Month: August 2023

Dr. Kotter’s research and exploration of the OD and Change world is extraordinarily impactful and incredibly helpful to practioners everywhere. As a person that regularly supports change management and change leadership, I too have witnessed the many gaps of his 8 step change process which have been shared in the video.

From my experience, the biggest gap I see is the step of the communication change vision. I believe all change and continuous improvement should start with the “why.” Employees must be brought along with the change and be assured that the change is happening for them, not to them. Another part of the change process and video that causes me pause from experience, is Kotter’s desire for a considerable length of time for a change process. This is often not realistic in today’s fast paced changing environment. Change in many organizations is often quite behind and sprinting toward an unclear and unsupported vision.

I am definitely a fan of creating a sense of urgency, but I fear the word urgency can be misconstrued as negative. Rather, by sharing a clear why to the change, and how you can bring your employees along may provide a stronger outcome.

I absolutely love when a change process strategy celebrates the small wins and appreciate when senior leadership leads that charge as shared in the video. I have witnessed much stronger championing in these scenarios as well.

We have also heard time and time through Kotter’s research, that 70% of change efforts fail. I believe the other statistic that was shared in a prior video was that 88% of employees hear the word change in a negative connotation. That is pretty powerful for me. I have recently shifted to the phrase continuous improvement as a synonym for change and have been pleasantly surprised by the positive reception as I coach through change process in my organization.

Academically, Training Needs Assessment (TNA) and Organizational Diagnosis (OD) both share the goal of enhancing organizational effectiveness and impact. TNA centers on pinpointing employees’ skill gaps and designing training programs to bridge them, aiming to boost individual and group performance. In contrast, OD examines the broader organization, analyzing aspects like structure, engagement, culture, and processes to identify systemic issues and opportunities for improvement. TNA’s focus is on training, skill enhancement, predominantly for employees, while Organizational Diagnosis assesses overall organizational health, targeting systemic enhancements that encompass leadership, communication, and more. Both processes involve data collection and informed decision-making, yet TNA focuses in on individual employee or group needs, while Organizational Diagnosis takes a wider perspective, encompassing the entire organizational framework.

I believe my workplace does this differentiation quite well. We have specific TNA teams dedicated to training, design and upskilling and we have a division of Continuous Improvement that focuses more on strategy, problem solving, and the larger OD concerns. I have been involved in engagements for both TNA and OD and they feel quite different in my opinion. I have a deep desire for learning so I tend to greatly enjoy the TNA projects as they are often quick engagements, offer a lot of data, and impact can be seen fast. Also, people are involved and when you get an engaged group, it is the best! I do also enjoy the OD engagements but they are often more strategically critical, longer range in timeframe, and very broad – often not one correct direction, but many to try. All a part of continuous improvement though which is such an important mindset to have in our field.

As I reflect on the Organisational Diagnosis video presented by Dr. Mannie Sher, a few takeaways that greatly resonated with me were:

1.) Understanding the objective – Why were you hired? What is the organization all about? Mission?

2.) Who are your key people? – Are they on board? Can you build that relationship? Do they have the power to affect change and influence?

3.) Data – Can you obtain data? Will you be granted access as an outsider? Have assumptions already been made regarding data?

As I ponder these takeaways, I can’t help but think about the power of people. Dr. Sher speaks of influence and relationships. It is critical to build trust and relationships when one begins a new engagement and even more critical to bring people along with you in order to effectively bring change across an organization. These themes have the potential to be issues during an engagement as well. In my experience, sometimes the leader or key player is not on board or they believe they know the problem, however, it may not be the case. Having a trusting relationship, to speak honestly, can speed through this roadblock to dig into the real problems, hopefully diagnosed with more accurate data than an assumption.

I especially appreciated Dr. Sher’s take on ensuring we do not “waste” the humans of the organization. People are powerful, and when you can collectively influence a large group or better yet, and entire organization to move forward autonomously, you may see transformational positive change. This is often overlooked or underutilized. In my last class last semester (Appraising Change),  an OD practioner shared the idea of Top Down, Bottom Connected. This greatly resonated with me as I have witnessed senior leaders do a wonderful job with communicating down, however, the bottom, often the employees that matter most, are not connected. Dr. Sher’s focus on proper diagnosis, data use, people matter, influence, and autonomous empowerment across an organization sets the stage for strong OD consulting.

Hello all –