Organizational Development
New Year...New Plans?
We have now turned the corner on the new year and with it may come a mix of anxiety and excitement about what it will bring for ourselves and our organizations. Every year has its pleasant surprises and satisfactions and its disappointments and frustrations.
To tip the odds in favor of the former, most of us recognize that doing some planning about where we want to go or what we want to achieve will help. Yet, for many of us, the term “strategic planning” brings to mind elaborate processes and obfuscating jargon that hinders more than helps.
Year-End Reflection on Values
It is December and soon the last page of this year’s calendar will be discarded. For many of us, the passing of the year prompts reflection on what we have accomplished over the past twelve months. If it has been an especially fruitful year, our sentiments may be inclined toward gratitude for what has been and hope for what lies ahead. If this has not been one of our better years but rather one where the challenges we faced weighed us down more heavily than the victories we enjoyed could uplift us, then maybe we move into this time with unease, whether looking backward or forward. In either case, end-of-year reflections naturally tend to lead into new-year musings.
Organizational Structure
Do we get things done because of our organization’s structure … or in spite of it? Last week I introduced Marvin Weisbord’s “Six-Box Organizational Model” of doing assessments. To review, those boxes are: 1) relationships, 2) mechanisms, 3) rewards, 4) structure, 5) purpose, and 6) leadership.
I then mentioned that one of the issues which will often arise in conducting an assessment is the design of the organization. Is your organization designed for optimal effectiveness? Or, are structures the way they are because “things have just always been done that way” and “that is the way they have to be”? Do your policies and procedures and meetings propel progress? Or, do they impede it?
Organizational Assessment
As the seasonal holidays loom, some of you may be looking at the transition from one annual cycle to the next and wondering how it could be that “things are so messed up.” Maybe you started the fall excited about the possibilities, only to approach Thanksgiving with the question of “how did we get to where we are now!?” If this question is on your mind, then you might well consider engaging in the process of an organizational assessment.
Organizational Assessment and Weisbord’s “Six-Box Organizational Model”
Ground Rulesfor Working Together Effectively, Part I
Every working group, whether a board or committee or senior management team, needs to have a set of common understandings about how its members will work with each other effectively. Here is a list of possibilities. I urge every group to take this list of suggestions and decide together upon a short list of do's and don'ts for better effectiveness.
At Meetings...
Organization Development
Organize
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
-- Niccolo Di Bernardo Machiavelli
The Challenge
Organization Development
Unfold
When we see clearly, we can change.
-- Ayya Khema
At its most basic level, organization development (OD) is about increasing the effectiveness and general vitality of an organization through a planned change effort. These efforts usually pertain to how the organization actually operates, i.e. its procedures and practices. A typical OD approach is to assess a given situation, prepare recommendations about how to intervene profitably in that situation, and then to proceed with the implementation of those recommendations.
