CLASSIFYING OD

INTERVENTIONS
 The inventory of OD interventions is quite
extensive. We will explore several
classification schemes here to help you
understand how interventions "clump"
together in terms of
 (1) the objectives of the interventions and
 (2) the targets of the interventions.
 Becoming familiar with how interventions
relate to one another is useful for planning
the overall OD strategy.
 As we see it, the following are the major
"families" of OD interventions.
1. Diagnostic Activities

 Fact-finding activities designed to ascertain

the state of the system, the status of a
problem, the "way things are." Available
methods range from projective devices such
as "build a collage that represents your place
in this organization" to the more traditional
data collection methods of interviews,
questionnaires, surveys, meetings, and
examining organizational records.
2. Team-Building Activities
 Activities designed to enhance the effective
operation of system teams.
 These activities focus on task issues such as the
way things are done, the skills and resources
needed to accomplish tasks, the quality of
relationship among the team members or between
members and the leader, and how well the team
gets its job done.
 In addition, one must consider different kinds of
teams, such as formal work teams, temporary tasks
force teams, newly constituted teams, and cross-
functional teams.
3. Intergroup Activities.
 Activities designed to improve the
effectiveness of interdependent groups-
groups that must work together to produce a
common output. They focus on joint activities
and the output of the group as considered as
a single system rather than as two
subsystems. When two groups are involved,
the activities are designated intergroup or
interface activities; when more than two
groups are involved, the activities are called
organizational mirroring.
4. Survey Feedback Activities.

 Activities that rely on questionnaire surveys

to generate information that is then used to
identify problems and opportunities. Groups
analyze the data regarding; their performance
and design action plans to correct problems.
5. Education and Training
Activities.
 Activities designed to improve individuals' skills, abilities, and
knowledge. Several activities are available and several
approaches possible.
 For example, the individual can be educated in isolation from his
or her own work group (say, in a T-group consisting of
strangers), or one can be educated in relation to the work group
(say, when a work team learns how better to manage
interpersonal conflict). The activities may be directed toward
technical skills required for performing tasks or may be directed
toward improving interpersonal competence.
 The activities may be directed toward leadership issues,
responsibilities and functions of group members, decision-
making, problem solving, goal setting and planning, and so forth.
6. Techno structural or
Structural Activities.
 Activities designed to improve the effectiveness of organizational
structures and job designs. The activities may take the form of
(a) experimenting with new organization structures and
evaluating their effectiveness in terms of specific goals or
 (b) devising new ways to bring technical resources to bear on
problems. these activities and label them "structural
interventions" defined as "the broad class of interventions or
change efforts aimed at improving organization effectiveness
through changes in the task, structural, and technological
subsystems."
 Included in these activities are job enrichment, management by
objectives, socio technical systems, collateral organizations, and
physical settings interventions.
7. Process Consultation
Activities.
 Activities that "help the client to perceive,
understand, and act upon process events which
occur in the client's environment.'" .
 These activities perhaps more accurately describe
an approach, a consulting mode in which the client
gains insight into the human processes in
organizations and learn skills in diagnosing and
managing them.
 Primary emphasis is on processes such as
communications, leader and member roles in
groups, problem solving and decision making, group
norms and group growth, leadership and authority,
and intergroup cooperation and competition. '
8. Grid Organization
Development Activities
 Activities developed by Robert Blake and Jane Mouton, which
constitute a six-phase change model involving the total
organization. Internal resources are developed to conduct most
of the programs, which may take from three to five years to
complete.
 The model starts with upgrading individual managers' skills and
leadership abilities,
 moves to team improvement activities,
 then to intergroup relations activities.
 Later phases include corporate planning for improvement,
 developing implementation tactics, and
 finally, an evaluation phase assessing .change in the
organization culture and looking toward future directions.
9.Third-Party Peacemaking
Activities.
 Activities conducted by a skilled consultant
(the third party, designed to help two
members of an organization manage their
interpersonal conflict. These activities are
based on confrontation tactics and an
understanding of the processes involved in
conflict and conflict resolution.
10. Coaching and Counseling
Activities.
 Activities that entail the consultant or other
organization members working with individuals to
help
 (a) define learning goals,
 (b) learn how others see their behavior, and
 (c) learn new behaviors to help them better achieve
their goals. A central feature of this activity is non
evaluative feedback others give to an individual.
 A second feature is the second exploration of
alternative behaviors.
11. Life- and Career-Planning
Activities.
 Activities that enable individuals to
focus on their life and career objectives
and how to go about achieving them.
Structured activities include producing
life and career inventories, discussing
goals and objectives, and assessing
capabilities, needed additional training,
and areas of strength and deficiency.
12. Planning and Goal-Setting
Activities
 Activities that include theory and experience
in planning and goal setting, problem-solving
models, planning paradigms, ideal
organization versus real organization
"discrepancy" models, and the like.
 The goal is to improve these skills at the
levels of the individual, group, and total
organization.
13. Strategic Management
Activities.
 Activities that help key policy makers to
reflect systematically on the organization's
basic mission and goals and environmental
demands, threats, and opportunities, and to
engage in long-range action planning of both
a reactive and proactive nature.
 These activities direct attention in two
important directions: outside the organization
to a consideration of the environment, and
away from the present to the future.
14. Organizational Transformation
Activities.
 Activities that involve large-scale system changes;
 activities designed to fundamentally change the
nature of the organization.
 Almost everything about the organization is
changed-structure,
 management philosophy,
 reward systems,
 the design of work,
 mission, values, and cultures.
 Total quality programs are transformational: so are
programs to create high-performance organizations
or high performance work systems.
 Each of these families of interventions
includes many activities. They involve both
conceptual material and actual experience
with the phenomenon being studied. Some
families are directed toward specific targets,
problems, or processes.
 For example,
 Team-building activities are specific to work
teams,
 While life-planning activities are directed to
individuals, although these latter activities
take place in-group settings.
 Some interventions are problem specific:
examples are the third-party peacemaking
activities and the goal-setting activities.
 Some activities are process
specific: an example is intergroup
activities that explore the
 processes involved in managing

