ORGNISATIONAL

DEVELOPMENT &
INTERVENTION
Prepared By
Richie

INTRODUCTIO
N
ORG AN IS AT ION A L
D EV E LOP M E N T
IS
A
COLLE C TIO N OF CH A NG E M ET H OD T H AT T RY
TO
IM P R OV E
OR GA NI SAT I ONA L
EF F EC T IV E NE SS A N D E M P LOYE E WE LL B E IN G.
ORG AN IS AT ION D E V ELOP ME N T E NC OM PA SS E S
A
CO LLEC T ION
OF
P LA N N E D -CH A N GE D
IN T ER V EN T ION S
B UI LT
ON
H U MA N IS T IC
DE MOCR AT IC VA LU E T H AT S E E K T O IM P R OV E
ORG AN IS AT ION A L
EF F EC T IV EN E SS
AND
EM P LOYE E W E LL-B E IN G

OD
Interventions
Organization Development (OD) interventions techniques are the
methods created by OD professionals and others. Single organization
or consultant cannot use all the interventions. They use these
interventions depending upon the need or requirement. The most
important interventions are,
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

Survey feedback
Process Consultation
Sensitivity Training
The Managerial grid
Goal setting and Planning
Team Building and management by objectives

Sensitivity
Training
Sensitivity Training A variety of namessensitivity training, laboratory
training, encounter groups, or T-groups (training groups)all refer to
an early method of changing behavior through unstructured group
interaction. Members were brought together in a free and open
environment in which participants discuss themselves and their
interactive processes, loosely directed by a professional behavioral
scientist who created the opportunity to express ideas, beliefs, and
attitudes without taking any leadership role. The group was process
oriented, which means individuals learned through observing and
participating rather than being told.
Many participants found these unstructured groups intimidating,
chaotic, and damaging to work relationships. Although extremely
popular in the 1960s, they
diminished in use during the 1970s and have essentially disappeared.
However, organizadonal interventions such as diversity training,
executive coaching, and team-building exercises are descendants of
this early OD intervention technique.

Survey Feedback
Survey Feedback One tool for assessing attitudes held by organizational
members, identifying discrepancies among member perceptions, and solving
these differences is the survey feedback approach. 30
Everyone in an organization can participate in survey feedback, but of key
importance is the organizational "family''the manager of any given unit and the
employees who report directly to him or her. All usually complete a questionnaire
about their perceptions and attitudes on a range of topics, including
decisionmaking pracces; communication effectiveness; coordination among
units; and satisfaction the organization, job, peers, and immediate supervisor.
Data from this questionnaire are tabulated with data pertaining to an individual's
specific "family" and to the entire organization and then distributed to
employees. These data become the springboard for identifying problems and
clarifying issues that may be creating difficulties for people. Particular attention is
given to encouraging discussion and ensuring it focuses on issues and ideas and
not on attacking individuals. For instance, are people listening? Are new ideas
being generated? Can decision making, interpersonal relations, or job
assignments be improved? Answers should lead the group to commit to various
remedies for the problems identified.

Process Consultation
Process Consultation - managers often sense their unit's performance can be
improved but are unable to identify what to improve and how. The purpose of
process consultadon (PC) is for an outside consultant to assist a client, usually a
manager, "to perceive, understand, and act upon process events" with which
the manager must deal. 31 These events might include work flow, informal
relationships among unit members, and formal communication channels.
PC is similar to sensitivity training in assuming we can improve organizational
effectiveness by dealing with interpersonal problems and in emphasizing
involvement. But PC is more task directed, and consultants are there to "give
the client 'insight' into what is going on around him, within him, and between
him and other people. "32 They do not solve the organization's problems but
rather guide or coach the client to solve his or her own problems after jointly
diagnosing what needs improvement. The client develops the skill to analyze
processes within his or her unit and can continue to call on it long after the
consultant is gone. Because the client actively participates in both the diagnosis
and the development of alternatives, he or she arrives at greater understanding
of the process and the remedy and is less resistant to the action plan chosen

