"Bridging the gap between what is happening and what is possible is what change management is all about. The traditional process for creating organizational change involves digging deep to uncover the root causes of a problem, hiring experts or importing best-of-breed practices, and assigning a strong role to leaders as champions of change." - "Your Company's Secret Change Agents", Harvard Business Review, May 2005
This site will be a resource for anyone interested in Organization Development (OD) and the benefits of OD consulting. "OD In the News" will be particularly useful as it will share best practices as found in organizations today or common oversights that companies and leaders should avoid.
As Pascale and Sternin suggest, "bridging the gap" is a fitting analogy for desired change in organizations and businesses. Creating, enabling and managing organizational change is what credentialed Organization Development consultants do.
OD can be defined as an improvement in an organization’s effectiveness by helping its people work together and to be more productive. Ideally, OD consulting helps people appreciate differences of others resulting in a more comfortable work place and culture. The outcome of the OD engagement for any business should be to improve the bottom line, which OD consulting achieves.
After working in a sales organization for 15 plus years, I saw the impact when teams didn't work together; sales suffered greatly affecting the bottom line. Until differences could be worked out and trust created, sales typically did not improve. Based on a published case study, available on this site, one can read how my clients’ bottom line significantly improved after our work. And their bottom line improves continuously year after year.
As Pascale and Sternin acknowledge, change comes after digging deep to uncover root problems. I agree completely. Clients may think they have an idea of what may be holding them back, but until an open and inclusive assessment is completed clients typically are not aware of their root problems. None of this can occur without proper OD direction and facilitation, coupled with the full support of leadership and other internal "champions of change" who trust the process.