The Art of Organisational Development
Organisational Development (OD) has always straddled in existence between the concept of social action and scientific inquiry. Addressing the effects of change at a micro and macro level, OD encompasses a myriad of interventions and activities, ranging from team effectiveness to structure redesign, and even ensuring job enrichment in a diversified environment.
It is an end-to-end process of ensuring the success of organisations through facilitated interventions, designed around the people, aligned to strategy.
The criticality of this change enabler couldn’t be more important, as organisations, institutions, communities and systems are faced with major transformation, propelling them to not only think about the future world of work now, but to action it.
At IQbusiness, our People Advisory OD capabilities, (which form part of our broader Business Agility Offerings) bridge the current gap so often seen when it comes to enabling People Agility as organisations strive towards achieving Business Agility.
This process of leveraging Organisational Development, aligned to Business Agility frameworks positions us with a unique end-to-end offering to clients, as we help them navigate strategic changes (i.e. process or systems) ; leverage and translate the behavioural science theory into practice; and apply an adaptive approach to solutioning, with the goal of driving true organisational effectiveness.
OD, can be attributed to the success of many organisations who have gone through challenging changes. To weather tough economic times, Tesla embarked on a major reorganisation in favour of a flatter structure, to improve communications amongst its teams and increase efficiency.
Loreal, in its effort to drive innovation (through an understanding and respect of the differences at the core of its business), embarked on workforce diversity interventions, which contributed to shaping how it has become a great place to work.
Bringing this a little closer to home in the South African context, a large FMCG organisation approached IQbusiness to assist in positioning them as a strategically innovative IT function. This required IQ to partner with them in redefining their Operating Model capabilities, and the ideal Digital Leadership Competencies, that would drive business and leadership effectiveness.
These are just a few of the many examples of how Organisational Development is and will continue to be an incredible tool to drive both planned, and unplanned development, organisation wide improvement, and sustainable reinforcement of change.
The shift from a VUCA (Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity) to a BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Non-linear, and Incomprehensible) world, requires organisations to weather uncertainty by immersing themselves in it, to learn for understanding, and to step into an agile future now. All this is possible if done within the guardrails of sound behavioural, research and social science principles and practices, which are the building blocks upon which Organisational Development exists.
As you consider your next change, big or small, IQbusiness is the partner for solutions that capacitate organisations and the ecosystems they belong to with the knowledge, support and skills to make the right business calls, that secure success in turbulent agile times, whilst never leaving people behind.
We’re your go to for all your people in business matters.
Author: Zandile Mathe, Head: People Advisory, People and Behaviour Change Specialist at IQbusiness
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