How Do You Define Success in a New Role? Sharing My Achievements as Head of Organization Development

I have joined recently a governmnet sector in Abu Dhabi and appointed as a Head of Organization Developmnet last October 2009. My boss has requested me to list all my achievements last year despite short period of time .



It was an an interesting question and achievement for each individual can be different...and it's important in which context he was asking. What can be an achievement for me...might be a regular thing for someone else.



My Achievements as follows:



Ø Initiated and Designed the Orientation Program (Arabic & English) version aimed at giving new employees an overall perspective of the organization.



Ø Identified gaps during the organization review and proactively prepared the internal departmental transfer flow chart and the organizational change request flow chart in order to enhance the HR Business process.





Ø Selected as a core member of the Recruitment committee by conducting job Interviews.



Ø Prepared an excel sheet shows the manpower required and the summarized head count of the each department and shows the Year plan of Recruitment.



Ø Designed an organization chart graphically represents the management structure of an organization by using a Smart Art graphic in Microsoft Office Excel 2007



Ø Reviewed , updated and finalized the organization structure for the manpower strength of the organization (158) employees



Ø Conducted Online Employee Satisfaction Survey (ESS), interpreted the results and proposed recommended action plan to improve the Employee Satisfaction level.



Ø Prepared a Performance Assessment form to assess all employees who are in contract basis before confirming the employee under SCAD organization or terminate the employee if the performance is bad.



I need your feeback on the above lists and waiting for your feedback

and commnets if any.



Regards,

Khaled Al Maskari

Head of Organization Development

Dear Maskari,

Congratulations! I personally think you have done well in such a short time span.

Firstly, my suggestion to you is to expand on what you have listed above to include how your company will benefit from these programs. Even better, support it with numbers derived through, for example, modeling.

Secondly, do you know what the expectations of the company are from you as Head of OD? If the programs you have designed and implemented are not aligned with those expectations, you may be seen as having "underperformed." For instance, if the company wanted succession planning but it was not executed.

While it is true that to be hired as Head of OD, you must have the self-initiative to get things going, it would be even better to address the critical and expected tasks from the company. You may directly approach your boss to get that direction or, through informal discussions (even at lunch), gather such information.

Regards,
Autumn Jane

Dear Khaled Al Maskari,

Good that you have initiated the OD interventions. My comments are as below:

Ø Initiated and Designed the Orientation Program (Arabic & English) version aimed at giving new employees an overall perspective of the organization - have you included case example of how the values were exercised in action? This will go a long way.

Ø Selected as a core member of the Recruitment committee by conducting job Interviews - have you set the recruitment standards? Have you set the system to appraise the recruitment?

Ø Prepared an excel sheet shows the manpower required and the summarized head count of the each department and shows the Year plan of Recruitment - have you devised mechanism to check who will what work, how much and in how much time?

Ø Designed an organization chart graphically represents the management structure of an organization by using a Smart Art graphic in Microsoft Office Excel 2007 - have you included this chard in induction manual. Employee when joins the company should know his/her position in the organisation chart.

Ø Conducted Online Employee Satisfaction Survey (ESS), interpreted the results and proposed recommended action plan to improve the Employee Satisfaction level. - when are you going to do this ESS next time? Your action plan will how its effectiveness only if there is improvement.

Ø Prepared a Performance Assessment form to assess all employees who are in contract basis before confirming the employee under SCAD organization or terminate the employee if the performance is bad. - have you devised the mechanism to check the cost of poor performance? This will also show cost of poor recruitment. Secondly, you can also link output of PA to employee training and development.

Additional recommendations: - What you have done in just three months is really good. Now also need to prepare career plan for every single employee. You should be quite clear what each employee will be doing say after 2 or 4 or 5 years. This is herculean task, but then that is what OD is.

Ok...

Dinesh V Divekar