for their own growth and that of the organization or business.

Few advantages of OD interventions are as follows:

1.     Care and mindfulness of the management is registered pragmatically. People and culture are built on strong foundations and its growth is natural and organic.

2.     Team motivation is the key goal that needs to be realized. Group OD interventions are aimed to ensure that people are positive, motivated and productive.

3.     Productivity at individual and collective level will lead to business and team amelioration. Employees need care in terms of their learning, career growth and their families.

4.     Mutual trust and respect come through taking different OD initiatives that serve the individual employees, their mindset being positive, work life balance is achieved and the goal of career planning and career path ways is ensured.

5.     Positive work culture will start taking shape as a result of different initiatives of collective decision making, collaborative work approach, learn and development, career planning and career mobility.

6.     Human capability is achieved where Organization, HR, People, Customers and Stakeholders are the main contributors and beneficiaries at the same time.

7.     Business growth and profitability are the mainstay of an organization. A highly motivated team will make sure that this fundamental objective is achieved and then sustained. OD interventions will contribute significantly to actualize this goal.

8.     People and culture are the essence of any profit or non-profit organization. People are the heart of an organization. People together with management create a positive and productive work culture. OD initiatives and their continuity in different times, ways and situations will build an organization taking care of its people who in turn will take care of customers and stakeholders’ value.

Final words:

As I said in the beginning, OD is an ever-evolving process. Organizations will need serious, mature and seasoned HR and OD experts to be mindful their surroundings, people, culture, business and overall business or organizational stature. They will make sure that they keep their fingers on the pulse of the people, organization, culture and observe very closely that there is not a simmering issue that could assume a dangerous shape at any time in future to bring the organization down to its knees.

The management and boards should not be shy of taking this long-term process because OD interventions take months and sometimes years to produce results. The impact is slow and steady as it will change the culture, system, sub system, behaviours of the people and overall business environment.