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Organization Development Fifth Edition SAGE PUBLISHING: OUR STORY At SAGE, we mean business. We believe in creating evidence-based, cutting-edge content that helps you prepare your students to succeed in today’s ever-changing business world. We strive to provide you with the tools you need to develop the next generation of leaders, managers, and entrepreneurs. •• We invest in the right authors who distill research findings and industry ideas into practical applications. •• We keep our prices affordable and provide multiple format options for students. •• We remain permanently independent and fiercely committed to quality content and innovative resources. Organization Development The Process of Leading Organizational Change Fifth Edition Donald L. Anderson University of Denver FOR INFORMATION: Copyright © 2020 by SAGE Publications, Inc. SAGE Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted by U.S. copyright law, no part of this work may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail: [email protected] SAGE Publications Ltd. 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP United Kingdom All third party trademarks referenced or depicted herein are included solely for the purpose of illustration and are the property of their respective owners. Reference to these trademarks in no way indicates any relationship with, or endorsement by, the trademark owner. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data SAGE Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Names: Anderson, Donald L., 1971- author. India Title: Organization development : the process of leading organizational change / Donald L. Anderson, University of Denver. SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte. Ltd. Description: Fifth edition. | Los Angeles : SAGE, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 18 Cross Street #10-10/11/12 China Square Central Singapore 048423 Identifiers: LCCN 2019028212 | ISBN 9781544333021 (paperback) | ISBN 9781544333007 (epub) | ISBN 9781544333038 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Organizational change. Classification: LCC HD58.8 .A68144 2020 | DDC 658.4/06—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019028212 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Acquisitions Editor: Maggie Stanley Editorial Assistant: Janeane Calderon Marketing Manager: Sarah Panella Production Editor: Veronica Stapleton Hooper Copy Editor: Sheree Van Vreede Typesetter: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Proofreader: Dennis W. Webb Indexer: Will Ragsdale Cover Designer: Dally Verghese 19 20 21 22 23 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 BRIEF CONTENTS Prefacexv Acknowledgmentsxix CHAPTER 1 • What Is Organization Development? 1 CHAPTER 2 • History of Organization Development 24 CHAPTER 3 • Core Values and Ethics of Organization Development49 CHAPTER 4 • Foundations of Organizational Change 72 CHAPTER 5 • The Organization Development Practitioner and the OD Process 104 CHAPTER 6 • Entry and Contracting 128 CHAPTER 7 • Data Gathering 146 CHAPTER 8 • Diagnosis and Feedback 176 CHAPTER 9 • An Introduction to Interventions 206 CHAPTER 10 • Individual Interventions 226 CHAPTER 11 • Team Interventions 252 CHAPTER 12 • Whole Organization and Multiple Organization Interventions 291 CHAPTER 13 • Organization Culture and Design Interventions340 CHAPTER 14 • Sustaining Change, Evaluating, and Ending an Engagement 370 CHAPTER 15 • Global Issues in Organization Development388 CHAPTER 16 • The Future of Organization Development418 References439 Author Index 463 Subject Index 471 About the Author 480 DETAILED CONTENTS Prefacexv Exercises and Activities xvi Ancillariesxvii Acknowledgmentsxix CHAPTER 1 • What Is Organization Development? 1 Organization Development Defined 2 Making the Case for Organization Development 3 What Organization Development Looks Like Example 1: Increasing Employee Participation in a Public Sector Organization Example 2: Senior Management Coaching at Vodaphone Example 3: Team Development in a Cancer Center Example 4: A Future Search Conference in a Northern California Community Example 5: A Long-Term Strategic Change Engagement 4 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Marvin Weisbord 4 5 6 6 7 9 What Organization Development Is Not Management Consulting Training and Development Short Term The Application of a Toolkit 10 10 11 11 12 Who This Book Is For 12 Overview of the Book 13 Analyzing Case Studies 14 Summary17 Questions for Discussion 17 For Further Reading 18 ´´CASE STUDY 1: Every Coin Has Two Sides 18 CHAPTER 2 • History of Organization Development 24 Laboratory Training and T-Groups 24 Action Research, Survey Feedback, and Sociotechnical Systems Survey Feedback Sociotechnical Systems 27 27 29 Management Practices 31 Quality and Employee Involvement 35 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Robert J. Marshak 38 Organizational Culture 39 Change Management, Strategic Change, and Reengineering 41 Organizational Learning 42 Organizational Effectiveness and Employee Engagement 45 Agility and Collaboration 45 Summary47 Questions for Discussion 48 For Further Reading 48 CHAPTER 3 • Core Values and Ethics of Organization Development49 Defining Values 49 Why Are Values Important to the OD Practitioner? 50 Core Values of Organization Development Participation, Involvement, and Empowerment The Importance of Groups and Teams Growth, Development, and Learning Valuing the Whole Person 51 52 54 54 55 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Frederick A. Miller Dialogue and Collaboration Authenticity, Openness, and Trust 56 57 58 Changes to OD Values Over Time and the Values Debate 58 Challenges to Holding Organization Development Values 60 Statement of Organization Development Ethics 61 Summary61 Questions for Discussion 62 For Further Reading 62 Exercise: What Would You Do? 62 Appendix63 ´´CASE STUDY 2: Analyzing Opportunities for Organization Development Work at Northern County Legal Services 68 CHAPTER 4 • Foundations of Organizational Change 72 Levels and Characteristics of Organizational Change 73 Models of Organizational Change: Systems Theory and Social Construction Approaches 75 Organizations as Systems The Value of Systems Theory for OD Practitioners Models of Organizational Change Consistent With a Systems Theory Approach ´´Profiles in Organization Development—W. Warner Burke 75 77 78 84 Organizations as Socially Constructed 88 The Value of the Social Construction Approach for OD Practitioners90 Approaches to Organizational Change Consistent With a Social Construction Perspective 92 New Paradigms in OD 94 Summary96 Questions for Discussion 97 For Further Reading 97 Exercise: Using Organizational Change Models 97 ´´CASE STUDY 3: “I Just Can’t Work With Her:” Team Conflict in the Northeast Sales Division 98 CHAPTER 5 • The Organization Development Practitioner and the OD Process 104 The Consulting Relationship and Types of Consulting Expert Model Doctor–Patient Model Mechanic Model 104 105 106 106 The Organization Development Consulting Model 107 OD Practitioners: Who Are They and Where Do They Work? 109 Internal Versus External Consulting: Advantages and Disadvantages110 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Matt Minahan Ethical Issues for Internal and External Consultants 111 113 The Organization Development Consulting Profession Becoming an OD Consultant Skills and Competencies for OD Consultants 114 114 115 The OD Consulting Process and Action Research 117 A Dialogic Approach to OD 119 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Gervase R. Bushe 124 Summary126 Questions for Discussion 126 For Further Reading 126 CHAPTER 6 • Entry and Contracting 128 Entry129 Ethical Issues During the Entry Stage 130 Who Is the Client? 131 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—David W. Jamieson 132 Contracting134 What Is Contracting? 135 The Purpose of Contracting 137 Success in the Contracting Meeting 140 Recontracting141 Ethics in Contracting 142 Contracting as Data Gathering 143 Summary143 Questions for Discussion 144 For Further Reading 144 Exercise: Contracting 144 CHAPTER 7 • Data Gathering 146 The Importance of Data Gathering 147 Presenting Problems and Underlying Problems 147 Data Gathering Process 148 Data Gathering Methods 149 Interviews149 Focus Groups 153 Surveys/Questionnaires157 Observations160 Unobtrusive Measures 162 Creating a Data Gathering Strategy and Proposing an Approach 165 Ethical Issues With Data Gathering 168 Summary169 Questions for Discussion 169 For Further Reading 170 Exercise: Data Gathering 170 ´´CASE STUDY 4: Proposing a Data Gathering Approach at TLG Solutions CHAPTER 8 • Diagnosis and Feedback 171 176 Diagnosis: Discovery, Assessment, Analysis, and Interpretation 177 Finding Patterns by Analyzing Data Deductive Analysis: Using Models for Diagnosis Inductive Analysis: Pulling Out Key Themes Statistical Analysis 179 180 182 184 Interpreting Data 185 Selecting and Prioritizing Themes 186 Feedback188 Structuring the Feedback Meeting 189 Presenting Data in the Feedback Meeting 190 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Peter Block 191 Resistance193 Thinking Differently About Resistance 194 Working With Client Resistance 197 Ethical Issues With Diagnosis and Giving Feedback 200 Summary200 Questions for Discussion 201 For Further Reading 201 Exercise: Feedback and Resistence 201 ´´CASE STUDY 5: Sorting Through the Data From Logan Elementary School CHAPTER 9 • An Introduction to Interventions 203 206 Interventions Defined 208 Why Interventions Fail Consequences of Failed Interventions 209 212 Considerations in Selecting the Right Intervention Strategy 213 Structuring and Planning Interventions for Success Practicalities in Intervention Design 218 220 The Change Agent’s Role in the Intervention 220 Ethical Issues With Interventions 221 Overview of Intervention Techniques 222 Summary224 Questions for Discussion 224 For Further Reading 225 CHAPTER 10 • Individual Interventions 226 Individual Change and Reactions to Change 227 Individual Instruments and Assessments The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator 229 232 Coaching233 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Judith H. Katz 237 Mentoring239 360 Feedback 240 Career Planning and Development 242 The Classic View: Stages of the Career 242 The Contemporary View: Boundaryless Careers 243 Choosing a Career Direction and Identifying Work Interests 245 Setting Career Goals 245 Developing Career Transitions and New Employment Relationships246 Summary246 Questions for Discussion 247 For Further Reading 247 Exercise: Individual Intervention (Coaching) 247 ´´CASE STUDY 6: Individual Type Styles at the Parks Department248 CHAPTER 11 • Team Interventions 252 Defining Teams 253 What Makes a Successful Team? 254 Special Types of Teams Self-Directed Work Teams Virtual Teams Cross-Functional Teams 255 255 256 257 Team Development 258 Team-Building Interventions What Is Team Building? Data Gathering for Team Interventions 260 260 261 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Dick Axelrod ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Emily M. Axelrod 262 263 Team Start-Up and Transition Meetings 267 Confrontation Meetings 268 Role Negotiation and Role Analysis 270 Work Redesign 273 Workout275 Intergroup Interventions An Intervention to Resolve Intergroup Conflict Variations on Intergroup Interventions 277 280 281 Summary282 Questions for Discussion 282 For Further Reading 283 Exercise: Team Intervention (Facilitation and Team Development) 283 ´´CASE STUDY 7: Solving Team Challenges at DocSystems Billing, Inc. CHAPTER 12 • Whole Organization and Multiple Organization Interventions 284 291 Characteristics of Contemporary Large-Scale Interventions 293 Strategic Change Interventions Strategic Planning and Real-Time Strategic Change Scenario Planning Search Conferences and Future Search 294 294 299 302 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Sandra Janoff 305 Quality and Productivity Interventions 306 Total Quality Management 307 Reengineering308 Six Sigma 309 Interventions in Mergers and Acquisitions Organization Development in M&A Integration Target 1: