21st Century Organizational Development Consulting

21st Century Management

21st Century Management Consulting

Organizational Development

21st Century Organizational Development

21st Century Change Management

Process Consultation

21st Century Supervision

21st Century Leadership

Dialogue

21st Century Organizational Development Consulting

Organizational development consulting is a late twentieth century development. Arising out of the applied social and psychological sciences in the sixties and seventies, OD became a field of practice and an academic discipline (both rather weakly defined) in the eighties and nineties.

With vague boundaries and a plethora of specialized approaches, OD is perhaps not as understood or recognized as, say, HR or IT. The fact that many OD practitioners evoke a sense of having a cause or of being advocates for social views also gives it a tinge that leads to some dismissing it as "soft" or "touchy-feely" compared to supposedly "hard" or "practical" methods.

Yet, whatever criticisms may be made of over-ambitious or over-trendy tendencies in the OD community, two facts are undeniable: Organizational development principles and techniques are soundly based on an extensive body of research, theory and practice. And the OD approach – its flavor of management consulting, if you will – has decided advantages that are now more than ever relevant. Consider the following:

An organization is made up of people. To deny the importance of people factors is to deny reality. The greatest leader could accomplish nothing by communicating the greatest vision to the bricks and mortar, the computers, or other non-human assets. To lead people, you must have people skills; to lead an organization, you need organizational development.

An organization is more than the sum of its members. One of the greatest fallacies in modern business is the belief that maximizing specific inputs (such as individual performance) results in maximizing organizational performance. Yet everyone knows that teams perform better than isolated individuals! An organization is always a team or a group of teams, and organizational development is the key to linking individual, team, and organizational performance.

An organization has a culture. Any group of people has similarities and differences vis-à-vis any other group. To manage without paying attention to the organizational culture is like doing HVAC engineering while denying the existence of air. Organizational development lets you read, understand, and improve the culture of your business.

An organization and its members are mutually dependent. The idea that organizations own their members is obsolete. To win loyalty and obtain support from its members, an organization needs to balance collective and individual needs. The application of organizational development principles is the most powerful way to achieve such mutual successful outcomes.

Organizational development consulting has a shorter career history than management consulting or than the applied psychology from which it developed. Projecting its course is therefore relatively difficult, and in a world of continuous and unexpected changes any kind of prediction is at best speculative. But a few of the most apparent trends in 21st century organizational development consulting are as follows:

The variety of organizational development techniques will keep increasing. The very thing that makes some people dubious about organizational development – its constant chasing after new trends and borrowing of new ideas for practical application – is actually one of its greatest strengths. Given the constant stress and strain produced by the explosive growth of knowledge, every organization needs new ideas. The task of the organizational development consultant is to selectively utilize, put into practice, and provide education on the best and most suitable of these. Yesterday it may have been process mapping that was the best tool; today it may be appreciative inquiry; tomorrow it may be emotional intelligence. Constant change is business as usual, both in the world of business and in the world of ideas.

The number of employees involved in organizational development will increase. The direction of the current trend is to the point where all members of the organization will be involved in all phases of its operation. This means that organizational development consultants will work with all levels and with all types of members, not just the top level or the managers. Internal consultants will be more common and will be partners of external consultants. Organizational development consultants will provide knowledge of facilitation and related skills to teams and individuals at every level. As Peter Block predicted, every employee will be responsible for organizational development.

The need to improve organizational communication will be increasingly important. As technology continues to speed up and to multiply the amount of communication within and between organizations, the implications for organizational behavior – including stress, learning, and responsibility – will have to be repeatedly addressed. Dialogue will more and more be seen not simply as a tool for group practice and special situations, but as a general and ongoing need. Organizations will strive to make all communication more dialogic. Organizational development consultancies will frequently focus on communication issues. Just as every member of the organization will be concerned with customer services, everyone will be a communication specialist.