ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT (OD)
In today’s society, businesses are expanding, markets are becoming more diverse and even fragmenting and organisations are faced with adopting to new cultural makers and technology.
Organisational Development (OD) then becomes a critical focus to drive employees performance to the organisational goals.
WHAT IS ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT?
It is a development method designed to help organisations/ businesses plan and adapt to change and build the capability ready to deal with the changes.
OD is used to find the most important priorities within the company and help develop a strategic plan to increase performance and improve the function of an organisation to meet their objectives.
WHY IS OD IMPORTANT?
The workplace is always changing, and this makes the process of learning an ongoing task.
Organisational development caters to these changes, and allows people to prepare and adapt to them.
Many people are scared of change as they are set in their ways and feel happy within their ‘comfort zone’. The idea of change or perhaps the idea of the unknown is what scares people.
OD aims to prepare people for the transition, through structures and processes, making it easier and less stressful to adapt to the “unknown”.
Customers are becoming more demanding and better informed. They want results faster, better, and more improved and as globalization and this is one change that will gather momentum as globalization increases. Therefore companies and organisations that want to succeed in modern times need to be adaptable and be versatile. |
HOW ORGANISATIONS/ BUSINESSES CAN FOCUS ON ORGANISATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Every organisation is different; therefore OD needs to be adapted to companies individually.
However there are 3 main steps all organisations should follow:
Diagnosis: Use different methods of data collection (interviews, survey etc) to discover the organisations strengths and weaknesses. The clearer you are with your diagnosis, the better the outcome will be.
Intervention: after you have diagnosed the company’s issues, develop a strategy to tackle these issues. This can be done in many different ways (team building exercises, skill development, succession planning, improved performance reviews etc).
Evaluation: Monitor progress over a period of time (remember change is a process, it won’t happen over night- but it will happen!).
Organisational Development aims to provide managers with a way to introduce change systematically rather then suddenly. Above all it must be in line with the organizational goals and not be a person agenda item for one leader.
By following these steps and implementing organizational development within your business, there is no doubt it will lead to better personal, group and organizational success! |