interfaces.
 Another way to classify OD
interventions is by the primary
target of the intervention,
 for example, individuals, dyads and

triads, teams and groups,

intergroup relations, and the total
organization.
 Some interventions have multiple
targets and multiple uses, and thus
appear in several places in the
figure. These classification
schemes are intended to help you
understand the range and uses of
OD interventions.
 OD interventions
 Some logical Follow-up questions are:
 When is OD intervention appropriate
during the strategy formulation,
implementation, and evaluation
processes?
 What types of interventions could or
should be employed?
OD Programme Contents
 Interventions covered are based on the
needs for each class and include one
intervention from each category
 (individual, group, organization).
 Specific interventions may include the
following:
 Coaching
 Leadership development
 Diagnostic instruments
 Leadership and learning styles
 Use of training as an intervention

 Team development, group

dynamics, small group process
consultation
 Role clarification, organizational
design and redesign
 Visioning, collaborative strategic
planning, culture change
 Multicultural OD & Global Issues

 Large Group Methods

 Learning methods will include case

studies, role plays, large and small

group discussion.
Figure 18.5 Organization
development and the planned change
process.
Table 8.1
OD Interventions: An Overview (part 1 of
2)
Table 8.1
OD Interventions: An Overview
(part 2 of 2)
 1. Structure the activity to include the
relevant people, the people affected by the
problem or the opportunity.
 For example,
 if the goal is improved team effectiveness,
have the whole team engage in the
activities.
 If the goal is improved relations between two separate
work groups, have both work groups present.
 If the goal is to build linkages with some special group,
say, the industrial relations people, have them there
along with the people from the home group.
 If the goal is better customer service, include
customers in the activity.
 Preplanning the group composition is necessary for
properly structuring the activity.
Individual OD interventions
 Role negotiation
 Sensitivity training (T-groups)
 Management training
 Job redesign
 Career planning
Team OD
interventions
 Team building
 Process consultation
 Inter-group team building
Organization-wide OD
interventions
 Survey feedback
 Confrontation meeting
 Structural redesign
 Management by objectives (MBO)
 Third party peace making interventions
Study Question 5: How can stress be
managed in a change environment?

