OD is a critical tool for change in any organisation

OD (Organisation Development) & Change Strategies

If OD does not deliver bottom line results and impact the effectiveness of a business it is a worthless intervention.

True OD focuses upon improving that which composes the culture of the business to generate the desired results. Using gap analysis to aid the process means calibrating the current culture: detailing the desired future state and then transitioning that gap.

OD Consulting addresses issues both strategic and tactical in nature.  Below are core issues attract top team players who are keen to resolve current problems. These range from organisational re-design to team building, from creating a joint venture that works, to post acquisition strategy.

	OD is about creating strategic improvements

OD Consulting - what is it?

Here is a short article that focuses precisely on OD.  You'll find the charactersitics of a successful change inititaive as well as references to instances when leveraging change can be achieved by focusing on cultural and behaviour.

OD is critically diffierent from most change tools and therein lies its strengths to tailor solutions to unusual problems faced by businesses in unique circumstances.

OD Consulting: What is It?  More››

	Precision to leverage change

GE and its contribution to OD and developing a Methodology for Change

We can learn a great deal about the art and science of driving change from GE.  General Electric is one of the largest and most successful conglomerates in the World and has always been committed to developing models for implementing improvement in its businesses.   

Jack Welch, recently retired, was CEO of GE for almost twenty years.  He took over as CEO in the 80’s and inherited a large business that he considered was slow to change. 

GE & WorkOut 

Amongst other things he committed to ‘structure the business for change’ and in the late 80’s introduced a change management tool later entitled ‘Work-Out’. 

‘Work-Out’ was a concept that would infiltrate the whole business - from GE Aero Engines, to Plastics and Financial Services.  Work-Out, as a concept of continuous improvement, transcended the whole business of more than 300,000 people and brought about a major cultural shift. 

Work-Out created a common language for organizational improvement and was a forerunner of the highly successful methodology – the CAP (Change Acceleration Process).

GE Change Acceleration Process (CAP)

The seven stage CAP broadly followed the action research model implicit within OD.  GE was probably one of the first businesses to develop a model for change which focused not just on introducing and managing technological change but also equally geared to dealing with cultural change.

CAP is a very useful methodology and a discipline for others to follow.  I refined this into a five stage Rapid Improvement Strategy››

Rapid Improvement is five stage process that captures all the change management issues that anyone would want to address.  With the Rapid Model we avoid the bureaucracy often associated with the CAP model which dictates certain actions which could be easily sidelined as inappropriate for the project under scrutiny.

Anyway, assess the Rapid Improvement Model and consider how this could be used by your organisation to ease change and close the loop on those projects that seem to take for ever to be implemented.

	Technical and Cultural change integrated

Change is a Systemic Process 

When Change Fails

I believe it is important to look at how change fails to be implemented.  It is all based on ther fact that 'change agents' do not understand the systemic process of change.

Change in a Cultural & Behavioural System

As we introduce change in a 'cultural and behavioral' system or organization we cannot account for all the activities that arise from one particular action.  Therefore we need to seek continual feedback from our actions and adapt as we see necessary. 

Are we going in the right corporate direction? 

This reflects activity in the real world and the metaphor I use to illustrate its credibility is the Airplane analogy.  It is worth noting that all planes are only "on course" for a few minutes of their total flight - no matter how long the journey – which is during take-off and landing.  The rest of the time feedback from instruments helps the Pilot or ‘on board self correcting systems’ making minor changes to the flight trajectory. 

Paying attention to Feedback is what makes change work

Paying attention to feedback is the key issue in implementing Change.  Without feedback, we do not know if we are ‘on course or lost.’  A failure to understand and access relevant feedback means we have no means of knowing whether we are ‘nearer to or further away’ from our goal. 

Although feedback is critical in letting us fine-tune our trajectory for change, little resource and energy is devoted to capturing data that indicates the extent to which we have made specific and tangible progress. 

For instance, we can launch a drive for change and run a series of public presentations outlining the purpose of the program and yet fail to assess the response to it.  Many still have difficulty evaluating the effectiveness of even the most basic Training course or Workshops.  

Imagine if you had the attitude of curiosity, and the tools to measure progress during every stage of the change or project for which you acted as Client or Consultant,  what effect could this have on overall progress?

What to Measure – Culture & Results

The average organization continues to fail to create the relevant metrics to use feedback constructively.   There is a failure to be able to document what it is that causes results to be achieved. 

What is the impact of Culture on Business Performance

We fail to understand precisely what elements of the culture we can manipulate to create a specific desired goal.  We have not traced a sequence of cause-effect relationships between our ‘cultural and behavioral inputs’ and our ‘business outputs’. 

The real secret is developing a scorecard approach between the vision we have for the business and the performance measures, which tell us whether we are on course or not.  It is possible to highlight specific ‘behavioural’ practices and actions that will yield specific results.  Too few practitioners understand how to build that process into their organizations.

Do Consultants understand Culture & Behaviour Change?

This is a major competency gap for some Consultants.  They need to understand not only qualitative, but, more importantly, qualitative means of measuring culture and behavior change.  They need to be able to focus upon the critical incidents that indicate whether a change has been accepted or not or whether a new process is working.  The real secret is to develop the behavioral tools to elicit the feedback that tells us are we making progress?

This continual quest for the interpretation of feedback is extremely powerful in assessing potential problems and error prevention and is important for anyone engaged in bringing about large scale organizational change.