Individual Integration Target 2: Team Integration Target 3: Cross-Team/Department Integration Target 4: Organizationwide Integration 311 315 315 316 317 318 Transorganization or Interorganization Development 320 Dialogic OD Consultation and Interventions Role of the OD Practitioner in Dialogic OD Interventions Examples of Dialogic OD Practices Introducing Dialogic OD Successfully Further Areas for Development of Dialogic OD Positive Organizational Scholarship and Appreciative Inquiry 323 324 325 327 330 331 Summary334 Questions for Discussion 335 For Further Reading 335 ´´CASE STUDY 8: The Future of the Crossroads Center CHAPTER 13 • Organization Culture and Design Interventions 336 340 Organizational Culture Assessment and Change 341 Organization Design Common Organizational Structures Lateral Capability 348 351 357 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Amy Kates Tests of a Good Design 358 360 Summary363 Questions for Discussion 363 For Further Reading 363 Exercise: Whole Organization Intervention (Organization Design) 364 ´´CASE STUDY 9: Reorganizing Human Resources at ASP Software364 CHAPTER 14 • Sustaining Change, Evaluating, and Ending an Engagement Sustaining Change After the Intervention The Dangers of Sustaining Change Mechanisms to Sustain Change 370 371 372 373 Evaluation376 Challenges to Evaluation 376 Reasons to Evaluate 377 What to Evaluate 378 Evaluation Process 381 Examples of Evaluation 381 Ethics of Evaluation 383 Future of Evaluation 383 Ending an Engagement: Separation and Exit Ethics of Endings 384 385 Summary386 Questions for Discussion 386 For Further Reading 387 Exercise: Sustaining Change 387 CHAPTER 15 • Global Issues in Organization Development388 OD’s Challenges in a Global Environment 390 Dimensions of Global Cultural Difference 392 Power Distance 392 Uncertainty Avoidance 393 Individualism–Collectivism394 Masculinity–Femininity395 Short-Term–Long-Term Orientation 396 Indulgence–Restraint397 OD Values, Interventions, and Culture 399 ´´Profiles in Organization Development— Peter F. Sorensen, Jr.402 Case Examples and Research Findings 404 China404 Hong Kong 404 Japan405 Taiwan405 India405 Africa and the Middle East 406 Ghana407 Egypt407 South Africa 408 Latin America 408 United Kingdom and Ireland Beyond Single Cultures: Multicultural OD ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Therese Yaeger Advice for the Global OD Practitioner 409 410 410 412 Summary414 Questions for Discussion 414 For Further Reading 415 ´´CASE STUDY 10: A Global Partnership at GFAC Consulting 415 CHAPTER 16 • The Future of Organization Development418 Increasing Complexity of Change 418 Changing Workforce Demographics 420 Changing Nature of Work 424 The Current State of OD: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Opportunities428 ´´Profiles in Organization Development—Allan H. Church Strengths of OD Practice Today Weaknesses in OD Practice Today Opportunities for OD in the Future Conclusion: The Future of OD 429 432 432 433 437 Summary438 Questions for Discussion 438 For Further Reading 438 References439 Author Index 463 Subject Index 471 About the Author 480 PREFACE I n 2018, the World Economic Forum issued its Future of Jobs Report. Perhaps not surprisingly, the report noted an increase in jobs focused on robotics and automation, Big Data, artificial intelligence, and data science, whereas it also noted that jobs focused on data entry and factory work will likely be in decline. The report authors predicted that more than half of all jobs will require significant reskilling by 2022, making lifelong learning an increasing necessity. Yet against the backdrop of this focus on technology, the report authors also made a specific mention of the increasing influence of the field of organization development (OD). The report concluded: Also expected to grow are roles that leverage distinctively “human” skills, such as . . . Training and Development, People and Culture, and Organizational Development Specialists (World Economic Forum, 2018, p. viii). It seems that every few years, the field of organization development (OD) finds itself at a crossroads. Some feel that the field has strayed too far from its founding humanistic values of democracy, diversity, autonomy, collaboration, and choice. They argue that OD is in danger of being diluted or collapsed into human resources roles, leadership development, and talent management. Others feel that the “touchy feely” old values deserve a fresh update and that OD practitioners have a great deal to contribute to organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and enhanced performance in ways that helps both organization and individual. They see the role of the practitioner as a business adviser who can incorporate humanistic values without being hypocritical. I wrote (and continue to update) this book because, like the World Economic Forum, I firmly believe that OD as a field of research and practice has much to offer to people in contemporary organizations who are struggling with an incredible amount of change. Old management styles no longer fit the needs of today’s workplace and workers. New organizational forms are emerging to cope with the increasing pace of change, globalization, digitization and the latest technologies, economic pressures, and the expectations of the contemporary workforce. Managers struggle to engage employees despite ever-present threats of downsizing and outsourcing. In such an environment, many employees find work to be less personally satisfying than they did before. Skilled OD practitioners understand the dynamics of human systems and can intervene to encourage a healthy, engaging, and productive environment. Unfortunately, it has been challenging for many students to develop these skills. It generally requires “breaking in” to an OD department, finding a (hopefully skilled) mentor, and learning as much as possible through academic courses or self-discovery. While they are regularly tested on the job, managers and executives have few opportunities to develop their skills as change agents as well. Project xv managers, IT professionals, educators, and health care administrators all report that the skills of OD are applicable to their jobs. My hope is that this book will provide theoretical and practical background in OD to give you an introduction to the basic processes of organization development and change. It will also give you a chance to practice in a safe environment where you can develop your skills. I hope you find the book to be readable but rigorous— practical and relevant but with a solid academic foundation—and comprehensive enough without being exhausting. For this fifth edition, I have updated many sections of the book to reflect recent research and advances in practice while retaining classic approaches and foundational theories with which most practitioners ought to be familiar. Highlights of this new edition include the following: •• A new feature, “Profiles in Organization Development,” that showcases practitioners and researchers to highlight their experience, different paths to and histories in the field, and the diverse types of OD that are practiced today •• Additional case studies to allow you to practice using OD concepts and skills •• A revision to Chapters 12 and 13 to highlight the growing importance of organization design and culture interventions •• Additional examples of global issues in organization development •• New readings at the end of each chapter, where appropriate My continued thanks to the students at the University of Denver as well as to the clients who share with me their struggles in achieving change at work. Reviewers and readers of prior editions continued to share ideas to improve this volume. As always, I am grateful to my family and friends, especially my wife, Jennifer, for their patience, support, and encouragement. EXERCISES AND ACTIVITIES Many chapters contain exercises, activities, and role plays that can be used to practice skills and apply concepts developed in several chapters of the book. This chart details which exercises and activities accompany which chapter and topic. Exercise Chapter Topic What Would You Do? Chapter 3: Core Values and Ethics of Organization Development 62 Using Organizational Change Models Chapter 4: Foundations of Organizational Change 97 Contracting Chapter 6: Entry and Contracting 144 Data Gathering Chapter 7: Data Gathering 170 xvi   Organization Development Page Exercise Chapter Topic Page Feedback and Resistance Chapter 8: Diagnosis and Feedback 201 Individual Intervention (Coaching) Chapter 10: Individual Interventions 247 Team Intervention (Facilitation andTeam Development) Chapter 11:Team Interventions 283 Whole Organization Intervention (Organization Design) Chapter 13: Organization Culture and Design Interventions 363 Sustaining Change Chapter 14: Sustaining Change, Evaluating, and Ending an Engagement 387 ANCILLARIES Instructor Teaching Site A password-protected instructor’s manual is available at edge.sagepub.com/ andersonod5e to help instructors plan and teach their courses. These resources have been designed to help instructors make the classes as practical and interesting as possible for students. An Overview for the Instructor offers the author’s insights on how to most effectively use this book in a course on organization development and change. PowerPoint Slides capture key concepts and terms for each chapter for use in lectures and review. Case Epilogues provide additional information about the organizations or scenarios featured in the text. Discussion Questions suggest additional topics to engage students during classroom discussions and activities. Sample Course Syllabi provide models for structuring your course. A Test Bank includes multiple-choice, short-answer, and essay exam questions for each chapter. Video Resources for each chapter help launch class discussion. Student Study Site An open-access student study site can be found at edge.sagepub.com/ andersonod5e. The site offers videos of the author discussing the major stages Preface   xvii of organization development, Web links to additional tools, and Learning From SAGE Journal Articles, with access to recent, relevant, full-text articles from SAGE’s leading research journals. Each article supports and expands on the concepts presented in the book. This feature also provides discussion questions to focus and guide student interpretation. This text is accompanied by Cases and Exercises in Organization Development & Change, Second Edition (ISBN 978–1-5063–4447–8), which follows the same chapter organization as this text. A bundle of this text with the cases and exercises book is also available. xviii   Organization Development ACKNOWLEDGMENTS SAGE Publishing would like to thank the following reviewers for their contributions to the manuscript: Barry Davis, Tri-State Bible College and Graduate School Drew Thomas Foley, California State University, Northridge Dawn M. Newman, Saint Louis University Peter F. Sorensen Jr., Benedictine University Dr. Barbara S. Wallace, Webster University T. Craig Williams, East Carolina University xix CHAPTER ONE WHAT IS ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT? T hink for a moment about the organizations to which you belong. You probably have many to name, such as the company where you work, a school, perhaps a volunteer organization, or a reading group. You are undoubtedly influenced by many other organizations in your life, such as a health care organization like a doctor’s office or hospital, a church group, a child’s school, a bank, or the local city council or state government. Using an expansive definition of organization, you could name your own family or a group of friends as an organization that you belong to as well. With just a few moments’ reflection, you are likely to be able to name dozens of organizations that you belong to or that influence you. Now consider an organization that you currently do not belong to, but one that you were dissatisfied with at some point in the past. What was it about that organization that made the experience dissatisfying? Perhaps you left a job because you did not have the opportunity to contribute in the way that you would have liked. Maybe it was a