Organizational Development is a planned effort to change the culture, behaviors, ways of working and other “people” factors of an organization to enable it to effectively meet its strategic objectives.

Summary by The World of Work Project

Organizational Development

Organizational development, often referred to as “OD”, is a broad phrase that captures many things. Fundamentally though, organizational development can be thought of as intentional work designed to change and improve an organization so that it is better at what it does.

Most of the time this work focuses on the human factors at play in an organization. After all, organizations are complicated systems of intertwined processes and streams of work. And at their cores lie people.

In many instances the social systems, ways of working, cultures, methods of communication, relationships, human knowledge and behaviors within organizations determine how effective and competitive they are. They also determine what those organizations are like to work for and how fulfilling and rewarding the individuals who work for them find them to be.

The fundamental premise of organizational development, which derives many of its roots from organizational psychology, sociology and change management, is that by designing and delivering “interventions” that change the social systems, ways of working and cultures within organizations, it’s possible to both improve their competitiveness, and make them better places for people to work.

A Brief History of Organizational Development

Organizational development evolved in roughly the 1930s, primarily from the world of Psychology.

The founding father of Organizational Development is considered to be Kurt Lewin, an MIT professor who worked across a wide range of areas including organizational psychology and change as well as group dynamics. In fact, he set up MIT’s Research Center for Group Dynamics in 1944, shortly before his death in 1947. Kurt Lewin contributed hugely to the world of business and merits further research if you have time, we certainly regularly reference him and his work throughout what we do.

While Kurt is considered the founding father of Organizational Development, he never actually used that phrase himself. Instead, the phrase was formed by another giant of the profession, Richard Beckhard, who coined the term in the 1950s while working at Bell Labs. He later published a seminal work on the subject, “Organization Development: Strategies and Models”. He too was a professor at MIT.

From the 1960s on-wards, Organizational Development really started to take off, though perhaps not by that name. Management sciences became more professional and important as organizations searched for increasing competitive advantages and focused more on the engagement and productivity of their employees. In this period things like employee surveys were introduced and organizations started to deliver specific interventions designed to increase engagement. This ability to quantify and evidence changes in in employee opinion or engagement helped move these practices into the mainstream.

The Rise of the Term “OD”

While Organizational Development has grown significantly in recent decades, the term has only really become popular in the near past.

Prior to this, various areas of HR delivered Organizational Development initiatives under different names, wrapped up in learning and development, personnel, organizational change and performance and engagement teams.

Why Organizational Development Matters

Focusing on the people within an organization is an effective way to increase competitiveness.

Creating great places to work is important for improving competitiveness in all industries, but it’s particularly important in industries that require people to be creative, innovative, solve problems, manage complexity or otherwise perform more complex mental tasks. In these industries, being a great organization to work for really is a significant competitive advantage.

Organizational Development is one of the few fields of work in which it is really possible to create great outcomes for both individuals and organizations. To create lasting change though, organizations need to ensure that the benefits of organizational development programs are shared with employees, not simply captured as cost savings for the organization.

The World of Work Project View

In our view, organizational development is one of the most important things that leaders can do.

We don’t really care about the name OD, or the fact that it changes a lot. But we do care about the conscious effort to understand and improve how people feel and work together in an organization.

We genuinely believe that improving the human aspect of work leads to better outcomes for organizations and individuals involved, and think this is important and powerful.

In our view, all leaders should have an understanding of organizational development.

Learning More

Organizational development is a form of organizational change. These programs are often focused on changing a culture, improving employee engagement or changing the employee experience. Many successful organizational development programs have similarities.

As with much change, co-creation is helpful in OD programs and we should consider the emotional impacts of change on people. It might also be worth using Force Field Analysis to assess how likely it is for an OD program will succeed.

Also – our very first ever podcast was on this topic! You can listen below.

How We Help Organizations

We provide leadership development programmes and consulting services to clients around the world to help them become high performing organizations that are great places to work. We receive great feedback, build meaningful and lasting relationships and provide reduced cost services where price is a barrier.

Learning more about who we are and what we do it easy: To hear from us, please join our mailing list. To ask about how we can help you or your organization, please contact us. To explore topics we care about, listen to our podcast. To attend a free seminar, please check out our eventbrite page.

We’re also considering creating a community for people interested in improving the world of work. If you’d like to be part of it, please contact us.

Sources and Feedback

In this instance we’re talking about a field of work and not a theory. Given this, we think a good starting point for reading might be Richard Beckhard’s book. Beckhard, R. (1969). Organization development: strategies and models. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley.

We’re a small organization who know we make mistakes and want to improve them. Please contact us with any feedback you have on this post. We’ll usually reply within 72 hours.