Articles
Western OD is a local “dialect” (or version) of the OD profession practiced in North America. It is a widely spoken dialect, but it is not the only dialect of OD.This article will illustrate differences
between the North American dialect of OD and the global dialect of OD. OD as practiced in global companies on global problems, Global OD is another “dialect” of the profession. The values of the profession of the global dialect of OD and the skills of the practitioner are very different from those of the western dialect. An OD project done at Masari, a San Francisco-based global software and service company in the banking, insurance, and financial industry, will both illustrate some of the issues facing Global OD as a profession and show how Global OD differs from its North American counterpart.Read More
Practicing OD with a Technology Driven Global Organization
“When we OD practitioners find models that guide interventions in multi-organizational mega systems like this one, we will be on our way to becoming a reinvented profession. ”
There was a time when organizations consisted of people who worked in the same building, had face to face meetings and reported to one boss. There was a detailed organizational chart, roles and responsibilities seemed clear, and there were even job descriptions. Many organizations today still follow this traditional form and when consulting in these organizations, OD practitioners tend to draw upon traditional values and methods to guide their interventions. But traditional organizations aren’t as traditional as they used to be, and today many organizations are not traditional at all. Some OD practitioners like myself spend most of our time with new type organizations whose entire structures demand a more fluid functioning and thus a different mode of consulting. In this article I describe Saramir (a pseudonym) as an example of one such new type organization. The unique relationships at Saramir provide the context for my recommendations that traditional OD values and methods may need to be stretched and re-created to meet the challenge. Read More