dissatisfying team atmosphere, or you were not appreciated or recognized for the time and energy that you dedicated to the job. It could have been a change to your responsibilities, the team, or the organization’s processes. Some people report that they did not feel a larger sense of purpose at work, they did not have control or autonomy over their work, or they did not find an acceptable path to growth and career development. Perhaps you’ve witnessed or been part of an organization that has failed for some reason. Perhaps it went out of business or it disbanded because it could no longer reach its goals. You’ve likely had some excellent experiences in organizations, too. You may have had a job that was especially fulfilling or where you learned a great deal and coworkers became good friends. Maybe your local volunteer organization helped a number of people through organized fundraisers or other social services activities. Perhaps you joined or started a local community group to successfully campaign against the decision of your local city council or school board. All of this is to demonstrate what you already know intuitively, that we spend a great deal of our lives working in, connected to, and affected by organizations. Some of these organizations function quite well, whereas others struggle. Some are quite rewarding environments in which to work or participate, but in others, organizational members are frustrated, neglected, and disengaged. The purpose of this book is to introduce you to the field of organization development, an area of academic study and professional practice focused on making organizations better—that is, more effective and productive and at the same time more rewarding, satisfying, and engaging places in which to work and participate. By learning about the field of organization development and the process by which Master the content at edge .sagepub.com/ andersonod5e 1 it is conducted, you will be a more effective change agent inside the organizations to which you belong. ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT DEFINED Organization development (OD) is an interdisciplinary field with contributions from business, industrial/organizational psychology, human resources management, communication, sociology, and many other disciplines. Not surprisingly, for a field with such diverse intellectual roots, there are many definitions of organization development. Definitions can be illuminating, as they point us in a direction and provide a shared context for mutual discussion, but they can also be constraining, as certain concepts are inevitably left out, with boundaries drawn to exclude some activities. What counts as OD thus depends on the practitioner and the definition, and these definitions have changed over time. In a study of 27 definitions of organization development published since 1969, Egan (2002) found that there were as many as 60 different variables listed in those definitions. Nonetheless, there are some points on which definitions converge. One of the most frequently cited definitions of OD comes from Richard Beckhard (1969), an early leader in the field of OD: Organization development is an effort (1) planned, (2) organizationwide, and (3) managed from the top, to (4) increase organization effectiveness and health through (5) planned interventions in the organization’s “processes,” using behavioral-science knowledge. (p. 9) Beckhard’s definition has many points that have survived the test of time, including his emphasis on organizational effectiveness, the use of behavioral science knowledge, and the inclusion of planned interventions in the organization’s functions. Some critique this definition, however, for its emphasis on planned change (many organizational changes, and thus OD efforts, are in response to environmental threats that are not so neatly planned) and its emphasis on the need to drive organizational change through top management. Many contemporary OD activities do not necessarily happen at the top management level, as increasingly organizations are developing less hierarchical structures. A more recent definition comes from Burke and Bradford (2005): Based on (1) a set of values, largely humanistic; (2) application of the behavioral sciences; and (3) open systems theory, organization development is a systemwide process of planned change aimed toward improving overall organization effectiveness by way of enhanced congruence of such key organizational dimensions as external environment, mission, strategy, leadership, culture, structure, information and reward systems, and work policies and procedures. (p. 12) Finally, I offer a third: Organization development is the process of increasing organizational effectiveness and facilitating personal and organizational change through the use of interventions driven by social and behavioral science knowledge. 2   Organization Development These definitions include a number of consistent themes about what constitutes organization development. They propose that an outcome of OD activities is organizational effectiveness. They also each stress the applicability of knowledge gained through the social and behavioral sciences (such as sociology, business and management, psychology, and more) to organizational settings. MAKING THE CASE FOR ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT Perhaps the point on which most definitions agree is that the backdrop and purpose of organization development is change. As you have no doubt personally experienced, large-scale organizational change is rarely simple and met without skepticism. As Peter Senge and colleagues (1999) write, “Most of us know firsthand that change programs fail. We’ve seen enough ‘flavor of the month’ programs ‘rolled out’ from top management to last a lifetime” (p. 6). Because of its impact on the organizational culture and potential importance to the organization’s success, organizational change has been a frequent topic of interest to both academic and popular management thinkers. With change as the overriding context for OD work, OD practitioners develop interventions so that change can be developed and integrated into the organization’s functioning. Significant changes today are facing organizations and their teams and individual employees. To become effective, productive, and satisfying to members, organizations need to change. It will come as no surprise to any observer of today’s organizations that change is a significant part of organizational life. Change is required at the organizational level as customers demand more, technologies are developed with a rapidly changing life cycle (especially high-tech products; Wilhelm, Damodaran, & Li, 2003), and investors demand results. As Rita McGrath (2013) writes, “Music, high technology, travel, communication, consumer electronics, the automobile business, and even education are facing situations in which advantages are copied quickly, technology changes, or customers seek other alternatives and things move on” (p. 7). This requires that organizations develop new strategies, economic structures, technologies, organizational structures, and processes. Change is required of team members, who now are likely to work virtually in collaboration with members from around the globe. Cultural differences, changes in communication technologies, and a changing diverse workforce all combine to complicate how team members work together. Role conflict and confusion in decision processes and decision authority are common when members who have never worked together are thrown into an ad hoc team that is responsible for rapid change and innovation. Change is also required of individuals. Employees learn new skills as jobs change or are eliminated. Organizational members are expected to quickly and flexibly adapt to the newest direction. Best-selling business books such as Who Moved My Cheese? teach lessons in ensuring that one’s skills are current and that being comfortable and reluctant to adapt is a fatal flaw. Leaders today need to adapt to matrix organizational structures and new participative styles of leadership rather than old hierarchical patterns and command and control leadership (Holbeche, 2015). For organizational members, change can be enlightening and exciting, and it can be hurtful, stressful, and frustrating. Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   3 Whether or not we agree with the values behind “change as a constant,” it is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. Whereas some decry an overabundance of change in organizations (Zorn, Christensen, & Cheney, 1999), others note that it is the defining characteristic of the current era in organizations and that becoming competent at organizational change is a necessary and distinguishing characteristic of successful organizations (Lawler & Worley, 2006). There are, however, more and less effective ways to manage change. Creating and managing change in order to create higher-performing organizations in which individuals can grow and develop is a central theme of the field of OD. When we speak of organization development, we are referring to the management of certain kinds of these changes, especially how people implement and are affected by them. WHAT ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT LOOKS LIKE It may be easiest to understand what organization development is by understanding what forms it takes and how it is practiced. The following are five examples of published case studies of OD in action. Example 1: Increasing Employee Participation in a Public Sector Organization Public sector organizations, it has been noted (Coram & Burns, 2001), often face additional special challenges in the management of change. Bureaucratic structures, interfaces with regional governments and legislatures, political pressures, and legislative policies all complicate the implementation of new processes and changes to organizational practices. In the Republic of Ireland, a special initiative aimed to reduce bureaucracy in the public sector to gain efficiency, improve customer service, and improve interdepartmental coordination (O’Brien, 2002). Many programs of this type have been launched in other organizations as top-down mandates from senior management, causing frustration and decreased commitment among staff members who resisted the mandated changes. One department wanted to do things differently. The offices were in the division of Social Welfare Services, a community welfare organization of 4,000 employees. Two Dublin offices (50 employees each) became the focus of this case. These offices chose to involve employees in the development of an initiative that would improve working conditions in the department as well as increase the employees’ capacity for managing changes. A project steering team was formed, and it began by administering an employee survey to inquire about working relationships, career development, training, technology, and management. Follow-up data gathering occurred in focus groups and individual interviews. The tremendous response rate of more than 90 percent gave the steering team a positive feeling about the engagement of the population, but the results of the survey indicated that a great deal of improvement was necessary. Many employees felt underappreciated, distrusted, and not included in key decisions or changes. Relationships with management were also a concern as employees indicated few opportunities for communication with management and that jobs had become routine and dull. 4   Organization Development The steering team invited volunteers (employees and their management) to work on several of the central problems. One team worked on the problem of communication and proposed many changes that were later implemented, including a redesign of the office layout to improve circulation and contact among employees. As the teams continued discussions, they began to question standard practices and inefficiencies and to suggest improvements, eventually devising a list of almost 30 actions that they could take. Managers listened to employee suggestions, impressed by their insights. As one manager put it, “I have learned that a little encouragement goes a long way and people are capable of much