Have You Ever Made a Difference as an OD Practitioner? Share Your Success or Failure Stories

Dear friends, can anyone share their experiences (i.e., success or failure stories) as an OD practitioner or OD consultant? Even an HR manager who has gone through such difficult situations can also comment. To make the question clearer: Have you faced any situations in your organization (good or bad) where your intervention as an OD practitioner resulted in the success or failure of that situation? You need not mention your company's name; even if you do, it will be kept confidential. The details you share will be used for academic purposes only.

Organizational Dynamics: A Personal Experience

It's nice to read this thread. In general, practicing HR professionals are nowadays not observed to be very much engaged with the CiteHR forum. I have noted similar sentiments from your statement, "Even an HR Manager Who Has Done or Gone Through Any Such Difficult Situations Can Also Comment." Many readers must have engaged in Organizational Development (OD), facilitated, or driven the assignment, and so have I.

Organizational Dynamics (OD)

Organizational Dynamics (OD) is the study of how people in a large company or organization behave and react to each other, and of how the organization can be made to work more effectively. While conducting this intervention, I carried out a diagnosis and reported survey findings to the Top Management Team and shared this report with the participants of the study. Management allowed this act of sharing the survey findings, and by doing this, line managers started listening to the Top Management Team and HR as a medium and source, both with dependence and concern. Collectively, they saw more focus on routine and managed executions better than earlier. At this point, management formed various teams for gap corrections. One such team was the Remuneration and Succession Planning Team, which took three months to prepare comparative packages and statements suggesting revisions, and the same was executed.

So, OD intervention does not threaten HR, nor any functionary, not at all. It is, otherwise, a scientific research and management intervention undertaken to improve organizational effectiveness from dysfunctional to futuristic strides.

Best regards,

RDS Yadav
DIRECTOR - Future Institute of Engineering and Management Technology
Labour Law Advisor,
Navtarang HR Services
[Email Removed For Privacy Reasons]

Rarely on this forum do we get queries related to Organisation Development (OD). I would have responded to your query promptly; nevertheless, I thought of waiting for the OD consultants to respond. However, no OD consultant worth their salt has come forward to address your query. If you had raised a query on training or consulting on OD, consultants of all hues would have jostled to show how "expert" they were in providing their services to you. A few would have stretched their imagination and told you how psychometric tests or outbound training is a classic OD activity. A week has passed since you posted your query, and still, our experts are silent. However, value addition through their reticence, since it perfectly fits within the rules of this forum, let me move on to my reply.

It appears that you have not read sufficient books on the subject of OD. OD is not an event so that its success or failure can be measured so easily. OD can be defined as a change effort that is (a) planned (b) focused on an entire organisation or a large subsystem (c) managed from the top (d) aimed at enhancing organisational health and effectiveness and (e) based on planned interventions made with the help of a change agent (manager) or external consultant who is well-versed in the behavioural sciences.

Major Features of Organisational Development:

a) The change is planned and proactive rather than reactive.

b) The changes are aimed at a whole organisation or a large division or department rather than one small group or narrow aspect such as an inventory system or compensation system.

c) Top management recognises the need for change, but the change effort itself involves the cooperation of organisation members at other levels as well.

d) The major focus is on increasing the capacity for long-run effectiveness, even though OD solves immediate problems as well.

e) OD relies on the use of interventions, which are OD change strategies developed and initiated with the help of a change agent (internal and external) who acts as a catalyst to initiate improvements.

From the above features, it can be deduced that OD is a complex process that may take a year or more to design and implement, and the process may continue indefinitely. It tries to move an organisation from where it is now to where it should be after some time.

The query that you have raised shows that you are under the notion that OD is some isolated activity.

Example of Infosys and HP: Since Mr. Vishal Sikka took over as CEO of Infosys, he has launched an organisation-wide programme called "design thinking." This is a major shift to make Infosys a product-based IT company from a service-based company. The second example is HP. This company was once very strong in computer hardware. However, as the sales of computers started dwindling, it made a major shift to cloud technology.

General Example of OD: In order to optimise the utilisation of resources, suppose some big company decides to implement Operations Research (OR) techniques across the organisation; then mere hiring of OR consultants is not enough. Staff need to be educated on how they can support the consultants. Once this goes on for a couple of years, the decrease in the consumption of resources or reduction in turnaround time of various processes is the success of an OD intervention. Introduction of lean manufacturing, Six Sigma, ISO 9000 could be OD interventions, albeit partially if not fully.

The above two examples show that the OD interventions are in support of the organisation's strategy. I am saying "strategy" and not "vision" or "mission," please note. Sans the strategic direction, if OD interventions are conducted in isolation or when HR launches a few interventions on their own, these are bound to fail. The second important factor of OD interventions is that HR should be empowered sufficiently. There are cases wherein strategy was executed even though HR played an insignificant role.

You will find a reply to your query in HR-related or business-related magazines. HR Heads write articles on the success of OD intervention in their organisation. As far as failure in OD interventions is concerned, hardly will you get that example as nobody discloses their failures, or in India, there are no failures!

For Mr. RDS Yadav: Though Amritha could have written the full form of OD rather than just the abbreviation, let me specify that the abbreviation OD in HR is used predominantly for "Organisation Development" and not for "Organisational Dynamics." There are consultants for organisational development and not for organisational dynamics.

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar

Thank you, Dinesh, for that. The examples were really useful. I actually wanted those examples, if possible from people who have gone through that success or failures. That's why I referred to it as an "event".

Thank you for your precious time.

Regards, Amritha Zachariah.

The kind of information you are looking for is difficult to obtain, at least in India. This very forum is evidence of what I say. None of the OD consultants have uploaded even a fraction of the information. Therefore, you may try looking for publications in HBR. They might have published something. Further, in regular HBR issues, the publishers might have provided some case studies. Therefore, you have to search for the information or excavate it.

I have come across an article where there is filtered information. Click the following link to refer to it: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-...edictor-tv-rao

By the way, while seeking information, propriety demands giving a little information about yourself too. Why have you raised this post? Are you a student or a professional? If the latter, then what is your designation? Why did you not ask for advice from the seniors in your company?

Whether you are a student or a professional, have you read books on OD? A sufficient number of books are available on Amazon.in. Have you tried that?

Thanks,

Dinesh Divekar