 Stress
 A state of tension experienced by individuals facing
extraordinary demands, constraints, or opportunities.
 Stressors
 Things that cause stress
 Originate in work, personal, and nonwork situations.
 Have the potential to influence work attitudes, behavior,
job performance, and health.
Designing an Intervention
Strategy – 2 
 Systems Approach:
 Diagnose the Environment
 e.g., force field analysis
 Develop an Action Plan
 objectives, activities, “details”
 Evaluate the Results of the Intervention
Types of Interventions: Human
Process-Based
 Survey Feedback
 The systematic collection of survey data
 Fed back to groups to promote problem solving
and change
 Team Building
 A process to improve a group’s problem-solving
abilities
 Example: process consultation
Types of Interventions:  
Techno structural 
 Job Enlargement
 Adding variety through similar tasks
 Job Enrichment
 Increasing responsibility, knowledge of results,
and meaningfulness of work
 Alternative Work Schedules
 Compressed workweek
 Flextime work schedule
Types of Interventions:  
Socio technical Systems
 Quality Circles
 Involving employees in work decisions
 Total Quality Management (TQM)
 Continuous improvement efforts
 Self-Managing Teams (SMTs)
 Team members have authority to make
decisions and regulate the team’s activities
Types of Interventions:  
Socio technical Systems – 2 
 Total Quality Management (TQM)
 Five basic components:
 Total commitment from senior management
 Quality standards and measures in place
 Training in quality for all employees (including Statistical
Process Control)
 Programs/ways to reward, recognize, and celebrate
quality achievements
 Strong quality communication efforts
Types of Interventions:  
Socio technical Systems – 3 
 Self-Managing Teams
 Basic components:
 Interdependence among team members
 Individual members have discretion/authority to
make important work decisions
 Individual members possess a variety of skills,
so that they can perform multiple tasks
 The team receives regular performance
feedback
Types of Interventions:  
Organizational Transformation 
 Cultural Interventions
 Efforts to change the values, norms, or ways of
thinking in an organization
 Strategic Changes
 Fundamental changes in the purpose or mission
of an organization
 Becoming a Learning Organization
 Beyond TQM, to continuous learning and
improvement for all employees
 High Performance Work Systems
Types of Interventions:  
Organizational Transformation – 2  
 Becoming a Learning Organization
 Dimensions that support learning:
 Organization Structure – more collaborative
and team-based
 Information Acquisition, Sharing, and Retention
– effective knowledge and information sharing
 HRM Practices – all reinforce learning
 Organizational Culture – promotes learning
 Leadership – supportive (at all levels)
 Types of Interventions :
Organizational Transformation – 3 
 High Performance Work Systems
 Eight core principles:
 Alignment to organizational strategy
 Clear goals and outcomes (all levels, all aligned)
 Work is organized around processes
 Process-oriented tracking and management of
results
 Work units are linked to identified processes
 Accountability, cycle time, and responsiveness
emphasized
 Collaboration, trust, and mutual support are
present
 Emphasis on strategic change management
Study Question 4: What is organization
development?

 Action research
 The process of systematically collecting data on
an organization, feeding it back to the members
for action planning, and evaluating results by
collecting more data and repeating the process as
necessary.
 Is initiated when someone senses a performance
gap.
Study Question 4: What is organization
development?
 Steps in the action research process:
 Problem sensing.
 Data gathering.
 Data analysis and feedback.
 Action planning.
 Action implementation.
 Evaluation and follow-up.
Some Concluding Thoughts on
Organization Development 
 Effectiveness: There is evidence for the
effectiveness of particular OD interventions.
However, there is much room for
improvement (in the research designs used,
and the results obtained).
 Recent efforts have stressed “change
management.”
Some Concluding Thoughts on
Organization Development – 2 
 Many HRD applications can be viewed as OD
interventions:
 Human Process-Based: career development,
coaching, orientation
 Technostructural: skills/technical training
 Sociotechnical: team and quality training
 Organization transformation: EAPs, management
development
Summary 

 Organization development can be difficult!

 Reluctance/resistance to change
 Success is most likely with:
 An appropriate model of change
 The appropriate methods/interventions
 A systems approach (e.g., high performance work
systems, HRD process model)
 Need a dual focus on organizational
performance and employee well-being
 Third party
peacemaking
interventions
Third party peacemaking
interventions
 It have the potential to control the
conflict or resolve it.
 Its basic feature is confrontation:the two

principals must be willing to confront the

fact that conflict exists and that it has
consequences for the effectiveness of
the two parties involved.
Walton’s approach to third
party peacemaking
 The diagnostic model:

 The model is based on four elements:

 The conflict issues.
 Precipitating circumstances.
 Conflict relevant acts.
 The consequences of the conflict
It is also important to know the
source of the conflict. 
 Sources:

 Substantive issues, which is conflict related to

practices, scarce resources, and differing
conceptions of roles and responsibilities.

 Emotional issues, involve feelings between the

parties, such as anger, hurt, fear, resentment, etc
 Walton has outlined the ingredients of a productive
confrontation( the process of addressing conflict),
they are
2. Mutual positive motivation
3. Balance of power
4. Synchronization of confrontation efforts
5. Differentiation and integration of different phases
of the intervention must be well paced
1. Conditions that promote openness should be
created
2. Reliable communicative signals
3. Optimum tension in the situation
Organizational
Mirror
Interventions
 Host group genuinely wants to hear how
the unit is perceived, the consultant
feeds back to the total group information
from the interviews.
 The outsiders FISH BOWL to discuss &

explore the data presented by the

consultant.
Organization Mirror

Gives feedback to teams on how

other elements of organization view
them.
Units meet together to process data
with objective of identifying
problems and formulating solutions.
Organizational Mirror
Interventions:
 Set of activities in which host group
receives feedback about how it is
perceived and regarded from reps
across organization
 Intended to improve intergroup
relationships
 It is different from the inter group team-
building intervention in that:
 Three or more groups are involved
 Representatives of other work related groups
typically participate rather than the full
membership
 The focus is to assist the host unit that
requested the meeting
Process