more than given credit for in their normal everyday routine” (O’Brien, 2002, p. 450). The joint management–employee working teams had begun to increase collaboration and interaction among the two groups, with each reaching new insights about the other. As a result of the increased participation, “There appeared to be an enhanced acceptance of the change process, coupled with demands for better communications, increased involvement in decision making, changed relationships with supervisors and improved access to training and development opportunities” (O’Brien, 2002, p. 451). Example 2: Senior Management Coaching at Vodaphone Vodaphone is a multibillion-dollar global communications technology company headquartered in the United Kingdom and was an early leader in the mobile telephone market (Eaton & Brown, 2002). Faced with increasing competition, the company realized that in order to remain innovative and a leader in a challenging market, the culture of the organization would need to adapt accordingly. Specifically, senior management realized that its current “command and control” culture of blame and political games would hinder the collaboration and mutual accountability needed to succeed in a competitive environment. Instead, the company wanted to encourage a culture of empowered teams that made their own decisions and shared learning and development, speed, and accountability. Several culture initiatives were implemented, including the development of shared values, the introduction of IT systems that shared and exchanged information across major divisions that had hindered cross-functional learning, and the establishment of teams and a team-building program. To support the initiatives and encourage a new, collaborative management style, Vodaphone implemented a leadership coaching program. Top managers attended the program to learn skills in conducting performance reviews, helping employees set goals, and coaching teams. Following the program, managers had one-on-one coaching sessions with a professional coach who worked with participants to help them set coaching goals and reflect on how successfully they were able to implement the skills learned in the program. As a result of the program, managers began to delegate more as teams started to solve problems themselves. Teams began to feel more confident in their decisions as managers trusted them. Eaton and Brown (2002) attribute several subsequent company successes to the program, noting that it was critical that the coaching program was integrated with the other culture change initiatives that it supported. “Cultural change takes time,” they note, and “traditional attitudes to management do not die away overnight” (p. 287). However, they Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   5 point out that a gradual evolution took place and the new cultural values are now the standard. Example 3: Team Development in a Cancer Center Health care workers who have the challenge of caring for critically ill patients experience stress, emotional exhaustion, and burnout at very high rates compared with workers in other fields. Without social support from friends or other coworkers, many workers seek to leave the field or to reduce hours to cope with the emotional exhaustion of such a demanding occupation. Consequently, many researchers have found that health care workers in particular need clear roles, professional autonomy, and social support to reduce burnout and turnover. In one Canadian cancer center (Black & Westwood, 2004), a senior administrator sought to address some of these needs by creating a leadership team that could manage its own work in a multidisciplinary team environment. Team members would have professional autonomy and would provide social support to one another. Leaders volunteered or were chosen from each of the center’s main disciplines, such as oncology, surgery, nursing, and more. Organization development consultants were invited to lead workshops in which the team could develop cohesive trusting relationships and agree on working conditions that would reduce the potential for conflict among disciplines. In a series of three 2-day workshops over 3 months, the team participated in a number of important activities. Members did role play and dramatic exercises in which they took on one another’s roles in order to be able to see how others see them. They completed surveys of their personal working styles to understand their own communication and behavior patterns. The team learned problemsolving techniques, they clarified roles, and they established group goals. Three months after the final workshop was conducted, the facilitators conducted interviews to assess the progress of the group. All of the participants reported a better sense of belonging, a feeling of trust and safety with the team, and a better understanding of themselves and others with whom they worked. One participant said about a coworker, “I felt that [the workshops] connected me far differently to [a coworker] than I would have ever had an opportunity to do otherwise, you know, in a normal work setting” (Black & Westwood, 2004, p. 584). The consultants noted that participants wanted to continue group development on an ongoing basis. Example 4: A Future Search Conference in a Northern California Community Santa Cruz County is located in Northern California, about an hour south of San Francisco. In the 1960s, the county had approximately 25,000 residents in an agricultural region and in a small retirement community. In the late 1960s, the University of California, Santa Cruz, opened its doors, and in the following years the county began to experience a demographic shift as people began to move to the area and real estate prices skyrocketed. By 1990, the population had reached 250,000 residents, and increasingly expensive real estate prices meant that many residents could no longer afford to live there. Affordable housing was especially a problem for the agricultural community. A local leadership group 6   Organization Development had convened several conferences but could never agree on an approach to the housing problem. In the mid-1990s, a consortium of leaders representing different community groups decided to explore the problem further by holding a future search conference (Blue Sky Productions, 1996). They invited 72 diverse citizens to a 3-day conference not only to explore the problem of affordable housing but also to address other issues that they had in common. The citizen groups represented a cross-section of the community—from young to old, executives to farmworkers—and social services agencies. Attendees were chosen to try to mirror the community as a “vertical slice” of the population. They called the conference “Coming Together as a Community Around Housing: A Search for Our Future in Santa Cruz County.” At the conference, attendees explored their shared past as individuals and residents of the county. They discussed the history of the county and their own place in it. Next, they described the current state of the county and the issues that were currently being addressed by the stakeholder groups in attendance. The process was a collaborative one; as one attendee said, “What one person would raise as an issue, another person would add to, and another person would add to.” There were also some surprises as new information was shared. One county social services employee realized, “There were a couple of things that I contributed that I thought everyone in the county knew about, and [I] listen[ed] to people respond to my input, [and say] ‘Oh, really?’” Finally, the attendees explored what they wanted to work on in their stakeholder groups. They described a future county environment 10 years out and presented scenarios that took a creative form as imaginary TV shows and board of supervisors meetings. Group members committed to action plans, including short- and long-term goals. Eighteen months later, attendees had reached a number of important goals that had been discussed at the conference. Not only had they been able to increase funding for a farmworkers housing loan program and create a rental assistance fund, but they were on their way to building a $5.5 million low-income housing project. Participants addressed a number of nonhousing issues as well. They embarked on diversity training in their stakeholder groups, created a citizen action corps, invited other community members to participate on additional task forces, and created a plan to revitalize a local downtown area. “Did the future search conference work?” one participant wondered. “No question about it. It provided a living model of democracy.” Example 5: A Long-Term Strategic Change Engagement ABA, a German trading company with 15,000 employees, embarked on a major strategic change initiative driven by stiff competition (Sackmann, EggenhoferRehart, & Friesl, 2009). A global expansion prompted the company to reorganize into a three-division structure. A decentralized shared services model, comprising 14 new groups, was created for administrative departments that would now support internal divisions. To support the culture of the new organization, executives developed a mission and vision statement that explained the company’s new values and asked managers to cascade these messages to their staffs. This effort was kicked off and managed from the top of the organization. Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   7 The director of the newly formed shared services centers contacted external consultants, suspecting that a simple communication cascade to employees would not result in the behavioral changes needed in the new structure. The new administrative groups would have significant changes to work processes, and the lead managers of each of the 14 new groups would need assistance to put the new values and beliefs into practice. The consultants proposed an employee survey to gauge the beliefs and feelings of the staff and to provide an upward communication mechanism. Survey results were available to managers of each center, and the external consultants coached the managers through an interpretation of the results to guide self-exploration and personal development. Internal consultants worked with the managers of each of the new centers to facilitate a readout of the survey results with employees and take actions customized to the needs of each group. Consultants conducted workshops for managers to help them further develop personal leadership and communication skills, topics that the survey suggested were common areas of improvement across the management team. Over a period of 4 years, the cycle was repeated, using variations of the employee survey questions, a feedback step, and management development workshops covering new subjects each time. Interviews and surveys conducted late in the process showed that employees had a positive feeling about change in general. Leaders reported noticing a more trusting relationship between employees and their managers characterized by more open communication. Center managers took the initiative to make regular and ongoing improvements to their units. Sackmann and colleagues (2009) noted the need for a major change like this one to include multiple intervention targets. This organization experienced “changes in strategy, structure, management instruments, leadership, employee orientation, and the organization’s culture context” (p. 537), which required a broad set of surveys, coaching, and workshops to support. “These change supporting activities helped implement the change with lasting effect” (p. 537), they conclude. As you can see from this and the previous examples, OD is concerned with a diverse variety of issues to address problems involving organizations, teams, and individuals. OD is also conducted in a diverse variety of organizations, including federal, state, and local governments (which are among the largest employers in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics), public sector organizations around the world, health care organizations, educational settings, and nonprofit and private enterprises. Interventions can involve a single individual, a small team (such as the cancer center team described earlier), multiple teams, or a whole organization. It can also consist of multiple targets of change, such as in the Vodaphone initiative that involved not only large-scale culture change but also the implementation of teams and individual coaching. OD can also deal with multiorganization efforts, such as in the case of Santa Cruz County, or it can involve multiple national governments. The target of change can be something as seemingly simple as increasing employee involvement or developing coworker relationships, or it can be as potentially large as creating the vision or strategy of an entire organization or documenting the 10-year future of a large county. 