Organization Development: Scope, Success Factors, Competencies and Impacted Areas

Business Scope

Often times, many see Organization Development (OD) and Organization Design as same and justifiably so because of the interconnections especially when professionals like my team and I operate in both planes. Well, they are different but complementary. OD has a broad scope (i.e. enterprise-/system-focused) and is targeted at organizational alignment, harmony and advancement, while Organization Design (which flows from a company's operating model) is relatively narrow and focused on the alignment among strategy, organograms and processes. OD is beyond (human resources and) change management just as Organization Design is beyond organograms.

Recall I mentioned that they are complementary? I will tell you why, and simply, too. During OD projects, upon current position/state diagnosis and analyses of a company (or a department or unit), one might discover that there are some organization design problems, and for organization change to be executed, there will be need to restructure (an exercise that is within the operational scope of organization design). From consulting as well as some regular employment experiences and even numerous OD articles studied, culture change is most times in a Tango (dance) with structure change because the alignment is crucial to sustainable organizational advancement.

OD must always be enterprise-/system-focused; about how the system and sub-systems align as well as how an organization remains responsive and adaptive to the changing market and industry it is embedded in. It is important at this point to highlight critical success factors for OD in any organization with the intention of maximizing its full benefits.

Critical Success Factors for OD

For OD to thrive in any organization, the following components (call them ingredients, if you will) must be in place:

• Clearly defined corporate and business strategies
• Strategically aligned culture
• Clearly and accurately defined OD scope, goals and strategy
• Expert resource persons/in-house professionals (to consult, advise, lead processes and deliver results)
• OD tools
• OD policy and procedures
• Executive leadership support
• Access to robust and accurate evolving organizational data
• Technology support
• Dependencies and collaborative teams

One of the most vital resources to aid an excellent delivery of OD goals is a team of expert professionals. To harness critical organizational factors in a productive way, an OD professional must possess the competencies highlighted in the next section.

Requisite Competencies for OD Professionals

Below are core competencies central to the OD job and profession:

1. Business Acumen
2. Systems Thinking (internal and external)
3. Stakeholder Management
4. Consulting and Advisory Skills
5. Strategy and Execution Skills
6. Research and Diagnostic Skills
7. Organization Design and Change Management
8. Conflict Management
9. Project Management
10. People and Process Leadership

I will be remiss if I fail to mention that OD, like Human Resource Management (HRM), Business Analysis, Marketing Management, Engineering etc. can be viewed through a career lens and this means that proficiencies in the aforementioned competency areas are developed overtime with increasing exposure to diverse OD projects, training and coaching sessions, books (written by academics and practitioners) and more.

Now you might say "And so what? How does it impact business significantly?" I will tell you concisely.

Impacted Business Areas

To meet market demands and other stakeholder needs, an organization must be fit-for-purpose. It must be designed and constantly managed well to deliver financial and non-financial results. A key thrust of OD is to ensure alignment of organizational parts like strategy, structure (interconnected jobs manned by different levels of leaders and direct reports to execute business strategy), processes, culture, policies etc. This alignment is crucial because sustainable organizational results are systems-driven and a system implies integration and harmony.

From the foregoing, the following areas are hugely impacted by OD initiatives:

• Leadership (Senior, Mid-level etc.)
• Strategy (Corporate, Business, and Functional)
• Culture
• Processes

You might wonder why limit it to these few areas (which is an understandable thought). It is simple. These organizational areas have compounding effects that significantly impact business outcomes. For instance, effective leadership development (a core focus in OD) shapes better strategy (which births structures) and also drives better organizational culture (which has a bi-directional relationship with process).

OD is not particularly mainstream here in Nigeria like HRM (which by the way, both are often confused as more of the same), and so it may not resonate with many even within the HRM profession hence the reason I thought to share these little insights.

I hope you found this useful?

Jude Adigwe