Team Building
Team Building We've noted throughout this book that organizations
increasingly rely on teams to accomplish work tasks. Team building
uses high interaction group activities to increase trust and
openness among team members, improve coordinative efforts, and
increase team performance. Here we emphasize the intragroup
level, meaning organizational families (command groups) as well as
committees, project teams, self-managed teams, and task groups.
Team building typically includes goal setting, development of
interpersonal relations among team members, role analysis to
clarify each member's role and responsibilities, and team process
analysis. It may emphasize or exclude certain activities, depending
on the purpose of the development effort and the specifi c problems
with which the team is confronted. Basically, however, team
building uses high interaction among members to increase trust
and openness

Intergroup Development
Intergroup Development A major area of concern in OD is dysfunctional conflict between groups. Intergroup
development seeks to change groups' attitudes, stereotypes, and perceptions about each other. Here training
sessions closely resemble diversity training (in fact, diversity training largely evolved from intergroup
development in OD), except rather than focusing on demographic differences, they focus on differences among
occupations, departments, or divisions within an organization.
To increase trust and openness between the government and the people and to decrease corruption, the state of
Karnataka implemented an e-governance project named Bhoomi for the computerization of land records. Bhoomi
has been successful in making data on land records transparent and available to everyone. The project design
took away the power of the civil servants to delay or deny the service. The application process has been
computerized and the applications are processed in the order in which they are received. 34 The formalization of
processes at the backend has also made it possible for all employees to focus on providing efficient services to
their clients, compared to earlier times when data were scattered and accessible to only a handful of people. To
enable such changes, groups of revenue officials such as shirstedars, revenue inspectors, and village
accountants underwent training, which helped in the development of better inter-group relationships.
In one company, the engineers saw the accounting department as composed of shy and conservative types, and
the human resources department as having a bunch of "ultra-liberals more concerned that some protected group
of employees might get their feelings hurt than with the company making a profit." Such stereotypes can have
an obvious negative impact on coordination efforts among departments.
Among several approaches for improving intergroup relations,35 a popular one emphasizes problem solving. 36
Each group meets independently to list its perceptions of itself and of the other group, and how it believes the
other group perceives it. The groups share their lists, discuss similarities and differences, and look for the causes
of disparities. Are the groups' goals at odds? Were perceptions distorted? On what basis were stereotypes
formulated? Have some differences been caused by misunderstanding of intentions? Have words and concepts
been defined differently by each group? Answers to questions like these clarify the exact nature of the conflict.
Once they have identified the causes of the difficulty, the groups move to the integration phasedeveloping
solutions to improve relations between them. Subgroups can be formed of members from each of the conflicting
groups to conduct further diagnosis and formulate alternative solutions.

Appreciative Inquiry
Appreciative Inquiry Most OD approaches are problem centered. They identify a problem or set of
problems, then look for a solution. Appreciative inquiry (Al) instead accentuates the positive. Rather
than looking for problems to fix, it seeks to identify the unique qualities and special strengths of an
organization, which members can build on to improve performance. That is, Al focuses on an
01vanizadon's successes rather than its problems.
The Al process consists of four stepsdiscovery, dreaming, design, and discoveryoften played out
in a large-group meeting over a 2- or 3-day time period and overseen by a trained change strengths.
agent. Discovery Employees sets out recount to identifytimes
what people think are the organization's they felt the organization worked best or when they
specifically felt most satisfied with theirjobs. In (Imamin.g, employees use information from the
discovery phase to speculate on possible futures, such as what the organization will be like in 5
years. In design, participants find a common vision of how the organization will look in the future and
agree on its unique qualities. For the fourth step, par. ticipants seek to define the organization's
destiny or how to fulfill their dream and they typically write action plans and develop implementation
strategies.
Al has proven an effective change strategy in organizations such as Wipro, Arvind, and the Defence
Research & Development Organisation (DRDO). American Express used Al to revitalize its culture
during a lean economy. In workshops employees described how they already felt proud of working at
American Express and were encouraged to create a change vision by describing how it could be
better in the future. The efforts led to some very concrete improvements. Senior managers were able
to use employees' information to better their methods ofmaking financial forecasts, improve IT
investments, and create new performance-management tools for managem The end result was a
renewed culture focused on vnning atdtudes and behaviors. 38