What is organization development?
Yes organization development:
- Training and
- Leadership development and
- Coaching and
- Performance management and
- Change management and
- Communications and
- Organization design and
- Competency models and
- Strategic planning and
- really so much more
It is almost more confusing than helpful to really say what organization development is.
This challenge spills over when I am to bring organization development with me to look at a performance management plan, but told not to touch incentives, coaching, or talent development.
Or asked to provide change management, but not allowed to meet with the top of the house to identify communication points or told not to touch skills-gap analysis, training, or performance management.
When I look at an organization, a department, a team, or an individual, I see each in a frame of the system they work within. The general characteristics of a healthy organization are cohesion, interdependence, and stability.
Organization Development Root Cause
Systems theory relies on all interaction. You can not divorce the pieces: just as you can not take the ocean out of the carbon cycle.
What is organization development?
Well, who really cares, unless it helps people identify a need, overcome a challenge, and maximize resource return.
Simply, organization development is diagnosing the root cause and then designing the critical path to commitment.
Without commitment you only have a perspective.
The diagnosis without the critical path to commitment is rhetoric.