8   Organization Development PROFILES IN ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT Marvin Weisbord Marvin Weisbord had a 50-year career as manager, writer, researcher, and consultant to corporations and medical schools. He was a founder and co-director of Future Search Network, a global nonprofit whose members manage strategic planning meetings for communities worldwide. He received a lifetime achievement award from the Organization Development Network, which voted his book Productive Workplaces one of the “Top Five Most Influential OD books of the Past 40 Years.” For 20 years, he was a partner in the consulting firm Block Petrella Weisbord, a member of the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science, and a member of the European Institute for Transnational Studies (ITS). 1. How did you get started in OD? What favorite lessons stand out about your work with people and organizations? I learned to do organization development (OD) by doing it. I became an advocate for projects to help people learn from their own experience. Most people know more about their work than they realize. They rarely have a chance to discover it. Given time to educate one another, people always learn more about the whole than any one person knew before. Given influence over policies and work systems, people perform better than they think they can. This has occurred for decades regardless of culture, age, class, gender, ethnicity or “personal style.” I learned that “sustainable change” was an oxymoron! The best we could hope to sustain was peoples’ commitment from one meeting to the next. That is a priceless change worth having. If you want a new culture, make every meeting congruent with the culture you want. You’ll never do better than that. I learned the power of applying systems thinking to complex tasks. Getting from Point A to Point B means paying attention all at once to economics, technology, and people. Such was the origin of my 6-box organizational diagnosis model. I imagined it as an aircraft’s instrument panel. I likened leadership to scanning the dials, keeping all the instruments in balance, mindful that you never can change just one thing. For two decades after leaving the consulting business, I ran and taught a three-day planning event called “Future Search.” Indeed, Sandra Janoff and I showed more than 4,000 people around the world how to do effective large group strategic planning for themselves. I liked that work because it required all the key players in the same room. Whatever did or did not happen was up to them. We saw people who had never worked together do things in a few hours that none believed possible. We documented positive results from Future Searches all over the world. 2. What other jobs or experiences helped you as an OD practitioner? I could not have become an OD consultant had I not worked for a decade in a business forms company. I could not have written up my OD cases had I not been a magazine writer. Nor would I have gotten into the NTL Institute, a group dynamics pioneer. I could not have learned to function in groups, nor how to do action research, without being an NTL workshop leader for 20 years. I could not have learned (Continued) Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   9 (Continued) the nuts and bolts of collaborative consulting without partnering with Peter Block and Tony Petrella. Had it not been for research in medical schools with Paul Lawrence and D-I (differentiation-integration theory), I might never have got how behavior change follows structural change more often than vice versa. I could not have appreciated the unity of human experience but for Sandra Janoff’s and my shared interest in applying D-I theory to strategic planning. Nor could I have freed myself to work easily anywhere in the world without John and Joyce Weir’s gift of owning my experience without needing to deny anybody else’s. In the long run, I integrated everything I learned into a dance that included human relations, socio-technical systems design, and personal growth. 3. What do you think are the most important skills for a student of OD to develop? If you want to help others, do what they never did before: Start with yourself. You cannot get too much selfknowledge. That requires finding parts of yourself you didn’t know existed. There is a lifetime of work for each of us in finding our “shadows,” harmonizing inner voices that tear us apart. We’re never finished, and the right time to do it is every day. When you walk into a meeting, imagine everyone doing their best with what they have. Then deal with people the way you find them. Realize that you can’t change them. You can learn to do things you never did before—even accepting others the way you find them. You can give people opportunities they never had. You will not discover this in power points and executive summaries. 4. Can you comment on the future of organizations and the field of OD? After 30 years of Future Searches, I believe that the best way to manage the future is to understand that it happens now. Both past and future exist only in the present. Today is yesterday’s future. It’s dissolving into the past by the second. Learning that is the best asset a consultant can acquire. Look around you. Whatever people are doing today was yesterday’s future. We cannot solve novel problems before we have them. Improving companies and communities can be satisfying work if you avoid thinking you build for the ages. You can only do “future” work in today’s meetings. You can only capitalize on the expertise, experience, hopes, fears, and dreams of those doing the work. Figure how to get everybody improving whole systems. If you put energy into doing that you can make a difference, not someday, but every day. WHAT ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT IS NOT Despite this seemingly expansive definition of what organization development is and what issues and problems it addresses, it is also limited. OD is not any of the following. Management Consulting OD can be distinguished from management consulting in specific functional areas such as finance, marketing, corporate strategy, or supply chain management. It is also distinguished from information technology applications. 10   Organization Development Yet OD is applicable to any of these areas. When organizations attempt a conscious change, whether it involves implementing a new IT system; making changes in strategy, goals, or direction; or adapting to a new team leader, OD offers relevant processes and techniques to make the change function effectively. An OD practitioner would not likely use expertise in one of these content areas (for example, best practices in financial structures of supplier relationships or contemporary marketing analysis) to make recommendations about how an organization does this activity. Instead, an OD practitioner would be more likely to assist the organization in implementation of the kinds of changes that management consultants would advise them to make. Thus, OD makes a distinction between partnerships with a client where the consultant offers content advice and those where the consultant offers process advice. Consulting where the practitioner offers content advice falls under the heading of management consulting, whereas OD offers consultation on the process used to reach a desired goal. Most management consulting also is not based on OD’s set of foundational values (a topic that we will take up in detail in Chapter 3). In Chapter 5 we will discuss OD consulting in particular and differentiate it from management consulting activities with which you may be familiar. Training and Development While individual and organization learning is a part of OD and a key value we will discuss in a later chapter, OD work is not confined to training activities. OD is not generally the context in situations in which learning is the sole objective, such as learning a new skill, system, or procedure. OD deals with organizational change efforts that may or may not involve members of the organization needing to learn specific new skills or systems. Many training and development professionals are gravitating toward OD to enhance their skills in identifying the structural elements of organizations that need to be changed or enhanced for training and new skills to be effective. Other aspects of the training and development profession, however, such as needs assessment, course development, the use of technology, or on-the-job training, are not central to the job of the OD practitioner. In addition, most training programs are developed for a large audience, often independent of how the program would be applied in any given organization. While some OD interventions do incorporate training programs and skill building, OD is more centrally concerned with the systemic context that would make a training program successful, such as management support, job role clarification, process design, and more. As Burke (2008) writes, “Individual development cannot be separated from OD, but to be OD, individual development must be in the service of or leverage for system-wide change, an integral aspect of OD’s definition” (p. 23). Short Term OD is intended to address long-term change. Even in cases in which the intervention is carried out over a short period (such as the several-day workshops conducted at the cancer center described earlier), the change is intended to be a long-term or permanent one. OD efforts are intended to develop systemic changes that are long lasting. In the contemporary environment, in which changes are constantly being made, this can be particularly challenging. Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   11 The Application of a Toolkit Many OD practitioners speak of the OD “toolkit.” It is true that OD does occasionally involve the application of an instrumented training or standard models, but it is also more than that. To confuse OD with a toolkit is to deny that it also has values that complement its science and that each OD engagement has somewhat unique applications. As Feyerherm and Worley (2008) write, Too many clients ask, “How do I do x?” or “What tools are available to change y?” and too many OD practitioners, in an effort to be helpful, give the client what they want instead of what they need. The “tool” focus ignores assessment and risks, providing a band-aid in organizations without attacking core problems. (p. 4) Students of OD who seek out tools without being knowledgeable about the OD process and the reasons for the use of the tools are likely to find themselves having learned how to use a hammer and enthusiastically go around looking for nails (only to realize that not every problem looks like the same nail). As Schein (1999) puts it, Knowledge of many different kinds of interventions does not substitute for the knowhow of sensing what is needed “right now.” . . . In fact, having a skillset of interventions “at the ready” makes it harder to stay in the current reality because one is always looking for opportunities to use what one believes oneself to be good at. (p. 245) OD is more than a rigid procedure for moving an organization, team, or individual from point A to point B. It involves being attuned to the social and personal dynamics of the client organization that usually require flexibility in problem solving, not a standardized set of procedures or tools. In Chapter 3 we will discuss the values that underlie OD to better understand the fundamental concepts that explain how and why OD practitioners make the choices they do. WHO THIS BOOK IS FOR This book is for