Monthly Archives: October 2015

One fairly recent organizational change I experienced with my company occurred a few years ago when we launched a new, refreshed branding campaign.  This was something that seemed to be driven primarily by our Marketing Team, and I was working in our Training and Development group at the time.  I recall that our department head was extremely frustrated with the communication process that was put together to launch this new campaign to all associates.  His frustration trickled throughout our team, and I myself subscribed to that as well.  My frustration was  based on the lack of involvement that our team, and HR as a whole had in the early planning stages of this change effort.  We were brought in more as an after-thought.  Because of this, there wasn’t enough thought put into how this change would impact associates, and therefore how it should best be communicated.  After the news of the branding initiative was released throughout the company, I recall that many department heads were confused about the intent of the change- specifically, what did this mean for them and their associates?  Of course, these questions and concerns came directly to our HR Team.  Unfortunately, because we weren’t involved in some of the early discussions where the strategy was laid out, we weren’t in the best place to respond to these concerns.  Inevitably, we continued to feed these concerns to the main project team, and they were forced to re-group and identify a game plan to respond.  This time, members of our HR Team, including my boss- who was the leader of our Training and Development group- was involved in these conversations.  Much of the “clean – up” effort fell on the shoulders of HR, and that left our team, including me, with feelings of bitterness.  All-in-all, it wasn’t a good feeling.  And as I learn more about OD&C, it’s clear that this was an initiative that could have benefited from an OD consultant.

What work do I hope to do with OD and What career goals do I have for OD?

I want to be assigned as an internal OD Consultant for the company where I’m working.  I’ve been involved in several change processes over the past 2 years in my current role.  Some of these change processes were underway, and then HR was added in mid-stream.  No one was operating as an OD consultant.  As one could imagine, there were many critical associate relations factors that were not taken into consideration.  I see a large opportunity to assign an OD Consultant to first take a look at all of the change processes that we are currently engaged in (there are several), and then to identify some of the common threads between these various initiatives.  I see an enormous need for this at my company.  I’d like to become increasingly involved with all strategic initiatives and make the case for a separate Organization Development Department that would be at the steering wheel.   

What do I want to do at the end of this course? 

This is a excellent “foundation laying” course for me.  Coming into this course, I wouldn’t have been able to articulate the difference between OD, Training and Development, and HR.  I’m truly at the beginning of my journey in OD, so exploring the basic concepts is where I’m at right now.  I’m looking at this course to be something that I reference frequently to level-set myself in the basics from time to time.

Do I plan to be in the online MPS in Organization Development and Change (MPS in ODC) degree program? 

YES!  I’m just getting started, and my goal is to obtain my Masters through this online OD&C program.