IN TODAY’S highly turbulent world, the new rule is that there are no permanent rules. The 21st century world is volatile, unpredictable and ambiguous. In such an environment, adaptability, creativity and speed are the pathways to survival and success. Organizations, therefore need to be constantly self-transforming, even to the extent of creating new rules for effectiveness and success.
Predicting the future has become irrelevant in a rapidly-changing and chaotic environment, Instead, pre-paring the organization to be able to adapt & respond to unpredictable and random events is the key to survival and sustainable growth. Preparing the organization for an uncertain future entails making decisions today for consequences of unforeseeable events. This is especially true for successful business enterprises which are most imperiled by the complacency & arrogance which success often breeds. Rapid growth also brings special dangers, one of which is getting blinded by the obsession of more growth. This over-focus on growth, as exemplified in the Toyota fiasco a couple of years ago, can bring about disastrous results. In the case of Toyota, the obsession of becoming the biggest car manufacturer in the world has blinded its management from paying attention to its customers, its processes and its quality philosophy. In other words, its internal capabilities fell short of supporting its ambitious goals.
Organization Development (OD) is a philosophy and the strategy of harnessing organizational purpose, processes and people to develop the internal capabilities required to sustain the value creation processes of the enterprise amidst the realities of constant changes.
This view of OD, has been initially advocated by Richard Beckhard, considered a founding guru of the OD discipline. He defines OD as planned organization-wide & top managed effort to increase organization effectiveness & health through planned interventions in the organization’s processes, using behavioral science knowledge (Strategies and Models, 1969).
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The purpose of this overview is to update Beckhard’s definition and present OD as a strategic approach to dealing with organizational effectiveness in today’s “flat and fast-laned world.
Where is OD today?
