Seeking Guidance on Crafting an Effective Organizational Development Plan for a Growing HR Team

Dear seniors, I have been given the opportunity to write an OD plan by my senior HR manager. I believe I can handle the content with guidance on the headings. Please provide me with direction, and I will repost the document in a doc format so that you know your input is respected, and you can review and provide further comments.

By the way, I am an L&D officer at a construction firm whose HR department is still in its early stages.

Thank you in advance. I am eagerly looking forward to hearing from you.

Regards, Aung Ko Ko

Congratulations on your new assignment. You have developed a positive attitude towards completing this task successfully and now require guidance to proceed.

First Steps in Developing an OD Plan

Your first step toward developing an OD plan for your company is to initiate discussions with your Senior HR Manager and gather relevant information essential for the OD plan. It is crucial to seek guidance from your Senior Manager as both of you have a deep understanding of your organization. You may need to engage with your higher officials in the presence of your Senior Manager.

Can you expect us to guide you without understanding the insights of your organization? No, you can't. Your plan needs to be proofread by your Senior Manager, followed by necessary modifications.

Collaborative Efforts for Success

I recommend that you work collaboratively with your peers and department employees. This collaborative effort is vital for developing interpersonal skills, which ultimately leads to better professional relationship management.

Good luck in all your endeavors.

With profound regards,

Dear Skhadir, I anticipated this kind of logic long before any reply, and yes, I must mention from the very beginning that my assignment was a scrutiny, at least for my senior manager, to assess what I'm actually made of. Now that the thread has begun, it would only be respectful of me to tell everything from A to Z.

I joined as a Health Supervisor in the H&S section of HR, with a medical degree and an HR QCF Level 5 diploma in HRM, armed with a top paper prize in HRM from the ABE June 2012 exams. Two weeks later, the manager who appointed me left. A Senior Manager joined, who is a government retiree with some 30 years of work experience. The thing is, we're going through a major structural reform. He's also proposing a lot of reforms and making an OD plan of his own while demanding that I create one as well. My safety officer showcased my academic achievements to the BOD, and suddenly, I became head of L&D with more than double a pay rise before my probation was over.

Currently, I'm the lone player in the entire HRD function. There was an HR meeting in which I made the VC nod a lot over developmental moves we could and should make. Now, I'm being questioned whether I actually knew what I was talking about. This taught me a lesson not to outshine my boss, but walking away from it? No, sir.

I obviously bit off more than I can chew, and now I simply must learn how to manage it in time, with or without help. I am just trying to get any help I can muster.

With the warmest of willing respect,

Aung Ko Ko

Organizational Agility and HR's Role

This is especially about organizational agility that the HR department can help bring about. I'm thinking about three steps in achieving it:

1. Individual development
2. Management development
3. Organized empowerment of line management

Please help me swim through these murky depths.

Regards,
Aung Ko Ko

Earlier, there was a discussion on the subject. One Manish Sawankar had prepared the plan and uploaded it on this forum. Later, there were contrary views as well. Click the following link to refer to it: https://www.citehr.com/276333-od-pro...low-chart.html

Please review the inputs from this link and further improve upon them. Once you are done, kindly upload your OD plan as well.

Ok...

Dinesh V Divekar

I am sure there will be more qualified experts here to help you with your OD info. I would like to commend you on your positive attitude. Swimming in the 'murky' waters of organizational politics is not for the faint-hearted, and you certainly seem to be made of tougher stuff. Stay true to your convictions and always do what is right. Success will surely follow. I speak from personal experience.

Cheers!
Prashant Sharma

Organization Development Process

Organization Development is a continuous process. Based on the information shared by you, I am outlining an approach that you could consider. I have also attached reading material.

Discovery Phase

- Determine business challenges impacting revenue or growth and their root causes. For example, accidents, quality issues, attrition, morale.

Data Analysis

- Identify people issues that may contribute to the problems, such as supervisory skills, attitude to safety, pay/benefit issues, performance recognition.

Implementation

- Develop solutions to address the problem, get support from senior leaders, and institutionalize the solution through the leaders. Most importantly, seek inputs from your bosses at every stage and let him/her take part credit.

Best Wishes,

Chandra

Organizational Agility and HR's Role

Hello Aung,

Empowerment and adequate decentralization are essential for organizational agility. Most managements, while expecting agility, are not sure of giving empowerment due to a lack of trust in employees' willingness and ability to be accountable for it.