1. Host group asks key reps from

interface group (customer-supplier
groups) to meet and provide
feedback
2. Pre- and post interviews by
consultant to OD magnitude of
issue(s), precipitate participants and
answer their questions
At the actual session
– Opening remarks by manger of host group to set tone
– Guests use fishbowl discussion to maintain
natural flow; hosts listen
– Hosts fishbowl discuss, ask for clarification from guests
– Subgroups of guests and hosts form to ID most
important changes host group needs to make
– Reconvene in large group to hear summaries of each
sub group and form master task list
– Action planning, tasks, responsible parties, completion
dates established and agreed, concluding mirroring
session
– Follow-up meeting to assess and review progress
 It is imperative (VITAL) that
following the meeting the
host group in fact implement
the action plans that were
developed during the
meeting.
Survey-Guided
Development

Survey Feedback
 Process
Consultation
intervention
Process Consultation
 “It is more of a philosophy or a set
of underlying assumptions about
the helping process that lead the
consultant to take a certain attitude
toward his or her relationship with
the client.”
Edgar H. Schein
Process Consultation Defined
 Process consultation is the creation of a
relationship with the client that permits
the client to perceive, understand, and
act on the process events that occur in
the client’s internal and external
environment in order to improve the
situation as defined by the client`
PCI-

 “thecentral discipline for helping

professionals to build strong
client-consultant relationships
that result in sustained change
and improvement.”
Key Principles
 PRINCIPLE 1: Always Try to Be Helpful

“Consultation is providing help. Obviously,

therefore, if I have intention of being
helpful and working at it, I am likely to be
successful in creating a helping
relationship. If possible, every contact
should be perceived as helpful.”
Key Principles
 PRINCIPLE 2: Always Stay in Touch with the
Current Reality

“I cannot be helpful if I do not know the realities of

what is going on within me and within the client
system; therefore, every contact with anyone in the
client system should provide diagnostic information
to both the client and to me about the here-and-now
state of the client system and the relationship
between the client and me.”
Key Principles
 PRINCIPLE 3: Access Your Ignorance

“The only way I can discover my own inner reality is to

learn to distinguish
what I know from what I assume I know,
from what I truly do not know.
I cannot determine what is the current reality if I do not
get in touch with what I do not know about the
situation
and do not have the wisdom to ask about it.”
Key Principles
 PRINCIPLE 4: Everything You Do Is an
Intervention

“Just as every interaction reveals diagnostic

information, so does every interaction have
consequences both for the client and for me.
I therefore have to own everything I do and
assess the consequences to be sure that
they fit my goals of creating a helping
relationship.”
PRINCIPLE 5: It Is the Client Who Owns the
Problem and the Solution

“My job is to create a relationship in which

the client can get help. It is not my job to
take the client’s problems onto my own
shoulders, nor is it my job to offer advice
and solutions for situations in which I do
not live myself. The reality is that only the
client has to live with the consequences of
the problem and the solution, so I must
not take the monkey off the client’s back.”
Key Principles
 PRINCIPLE 6: Go with the Flow

“All client systems develop cultures and attempt to

maintain their stability through maintenance of those
cultures. All individual clients develop their own
personalities and styles. In as much as I do not
know initially what those cultural and personal
realities are, I must locate the client’s own areas of
motivation and readiness to change, and initially
build on those.”
Key Principles
 Principle 7: Timing is Crucial

“Any given intervention might work at one time

and fail at another time. Therefore, I must
remain constantly diagnostic and look for
those moments when the client’s attention
seems to be available.”
PRINCIPLE 8: Be Constructively
Opportunistic with Confrontive
Interventions

“All client systems have areas of instability and

openness where motivation to change exists. I
must find and build on existing motivations and
cultural strengths (go with the flow), and, at the
same time seize targets of opportunity to provide
new insights and alternatives. Going with the
flow must be balanced with taking some risks in
intervening.”
Key Principles
 PRINCIPLE 9: Everything Is Data; Errors
Will Always Occur and Are the Prime
Source for Learning

“No matter how carefully I observe the above

principles I will say and do things that
produce unexpected and undesirable
reactions in the client. I must learn from them
and at all costs avoid defensiveness, shame,
or guilt…”
Key Principles
 PRINCIPLE 10: When in Doubt, Share the
Problem

“I am often in the situation where I do not know

what to do next, what kind of intervention
would be appropriate. It is often appropriate
in those situations to share the problem with
the client and involve him or her in deciding
what to do next.”