The Future of Organization Development
In 2011, Donald
Brown and a collection of students, colleagues, and managers created a 450-page
tome of insight, strategy, and experience designed to help managers learn
about organization development (OD) and the part it plays in bringing about change
in organizations. By creating an
awareness of environmental forces and empowering individuals with skills and
techniques to deal with change, their eighth edition of Organization Development has become a key resource in the hands of
successful leaders.
During my last class, Organization Change, I mentioned that
leadership is dangerous. In Leadership on the Line, Heifetz &
Linsky (2002) said, “To lead is to live dangerously because when leadership
counts, when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what
people hold dear—their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of
thinking—with nothing more to offer perhaps than a possibility” (p. 2). Just like individual change, corporations
change. Leaving adaptability and
strategy to chance is a thin strategy with a short shelf life. Times are changing faster than ever and the
organizations that are able to react and adapt quickly are the ones that will
survive. The most effective way to
secure that survival is by understanding and implementing OD into a company’s
way of life. Leaders and managers who
dismiss OD as a fad do so at their own peril.
Brown (2011) said,
“Change is coming down on us like an avalanche, and most people are utterly
unprepared to cope with it. Tomorrow’s world will be different from todays,
calling for new organizational approaches” (p. 3). Brown is bringing to the forefront what many
businesses would rather ignore. With
over three decades of research and experiments, Brown and his research team
have identified the common, and often uncommon, threads of human interaction,
technological advancements, and external forces that continually push and pull
an organization throughout its lifecycle.
In short, he is making an urgent plea for organizations to seek fluidity
over traditional static strategies.
During last semester, I viewed a video by the RSA titled The 21st Century Enlightenment. In the video, Matthew Taylor said society
needs a new perspective that “requires us to see past simplistic ideas and
inadequate perceptions of freedom, justice, and progress.” The RSA are active thinkers and leaders that
research and challenge people to find better ways of living. Taylor said, “We need to reconnect a concrete
understanding of who we are, who we need to be, and more importantly, who we
aspire to be.” It is no wonder that at
the heart of the RSA's contemporary mission about the future prospects
for the human race is the question ‘can
we go on like this?’ Will the ideas
and values which transformed our world in the last two centuries be sufficient
to find solutions to the challenges we now face or do we need new ways of
thinking?
OD
helps managers with “new ways of thinking” and allows them to avoid many of the
pitfalls that cause companies to implode.
In their book Decisive, Chip and Dan Heath (2013) said, “Much has been written in recent
years about intuitive decisions, which can be surprisingly quick and
accurate. But—and this is a critical
‘but’—intuition is only accurate in domains where it has been carefully
trained.” By viewing organizational life
through the lens of an OD perspective, leaders are better equipped to identify
structural, technological, or behavior capabilities that may be minimizing
success. Merely leaving decisions to
emotions or chance can—and more than likely will—produce ineffective and
inefficient results.
In his groundbreaking work, Good to
Great, Jim Collins (2001) said, “The good-to-great companies did not focus
principally on what to do to become
great; they focused equally on what not
to do and what to stop doing” (p.
11). OD creates an organizational
infrastructure that monitors and measures behaviors, processes, and strategies
concerning an organization’s health and wellness. Without OD, an organization bases decisions
solely on profits. Like the human body,
sometimes what appears outwardly healthy can be terribly sick within. OD acts as the intentional pursuit of health
and vitality. As Collins (2001) said,
“Greatness is not a function of circumstance.
Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice” (p.
11).
Brown (2011) said, “Because of the
rapid changes, predicting the future trends in OD is difficult, if not
impossible. Organization development has
moved far beyond its historical antecedents and is continually adding new
approaches and techniques as new problem areas emerge. What is needed are comprehensive, long-term
approaches that integrate the systems into long-term solutions” (p. 425). These long-term solutions will be found as
today and tomorrow’s leaders become functional experts in organizational
culture, change management, data diagnosis, employee empowerment, team
development, goal setting, and creating strategies that facilitate successful transformation. Finally, John Kotter (2012) said, “Today’s
trends demand more agility and change-friendly organizations; more leadership
from more people, and not just top management; more strategic sophistication; and,
most basically, a much greater capacity to execute bold strategic initiatives
rapidly while minimizing the size and number of bumps in the road that slow you
down” (p. ix).
Over the past 19 weeks (with a one week
break)—nearly five months—I’ve been reading, writing, evaluating, and studying
organizational change and the importance of high-performing teams. The material and discussions have immersed me
in the latest strategic initiatives designed to improve and strengthen an organization, their employees, and their products. Not a stone was
left unturned. But, with all research,
there is always more to see and more to find.
With my new tools in hand, there is little doubt that I am better
equipped, inspired, and significantly more aware of how to make an organization
and a team better. And, as an added
bonus, I have personally improved as well.
References
Collins, J. (2001). Good to great. New York, NY:
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2013). Decisive. New York, NY: Random House.
Heifetz, R.A., & Linsky, M.
(2002). Leadership on the line.
Boston, MA: Harvard
Business
School Publishing.
Kotter, J. (2012). Leading change. Boston, MA: Harvard
Business Review Press.
Taylor, M. (2010). RSA Animate: The
21st Century Enlightenment. Retrieved from
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=youtu.be
Taylor, M. (n.d.). The 21st
Century Enlightenment. Retrieved from
http://www.thersa.org/about-us/rsa-pamphlets/21st-century-enlightenment
No comments:
Post a Comment