Clearly, your people development efforts will have to focus on developing a culture of accountability. Normally, this is a tough challenge as all your line managers will have to lead from the front to create an 'experience' of 'reward and consequence'.

So, in effect, the stages you have identified are correct. Just that in your place, I would focus more on leaders' ability to demonstrate and create an experience.

All the best!

Shamik Vora

[QUOTE=chandra50002000;2048113] Most importantly, seek inputs from your bosses at every stage and let him/her take part credit. Best Wishes, Chandra

Dear Chandra, "Let them take part of the credit"? Are you kidding? Speaking like a doctor, if a life is saved, it doesn't matter who gets the credit! I'd happily let anyone who wants it have it provided I could save my patient and, in this case, my organization. And I have one "superweapon" that'll get me all the inputs we're gonna need from our bosses: The golden "What do you think?" question. President Eisenhower used it. Jack Welch used it. Steve Jobs used it. Why won't I?

And thanks for the reading materials. The ppt is as amazingly helpful and compact as it is.

Best regards, Aung Ko Ko

Inspiration and Management Development

It is widely believed that "People only uphold what they helped create." According to Dale Carnegie, the best way to inspire people, in this case, line management, to champion something is to make them think it is their idea! This is no easy task, but what is easy hardly works, and what works is rarely easy. I consider myself result-oriented, not someone who tends to be satisfied with any result that can be obtained by following pleasing methods.

The previous manager who left also speaks to the value of management development regarding this matter. Now it makes two of you, though lexical density varies between you two.

All the best!

Regards, Aung Ko Ko

P.S. I uploaded a PowerPoint document that depicts Step 1 of the plan. I'll keep you all informed of the process.

I'm glad to know that you learned something from your mistakes. It's common, and we all learn from our mistakes. There is no need to panic. Just relax. I am sure things will be fine as you start doing something better than nothing. You can swim through murky waters as long as you work collaboratively while coordinating with your superiors. I am sure neither you will be blamed nor held responsible for rolling out a relevant OD plan aiming to bring reforms supporting OD. Do not forget to communicate effectively and strictly avoid assumptions. Please feel free to share your views with your superiors. It is their responsibility to guide a new joiner.

Steps to Begin Your OD Plan

To start, take up one task (which you may understand better and have little exposure to) and start analyzing your organization's current status. Prepare a report, and this will help you to define what needs to be improved further. This process is similar to Lean Six Sigma. You need to interact with your superiors and seek their inputs/guidance because OD intervention is not a one-man show.

It's your team that can truly bring relevant changes in your organization as you are the team involved in all those policies framed by your management. I am sure it will take time as you start amending changes in your policies supporting the OD process.

Levels of Improvement

At the end of the day, whatever plan you may define, the improvement must reflect at:
1. Organization level
2. Department level
3. Employee level

Else your organization's progress level will be imbalanced.

With profound regards,

Good Luck

Dear Seniors,

Allow me to update you all regarding what's horribly wrong. I tried requesting guidance and support in terms of reference material several times, but my Senior Manager is literally applying all evasive maneuvers to provide me with both for the assignment while he's been preaching all the time about understanding. It's time I evaluated how concrete or volatile "understanding" can be. I'm requesting:

1. Succinct guidance
2. References required to carry out my assignment in writing, keeping a copy of that requisition report in hand.

That will stifle relations (if there's any at all), of course, but what should I do other than that?

Regards,
Aung Ko Ko

Did you ever try to do whatever I had requested you to do in my recent post? Without evaluating your current organization's status/modus operandi, you will never be able to define what needs to be further developed. Why don't you start with the HR Department and submit your views first? Just put it in writing whatever you understood, as there is no specific format to support this process. Let senior officials/management decide. Remember, this will cost the company; therefore, they must arrive at the tentative figures.

In case you guys can't do it or if you are not able to figure out what needs to be done, if you can afford to hire an experienced OD specialist, go ahead and get it done. Why are you inviting stress? Most organizations end up losing more money whenever they try to save a little. This is the bitter fact.

Last but not least, you need to be assertive and must update your seniors on "what you know and what you don't." It is their responsibility to assess your skills and knowledge and develop a plan stating what exactly you need to do, implement it, and provide you feedback.

With profound regards