What are the big challenges you are wrestling within your organisation? Talent attraction and retention? Developing your leaders and a leadership pipeline? Or enabling a sustainable self-directed performance culture? I know some may say “all of the above!”
It is likely these problems are discussed on a regular basis in most boardrooms as these are challenges many organisations are facing. The quickening pace of wider technological, economic and political change makes solving these problems even more complicated. The need for organisational insights that go beyond the normal employee engagement surveys is paramount.
As a field Organisational Development is ideally placed to help organisations to address these challenges. However, it has not helped itself, a simple google search of what OD is will bring up numerous definitions. It’s no surprise that many busy executives do not have a strong understanding of what OD is and how it can help their organisations. In this climate, Organisational Development can play a key role helping their Boards to gain better organisational insights and to understand what elements of their culture may help or hinder addressing these challenges. It’s an opportunity for practitioners to really start doing the “O” in OD and to work strategically in partnership with the Boardroom. OD practitioners are ideally placed to support organisations to do this. Linda Holbeche, adjunct professor at Imperial College comments “Good OD is about working largely with groups but not just groups to help them develop new understanding, new behaviours, new ways of relating to each other and the business, such that they’re able to help the organisation succeed”
OD often views the organisation as an eco-system, where parts of the system interact with or are affected by other parts within the same system, as illustrated by the Burke Litwin model below:
In the model Organisation Culture is a transformational factor and has a long- term influence on its performance. It’s why Peter Drucker famously said: "Culture eats Strategy for lunch." It is why great leadership and an aligned high-performance culture are as important as a robust well thought through strategy. Approaching the development of organisation culture at a systemic level is likely to be the most successful way to create the shifts that are needed to help the organisation overcome its challenges and ultimately succeed. Good OD practitioners have the skills to do this and are ideally placed to help Boards and the entire organisation to own and understand its culture.
What is needed is regular ongoing data and sentiment which is accessible for Boardrooms to review and understand. In OD terms this is normally referred to as diagnostic and dialogic information
Culture Analytics is technology which can track and understand what an organisation’s culture is and what impact it has. It is time for Organisational Development to embrace this digital technology, designed to provide regular insights for leaders (with support from OD) to develop new understanding, new behaviours and new ways of relating to each other and the business.
As the pace of change gets faster OD has the opportunity to incorporate digital technology into its practice. Providing regular ongoing data and organisation insights. Helping Boardroom leaders make more informed decisions and providing much-needed clarity to leaders on their organisations culture. These insights will help to predict the impact of decisions, future trends in the business and help to overcome the challenges each organisation is facing.
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