students, practitioners, and managers who seek to learn more about the process of organizational change following organization development values and practices. We will use the term organization development, as most academic audiences prefer, over the term organizational development, which seems to dominate spoken and written practitioner communication. We will also refer to the organization development practitioner, consultant, and change agent in this book as a single general audience, because these terms emphasize that OD is practiced by a large community that can include more than just internal and external paid OD consultants. OD includes (and the book is written for) anyone who must lead organizational change as a part of his or her role. With the magnitude and frequency of organizational change occurring today, this encompasses a wide variety of roles and is an increasingly diverse and growing community. The OD practitioner can include the internal or external organization development consultant, but also 12   Organization Development managers and executives; human resources and training professionals; quality managers; project managers and information technology specialists; educators; health care administrators; directors of nonprofit organizations; leaders in state, local, and federal government agencies; and many more. We will also more frequently discuss organizational members than employees, which is a more inclusive term that includes volunteers in nonprofit groups and others who are connected to organizations but may not have an employment relationship with them. The term also is intended to include not just leaders, executives, and managers but also employees at all levels. OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK This book provides an overview of the content of organization development, including theories and models used by change agents and OD practitioners. It also explores the process by which OD is practiced. The objective of the book is to acquaint you with the field of OD and the process of organization development consulting. The goal is to develop your analytic, consulting, and practitioner skills so that you can apply the concepts of OD to real situations. We will simulate these consulting situations through detailed case studies, which follow many of the skill development chapters, in which you will be able to immediately practice what you have learned in the chapter. Chapters 2 through 5 will explore the foundations of the field, including its history, values, and an overview of the key concepts and research in organizational change. In these chapters you will learn how OD began as a field, how it has evolved over the past decades, and how most practitioners think of the field today. In Chapter 3 we will discuss the underlying values and ethical beliefs that influence choices that practitioners must make in working with clients. Chapter 4 provides a foundation in research into organizational change from a systems perspective, a common way of thinking about organizations. We will also discuss a social construction perspective on organizational change. In this chapter you will be exposed to models of organizational systems and organizational change that have influenced the development of many OD interventions. In Chapter 5 we will define the role of the OD consultant, differentiating the OD consultant from other kinds of consultants, and describing the specific advantages and disadvantages to the OD consultant when the consultant is internal or external to the organization. Beginning with Chapter 6, the book follows an action research and consulting model (entry, contracting, data gathering, data analysis/diagnosis, feedback, interventions, and evaluation). We will discuss the major actions that practitioners take in each of these stages and describe the potential pitfalls to the internal and external consultant. Chapter 6 describes the early stages of the consulting engagement, including entry and contracting. You will learn how a consultant contracts with a client and explores what problems the client is experiencing, how those problems are being managed, and how problems can be (re)defined for a client. In Chapter 7 we will cover how practitioners gather data, as well as assess the advantages and disadvantages of various methods for gathering data about the organization. Chapter 8 describes what OD practitioners do with the data they have gathered by exploring the dynamics of the feedback and joint diagnosis processes. This stage of the consulting process is especially important as it constitutes Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   13 the point at which the client and consultant define what interventions will best address the problems that have been described. Chapter 9 begins by describing the most visible aspect of an OD engagement— the intervention. We will discuss the components of interventions and describe the decisions that practitioners must make in grappling with how to structure them for maximum effectiveness. Chapters 10 through 13 address the traditional OD practices with which most practitioners ought to be familiar, including interventions such as organization design, strategic planning, quality interventions, team building, survey feedback, individual instruments, and coaching and mentoring. These chapters also incorporate practices such as appreciative inquiry, future search, and Six Sigma. These interventions are organized according to the target of the intervention, whether it be the whole organization, multiple groups, single groups, or individuals. In Chapter 14 we will conclude our discussion of the OD process by exploring how organization development practitioners separate themselves from client engagements and evaluate the results of their efforts. In Chapter 15 we will examine the practice of OD in different cultures and geographies by discussing how globalization impacts organization development. The book concludes in Chapter 16 with a discussion of the future of OD, where we will discuss the applicability and relevance of OD to contemporary organizations, given trends in demographics, working conditions, and organizational environments. Following trends in the corporate world, ethical issues in OD are gaining the attention of academics, clients, and practitioners. While we will discuss values and ethics in Chapter 3, rather than leave ethical dilemmas to that chapter alone, we will also discuss ethical issues in organization development at relevant points throughout the book, when appropriate for the stage in the OD process being described. Many chapters begin with an opening vignette and thought questions to set the stage for the topics covered in those chapters. Some of these vignettes present published case studies of successful and unsuccessful OD efforts. As you read the vignette and the chapter, consider what factors made the case more or less successful and what lessons the practitioner may have learned from the experience. You may wish to find the published case and read it for additional details not presented in the vignette. Reading published cases can help you develop a deeper appreciation for the complexities of OD work and learn from the successes and struggles that others have experienced. At the end of each chapter you will find questions for discussion, exercises, activities, and/or role-play simulations that can help you develop your OD skills through realistic scenarios where you can practice in a safe environment. ANALYZING CASE STUDIES The case studies included in this book are intended to help you learn the role and thought process of an OD consultant or change agent through realistic examples. By reading and analyzing case studies, you will actively participate in applying the theory and concepts of OD to complex, real-life situations that consultants find themselves in every day. These cases are all based in practitioners’ real experiences— names and some details have been changed to protect the client’s and practitioner’s anonymity. By stepping into a practitioner’s shoes, you will be challenged to make the tradeoffs and choices that managers and consultants are asked to make. 14   Organization Development The cases will help you develop the problem-solving and critical-thinking skills that are central to the value that a practitioner brings to a client. Ideally you can discuss these cases with others who have analyzed them as well, and together you can identify the central issues in the cases and debate the most appropriate response. In this way, you will be assimilating knowledge that you have about organizations, change, human dynamics, and the concepts and theories of OD. You will learn the logic behind the choices that managers and practitioners make, and you will gain practice in making your thought processes explicit. The cases in the book will build on one another in complexity, so you will need to integrate what you have learned from previous chapters as you analyze each case. The case studies in this book are written as mini-plays or scenes to provide a richly detailed scenario in which you can imagine yourself playing a part, in contrast to many commonly published case studies in which a few short paragraphs provide all of the detail available for analysis. Since a good deal of OD and change management involves noticing and responding to the human and relational dynamics of a situation in addition to the task and content issues, the scenes in this book provide both in order to give you practice in becoming an observer of people during the process of organizational change. The cases in this book also are situated in a number of diverse types of organizations in which OD is practiced, including educational environments, health care and nonprofit organizations, and for-profit businesses. Each of these types of organizations brings with it unique challenges and opportunities for the OD practitioner. Each case provides a slice of organizational life, constructed as a brief scene in which you can imagine yourself playing a part, but which will require your conscious thinking and reflection. Cases present situations with many options. As Ellet (2007) writes, “A case is a text that refuses to explain itself” (p. 19). It requires you to take an active role to interpret it and discover its meaning. Fortunately, unlike the passage of time in real life, in written cases time is momentarily paused to give you the chance to consider a response. While you do not have the opportunity to gather additional data or ask questions of participants, you do have the ability to flip back a few pages, read the situation again, and contemplate. You can carefully consider alternate courses of action, weigh the pros and cons of each, and clarify why you would choose one option over another. As a result of having to make these choices, you will hone your ability to communicate your rationale for your decisions. Classmates will make different choices, each with his or her own well-reasoned rationales. Through discussion you will sharpen your ability to solve problems, understanding the principles behind the decisions that you and your classmates have made. You will learn about how your own experiences shape your assumptions and approaches to problems. You will be challenged to develop your skills to provide evidence for your reasoning, defend your analyses, and explain your thinking in clear and concise ways for fellow practitioners and clients alike. You may find that these discussions prompt you to change your mind about the approach you would take, becoming convinced by a classmate’s well-reasoned proposal, or you may find that your reasoning persuades others that your approach has the greater advantages. Regardless, you will learn that there is no single right answer at the back of the book or to be shared by your instructor after you have struggled. For some of the cases in this book, your instructor may share with you what happened after the case concluded. This information may provide support for the approach you would have taken, or it may make you think that your approach was incorrect. Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   15 Instead of seeking the right or wrong answer, however, asking yourself whether your proposal was well reasoned given the circumstances is more important than knowing the exact outcome of the case. While you have the opportunity to do so, use the occasion of the case study and the discussion to play with various alternatives. Here, the process may be more important than the outcome. The following tips will help you get started with case study analysis: 1. Read the entire case first, and resist the temptation to come to any conclusions the first time you read it. Allow yourself to first gather all of the relevant data about the situation before you propose any solutions or make any judgments about what is happening or what the client needs to do. 2. Use the tools and methods outlined in each chapter to help you think through the issues presented by the case. You will find worksheets, models, principles, and outlines that can assist you in identifying and categorizing problems, selecting and prioritizing interventions, and organizing ideas to respond to the client. Use charts and diagrams to map out organizational structures and underline key phrases and issues. Write questions that come to mind in the margins. Read the case multiple times to ensure that you have not missed a key detail that would indicate to a client that you had not been paying close attention. 3. Realize that like real life, case studies contain many extra details and describe multiple issues. Organizational life is messy and complex, and not all of these details are helpful or necessary to the consultant or change agent. A consultant helping a team redefine roles and responsibilities may be doing so in an environment in which the company has acquired a competitor or quarterly results were disappointing. Part of the practitioner’s role is to sort the useful primary information from the unnecessary secondary information (or information that is unnecessary for the immediate problem). This is part of the value of these case exercises and a logic and intuition that you will develop as your skills and experience grow. Ask yourself what the client is trying to achieve, what he or she has asked of you, and what the core issues and central facts are. 4. Similarly, in any response to a client or reaction to a case, resist the temptation to comment on everything. An OD practitioner can help to prioritize the most pressing issues and help the client sort through the complexities of organizational life. It could be that part of the reason the client has asked for help is that the number of possibilities for action are too overwhelming to decide what to do next. 5. When you are prepared to write a response or an analysis, ask yourself whether you have addressed the central questions asked by the case and whether you have clearly stated the issues to the client. Once your response is written, could you send that, in its present form, to the client described in the case? In that regard, is the analysis professionally written and well organized to communicate unambiguously to the client? Will the client understand how and why you reached these conclusions? 16   Organization Development 6. As you write your analysis, ask yourself how you know any particular fact or interpretation to be true and whether you have sufficiently justified your interpretation with actual data. Instead of boldly stating that “managers are not trained for their roles,” you could write, “Only 2 of 10 managers had attended a management training course in the past 5 years, leading me to conclude that management training has not been given a high priority.” The latter uses data and makes the interpretation explicit; the former is likely to invite criticism or defensiveness from a client. This does not mean that directness is not appropriate, only that it must follow from the evidence. We will describe the considerations of the feedback process in depth in this book. 7. When you have finished your own thinking and writing about the case, and after you have had the opportunity to discuss the case and options for action with classmates, take the time to write down your reflections from the experience (Ellet, 2007). What did you learn? What principles might apply for the next time you are confronted with these choices? SUMMARY Today’s organizations are experiencing an incredible amount of change. Organization development is a field of academic study and professional practice that uses social and behavioral science knowledge to develop interventions that help organizations and individuals change successfully. It is a field practiced in almost all kinds of organizations that you can imagine, from education to health care, from government to small and large businesses. Changes that OD practitioners address are diverse as well, including organizational structures and strategies, team effectiveness, leadership coaching, and much more. OD is not management consulting or training and development, and it is neither short term nor the mere application of a standard procedure or toolkit. OD practitioners can include many kinds of people for whom organizational change is a priority, such as managers and executives, project managers, and organizational members in a variety of roles. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION 1. Think of a job that you have held. It may be your current job, or it may be a job that you had in the past. Now take a few moments and write down several reasons why you found that job or work environment to be a positive or rewarding experience, or several reasons why you found it to be a negative or unrewarding experience. Share your ideas with a classmate. Did you note any similarities or differences? What OD interventions discussed in Chapter 1 do you think might have been helpful in this organization? 2. Without looking back at the definitions in this chapter, how would you describe organization development to a friend, colleague, or potential client? Now compare your description to the definitions in the chapter. How is your definition different? 3. Have you ever participated in an organization development project or intervention? What was your experience? Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   17 FOR FURTHER READING Beckhard, R. (1969). Organization development: Strategies and models. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Burke, W. W. (2008). A contemporary view of organization development. In T. G. Cummings (Ed.), Handbook of organization development (pp. 13–38). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Egan, T. M. (2002). Organization development: An examination of definitions and dependent variables. Organization Development Journal, 20(2), 59–71. Marshak, R. J. (2006). Organization development as a profession and a field. In B. B. Jones & R. Brazzel (Eds.), The NTL handbook of organization development and change: Principles, practices, and perspectives (pp. 13–27). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. Case Study 1: Every Coin Has Two Sides Read the case below and consider the following questions: 1. What are the sources of conflict on this team? Which of the issues are personal or interpersonal versus systemic or organizational? 3. Do you think this team can reconcile this conflict, or has this team reached a point where it is beyond repair? 4. What do you think an organization development practitioner could do to help Jared and this team? 2. If you were to summarize the issues for Tom or Jared, how would you present the data back? In Tom’s Office “I have a strange situation, and I’m not sure why it’s happening. I have done some investigating myself, but I’m perplexed about what do to next, which is why I reached out to you,” Tom began. “Tell me more about it,” Paul asked. As an internal organization development consultant to Tom, he was used to perplexing situations and eager to hear more. “One of the managers on my team, Jared, is relatively new. I have four other managers who are much more tenured in my organization, but he’s been part of my group for only about 7 months. About 3 months ago, I started getting complaints from his team,” Tom said. “Remind me what Jared’s team does?” Paul asked. “Jared’s team is responsible for the relationships with our suppliers. Any time we work with a supplier to buy parts from them, we have a 18   Organization Development supplier agreement that shows their agreed service levels to us, pricing, quality levels, shipping time expectations, and so on. Jared’s team members work closely with our suppliers to monitor the quality of the products they are shipping to us and whether the supplier metrics are meeting our agreements,” Tom explained. “That helps. What kinds of complaints were you hearing from Jared’s team?” Paul asked. “At first I was hearing general comments such as ‘he doesn’t listen to us.’ I take that with a grain of salt because to be honest, we have implemented a lot of changes in the last year, and I hear that complaint a lot. Plus people just don’t like change, so they say that we’re not listening just because they don’t like what we are saying or we made a decision they don’t like. About a year ago, we reduced our number of suppliers. We also centralized our supplier review teams into four locations in the U.S.: north, east, west, and south, and reduced staff by about 20%. While I tried to hold a lot of town hall meetings to communicate the centralization and the progress of our initiatives, I know that it wasn’t a popular change with employees. We worked through it and tried to be patient, and I think that generally speaking morale is on the upswing,” Tom said. “But back to Jared’s team,” Paul prodded, returning Tom to the reason for the meeting. “Yes, right. At first it was just one or two people that were the source of the complaints, but then I gradually started to hear other voices chime in. Jared’s team has about 10 members, so I interviewed each one of them in a ‘skip level’ meeting, where I met one on one with each person. Employees were very frank with me about their feedback for Jared. They weren’t sugarcoating. The themes centered on a couple of issues. In addition to listening, which was a pervasive comment, employees complained of not being taken seriously, being treated as incompetent, not having their ideas listened to, and being ‘talked down to’ in a condescending way,” Tom said. “That sounds like honest and tough feedback,” Paul said. “Were you able to share with Jared what people generally said?” “I did more than provide general feedback. I met with Jared and shared the very specific feedback with him. I told him that I had met with his team and they had some concerns about his management of them. I shared all that I’ve just said to you, about listening, taking people seriously, treating people as competent, and so on,” Tom said. “How did he respond?” Paul asked. “He was embarrassed that I was confronting him with that data, and he wants to do something about it,” Tom said. “But this is where it gets confusing. He said that he had no idea that his team felt this way. He told me about regular one-onone meetings he has with the members of the team and how he frequently invites their feedback to him directly. He showed me a survey he did of the team and the written feedback they gave him as well, which was filled with positive comments. He was right that none of the concerns I brought to him had appeared on any of the feedback he had received directly,” Tom said. “It just seems like such an odd disconnect between a group that has consistent negative feedback about his behavior but where Jared says he has absolutely no idea why people are saying those things about him.” “Thinking about the feedback you heard, have you ever heard similar points about your other managers? Is this type of feedback widespread throughout the organization?” Paul wondered. “No. I’ve never heard anything like this about any of my other managers. This is a pretty friendly department, overall. This is the kind of place where people throw foam footballs around the cubicles at lunchtime and have summer picnics with each other’s families,” Tom said. “But with Jared, it seems like some kind of mob mentality is forming, where the group is nice to Jared directly but they spiral into an angry crowd that feeds off of one another when he isn’t around. At first I was thinking that maybe it’s just growing pains since Jared has a very different style than the former manager of this group, Brad.” “Tell me about the former manager,” Paul asked. “Brad got promoted and left the group, but he’s still around the company. In fact it was from him that I originally started hearing about the complaints because the team was going to their old boss and he was sharing their feedback with me. I told him that he needed to get out of the team dynamic now and leave it to me. I don’t think that’s healthy. But he was popular with the team, he’s laid back but insistent on high-quality work, and the team respected him, so I can see why they were trying to get him on their side,” Tom said. “How would you describe Brad’s style?” Paul asked. “He treats people as equals. He doesn’t assume that he always has the answers, and he’s open to suggestions if his team members think they have a good suggestion or innovation to propose. He’s described as open, warm, and friendly. It’s probably due to him that we have the friendly collegial atmosphere that we have here. At the same time, you can’t get away with anything like slacking off or quality mistakes if you’re a member of his team. Brad really works to develop a team mentality where everyone is in it together and not out for their own personal achievements at the expense of the group. If someone has a problem on Brad’s team, they generally turn to the whole group to ask for input and not just assume that Brad will solve it. Frequent communicator, positive, team-oriented,” Tom concluded. Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   19 “In hindsight, is Jared able to identify any time when he had a feeling or intuition that something might be going wrong? And is the team able to look at a specific example and point out why they felt like they weren’t being taken seriously or being listened to?” Paul asked. “I hadn’t thought of that,” Tom admitted. “Maybe we can ask the employees to share more specific examples. And that’s a good action for Jared, too.” “Have there been any other performancerelated concerns with Jared or his team?” Paul inquired. “The thing is, I can’t emphasize enough that Jared is a very smart individual. He’s always in my office sharing progress on the team’s work, he knows the content of the job really well, and he always has an answer to every question. I have a great deal of respect for his knowledge and expertise. That’s why I hired him. But now that you mention it, there is another unusual situation we had. It’s not a performance concern, but there was another situation. There was a big problem with three of our suppliers that took everyone’s work to address. After the team got the supplier back on track and quality concerns diminished, Jared took the three employees who were assigned to those suppliers out to lunch to celebrate their success. It caused some hurt feelings among other members of the team because it was widely recognized that everyone participated on the project, not just those that were assigned to the supplier,” Tom said. “Jared told me later that he wanted to hold up those three as role models in working with their suppliers. And then there are the gifts.” “Gifts?” Paul asked, puzzled. “Around the holidays, Jared’s team started giving him gifts. They started out as nominal sorts of things like pen and pencil sets or a desk clock,” Tom said. “Then someone gave him a generous gift card, another gave him a new briefcase, and another gave him an expensive bottle of wine. It turned into some kind of competition. Jared pointed to that as an example of his good relationship with the team, but we finally had to ask employees to stop. It’s strange because we don’t usually share gifts like that here. It’s never happened,” Tom said. “That really sounds like an odd situation. Why would employees give lavish gifts to a manager they reportedly dislike?” Paul wondered. 20   Organization Development “Agreed. When I asked them about it, they said they felt obligated and actually complained about that, too. But I can’t figure out how they would feel obligated when no employees across any of my other groups have ever given a gift to a manager. I don’t really want to open up that whole gift situation again with employees, but I mention it just as background. You see how confused I am,” Tom stated, exasperated. “My gut feeling is that there is some element of truth on both sides or some kind of deep misunderstanding. I need your help figuring out what that is and what to do about it.” “Let’s start with Jared,” Paul said. íííí Meeting With Jared “Hi Jared, I’m Paul.” Paul introduced himself and sat down at the table in Jared’s office. “I can’t thank you enough for your time on this project,” Jared said. “I am really hoping that you can help me understand how I can improve my relationships on this team and my management skills.” “I’m glad to help,” Paul said. “I’d like to learn a little more about your transition to leading this team and how that went from your perspective.” “Absolutely. I have worked for the company for the past five years but only for the past six months on this team. I transferred from our east coast office to take over for Brad after his promotion,” Jared said. “When I began, my first order of business was to improve productivity on the team. I took a look at the projects per employee as well as the weekly hours spent per employee with suppliers. Both of those were significant metrics for me to look at, and both were about 20% lower than I would have expected based on my experience. In my first few weeks, I had a meeting with the team where I asked them to identify initiatives that would help us improve our numbers. We came up with four initiatives as a group, and we chose project teams and team leaders for each initiative. Employees volunteered for the initiatives, and I have always said that the team owns them.” “Tell me how those initiatives have been progressing,” Paul asked. “I believe in empowering the team and giving them the authority to make decisions,” Jared explained. “I asked them to come up with timelines, milestones, and deliverables, and for each project, we have a weekly review with me and the team. I’ll admit that I did push them on some of the timelines, but in general, the whole team is doing incredible work. Our numbers are already up from the initial baselines.” “How do you see morale on the team right now?” Paul asked. “It’s not where I want it to be, but that is to be expected in the middle of a transition. That’s why I’ve already started a recognition program to thank employees for reaching major milestones. I take the supplier leads out to lunch when they reach a level of quality that I’ve publicized to everyone. As a manager, my style is to push hard to accomplish our team objectives but to then recognize people when they succeed. Too many leaders just push people to get the work done but forget to say thank you, and any time you are trying to promote a change, it’s important to celebrate the small wins,” Jared said. “You asked me to think of specific examples of where misunderstanding could have occurred. I think my first attempt at recognition may have rubbed some people the wrong way, but when other team members reach their milestones, I will recognize them, too. It will take time for everyone to buy in to the change.” “Tell me about team meetings and how you interact with the team,” Paul inquired. “I think our team meetings are very productive. It’s a light atmosphere, we joke around, and yet we also get the work done. I have regular one-on-one meetings each week with each member of the team, and these are really their time to bring up personal concerns, get career advice or coaching, or get feedback. I’m a strong believer in constructive feedback and coaching. A manager should praise in public and critique in private, so if I have direct feedback about an area that is an opportunity for improvement for someone on the team, I will wait to tell them that in a private setting,” Jared explained. “I also try to coach employees as much as I can. I want them to know that they are in charge of their own careers, and I can help them grow their skills and experience so when they are ready to tackle the next challenge in their careers, they can set themselves apart.” “I have heard from Tom about some of the feedback the team has had, but I’d like to hear your perspective on that as well. Can you share with me what you have heard and what you think needs to be done?” Paul asked. “Some of the complaints are about the workload and how strapped people are for time. I get that. I’m not entirely going to apologize for trying to push the team a little, but I also work hard to find additional resources when I can. So when someone is having trouble on a project, I try to create an environment where people want to help each other out. A great example of that comes from a recent meeting with Beth. She was struggling with her workload, so I asked other team members to jump in. Collaboration across a team is one of the most important factors in a team’s success, and I believe that we succeed as a team or fail as a team,” Jared said. “Have you taken any action so far?” Paul asked. “Yes. One comment Tom shared was that people felt like I was not recognizing the fact that they were skilled professionals. Recently I wanted to commend a real superstar on the team, Nadia. She had done an exceptional supplier review that caught a number of errors that would have been very upsetting to our customers. I sent a note to the team to showcase Nadia’s work so that everyone would know of the importance of conducting high-quality reviews and how thorough she was,” Jared noted. “What needs to be done, in your view?” Paul concluded. “I am at a loss. But I will commit to listening to every piece of feedback that I need to hear, and to doing what is needed,” Jared said firmly. “I have no doubt that we all probably need to take action, and I want everyone to know that they can give me any direct feedback that they want. No one but Tom has mentioned anything to me directly, so I hope you can help.” “I’m going to talk to the team next, and then I will be better prepared to share specific thoughts with you about our next steps,” Paul said. íííí Excerpts From Meetings With Jared’s Team “You wanted a specific example, so I found one that illustrates a common scenario,” Beth explained. “I’m sure he’s told you about the initiatives that Chapter One • What Is Organization Development?   21 he assigned us to. Well, we have weekly project reviews to share our progress on each initiative. I’m one of the team leads for Supplier Quality, but I also have six suppliers of my own to manage on a regular basis outside of the initiative. Last week we had an initiative review with Jared, but there honestly wasn’t much to share. One of my suppliers had a huge problem that required me to spend the entire week sorting out why they were not able to get us enough products in time for us to make our customer shipments. Customers have to be our top priority. I had no time to spend on the initiative since I was prioritizing my time on the supplier problem. So in this week’s review, I told Jared that we didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked. His first response was, ‘What have you been doing all week? I wish I had that much free time,’ and then immediately sent an e-mail to the entire team that read, ‘Beth obviously needs help on her project since she was unable to make any progress this week. Please volunteer to help her immediately.’ There was no recognition that I was doing other critical work, and it was offensive to point me out in front of my peers like that.” íííí “I’m sure you’ve heard about our first employee meeting with Jared,” Luke pointed out. “He told us how he looks at employee performance. He told us, ‘You need to set yourself apart from the others if you want to succeed around here.’ That’s a direct quote. Then he took a few people out to lunch when we had all helped them succeed, so we quickly learned that it wasn’t worth helping out our peers. It’s hard to get a raise or a promotion …

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