What is an OD (Organizational Development) Intervention?

The term interventions refer to the range of planned programmatic activities clients and consultants participate, during the course of an organization development programme. Organization Development is “an effort, planned, organization-wide and managed from top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization’s processes using behavioural-science knowledge”.

How to identify an Appropriate Intervention?

Plan an OD Strategy:

1. Desired Objectives
2. Specific Interventions aimed at achieving objectives
3. Time Frame
4. Monitoring, Review & Evaluation System

The strategy must specify contingencies as well as primary interventions and take into account the power and influence dynamics of the Organization. There are six general steps to building a strategy:

1. Defining the Change Problem
2. Determining appropriate OD Objectives
3. Determining the systems and subsystems readiness and capacity to change
4. Determining key subsystems
5. Assessing resources
6. Selecting an approach and developing an action plan for reaching objectives

To understand the type of Intervention required to the identified problem, typology of interventions based on the following questions had to be made.

1. Is the Intervention directed primarily toward individual learning, insight, and skill building or toward group learning?
2. Does the Intervention focus on task or process issues?
3. What interventions are most commonly used to improve their effectiveness?

Focus on the Individual	Focus on the Group
Role Analysis Technique (RAT) Education Career Planning Job Enrichment MBO	Techno structural Changes Survey Feedback Confrontation Meeting Team-Building Sessions Intergroup Activities Grid OD Phases 2,3 Sociotechnical Systems
Life Planning Coaching & Counseling of Individuals Group Dynamics, Planned Change Stranger T-Groups Third Party Peace Making Grid OD Phase 1 Gestalt OD Transactional Analysis	Survey Feedback Team-Building Sessions Intergroup Activities Process Consultation Family T-Group Grid OD Phases 2,3 Gestlat OD

Implementation of  OD Intervention       –             Level of Team Structure and Function

Example: Team Building (based on the working experience with OD Consultant in an exercise conducted for Sr.Management Team of our company recently, initiated by our strategic partner company)

Key Objectives:

• To review and improve the Team effectiveness
• To identify problem areas of team behaviour and corrective actions

Developmental Focus:

• Team Performance
• Team Goals , Goal setting process
• Team norms, culture and feedback processes

Participants:

• The team Leader and all Team members

When to Implement:

• Useful as an early step for the Senior Management team in an organization
• The initial sessions to be followed by a session 3 to 9 months later to evaluate progress on action plans

Time Scale:

• Five to Seven days based on the Team Size

Details of Process of Implementation:

1. Contract Session
• Discussing Needs and Expectations
2. Pre-work Session
• Developing 10 to 20 Interview questions
3. Information Collection
• Conducting Individual Interviews
4. Information Feedback
• Distributing copies of handouts to all group members for review
5. Information Analysis
• Identifying key Strengths and Weaknesses
6. Agenda Development
• Rank ordering key weaknesses / problems according to importance
7. Problem examination
• Discussing each key weakness / problem in depth
8. Option Generation
• Generating ideas for solving each key weakness / problem identified
9. Action Planning
• Developing a written plan of action for each key weakness / problem identified
10. Assessment
• Evaluating the meeting in terms of content and process

Review / Follow-up session