Organisation Development

Interventions

Module-IV

Definition of Interventions
An organization development intervention is
a sequence of activities, actions, and events
intended to help an organization improve its
performance and effectiveness.
Interventions purposely disrupt the status quo.

Characteristics of
Effective Interventions
1. The Extent to Which it (the Intervention) fits the needs
of the organization.
2. The degree to which it is based on causal knowledge of
intended outcomes
3. The extent to which the OD intervention transfers
change-management competence to organization
members.

The Design of
Effective Interventions
Factors Related To The Change Situation
Readiness for Change
Capability to Change
Cultural Context
Capabilities of the Change Agent

Contd..
Factors Related to the Target of Change
Strategic Issues
Technology and structure issues
Human resources issues
Human process issues

TEAM INTERVENTIONS

Team Interventions
Team interventions are typically directed
towards four main areas:
Diagnosis
Task Accomplishments
Team relationships
Team and organization processes

Approaches To Team Building

The Formal Group Diagnostic Meeting
The Formal Group Team-building Meeting
Process Consultation Interventions

Gestalt Approach To Team Building

Focuses on individual rather than the group

And each person possesses positive & negative characteristics that

must be owned up to & permitted expression

The goals of gestalt therapy are:

Awareness / integration / maturation / authenticity / selfregulation / behaviour change

They must learn to stay with transactions with others & work them
through to resolution rather than suppressing negative feelings or
cutting off transactions prematurely.

Techniques & Exercises Used In Team

Building:
Before using these techniques, a careful diagnosis
should be made to ensure that the technique is
appropriate
Team-building sessions includes many of these
techniques & exercises

Contd
Techniques:
Role NegotiationContract setting:
(a) things to do more,
(b) things to do less,
(c) things to do the same.

Issue diagnosis.
Role negotiation
Written role negotiation agreement.

Contd
Role Analysis:
1.Role Analysis
2.The role incumbents expectations of others
3.Role expectations by others
4.Role profile
5.Repeat process
6.Review

Contd
The appreciations & concerns exercise:
This exercise is appropriate in case of deficiency which can be
lack of
Expression of appreciation or
Avoidance of confronting concerns & irritations

Each group member mentions both the appreciations & concerns

about the volunteer, who hears from all the group members. The
volunteer can only seek clarification & not challenge.

Contd
Responsibility charting:
It consists of the following steps:
List the activities to be performed
Against each activity, write the name of the person who is responsible for
carrying out that activity
If any activity has to be reviewed, state the name of the person who has
the authority to review it.
If any activity needs support in terms of logistics or resource, state the
name of the person who is responsible for providing support
If any activity after its performance, has to be kept posted to any
individual, such individuals name should be stated against that activity

Intergroup & Third Party

Peace Making
Interventions

Intergroup Team-Building Interventions

The focus of this team building group of OD is
on improving intergroup relations.
OD methods provide ways of increasing
intergroup co-opertion and communication.
Blake,Shepherd and Mouton has developed
activities applicable to stressed situations in the
forms of steps.

Steps
The leader of the two groups are asked if they want a better
mechanism for the solution.
If yes, the groups meet in separate rooms and build two lists.
The two groups come together to share each other
information on the list.

the

Now the groups discuss the areas of disagreement and

friction separately and makes a list of priority issues which is
usually much smaller than the previous one.

Contd
The two groups come back together and share their list, after
comparing it they together list the issues which should be
resolved.
They set priorities and together they take action for resolving the
problem.
The groups or the leaders assess how the group are doing their
action plan.
They follow up the intergroup team-building activity to monitor it.

Third party Peacemaking

InterventionWaltons Approach

What is third
party/intermediary?
Intermediaries (or
third parties) are
people, organizations,
or nations who enter a
conflict to try to help
the parties de-escalate
or resolve it.

Waltons model for diagnosis of

conflict situation

Walters diagnostic model for finding out the problem

accurately, is based on four elements:
The conflict issues.
Precipitating circumstances.
Conflict relevant acts.
The consequences of the conflict.
Apart from these four key elements of conflict
diagnosis it is also important to know and differentiate
the source of conflict.

Sources of Conflict
Substantive Issues
Involves disagreements over
policies and practices,
competitive bids for the
same resources and differing
conceptions of roles and
role relationships.
Require problem-solving
and bargaining behaviors
between the principals.

Emotional Issues
Involves negative feelings
between the parties(e.g.,
anger, distrust, resentment,
fear, rejection).
Requires restructuring
perceptions and working
through negative feelings.

Waltons outline for productive

confrontation(process of addressing conflict)
Mutual positive motivation.
Balance of power.
Synchronization of confrontation efforts.
Differentiation and integration of different phases of
the intervention must be well paced.
Conditions that promote openness should be created.
Reliable communicative signals.
Optimum tension in the situation .

Structural
Interventions

STRUCTURAL INTERVENTION
It is called as techno structural interventions.

This class of interventions includes changes in how the

overall work of an organization is divided into units, who
reports to whom, methods of control, the arrangement of
equipment and people, work flow
arrangements and changes in
communications and authority.

TYPES OF
STRUCTURAL INTERVENTION

1. Structural Design
is largely associated with
experiments attempted to create
better fit among the technology,
structure and social interactions
of a particular production unit.

PREMISES OF
SOCIOTECHNICAL SYSTEM
1. Effective work system must jointly optimize the
relationship between their social and technical
parts.
2. Such system must effectively manage the
boundary separating and relating them to the
environment.

TYPES OF
STRUCTURAL INTERVENTION
SELF-MANAGED TEAMS
A self-managed team has total responsibility
for its defined task. That task might be a specific
project. A self-managed team thrives on
interacting skill sets, on
shared motivation and
shared leadership.

WORK REDESIGN
This OD interventions aimed at creating jobs, and
work groups that generate high levels of employee
fulfillment and productivity.

FIVE CORE JOB CHARACTERISTICS

1. Skill Variety
2. Task Identity
3. Task Significance
4. Autonomy
5. Feedback from Job

Downsizing
This intervention reduces costs and
bureacracy by decreasing the size of
the
organization through personnel layouts, org
anization redesign and outsourcing.
Each of these downsizing methods must be
planned with a clear understanding
of
the organizations strategy.

QUALITY OF WORK LIFE (QWL)

An
attempt
to
restructure
multiple
dimensions of the organization and to
institute a mechanism, which introduces and
sustains changes over time.

QWL FEATURES
Voluntary involvement on the part of employees
Union agreement with process and participation.
Assurance of no loss of job
Training for team problem solving
Use of quality circles
Participation in forecasting, work planning
Regular plant and team meetings.
Encouragement for skill development.
Job rotations.

REENGINEERING
The fundamental rethinking and
radical redesign of business
processes to achieve dramatic
improvements in critical,
contemporary measures of
performance, such as cost, quality,
service, and speed.

Management by Objectives
Management by objectives (MBO), also known as
management by results (MBR), is a process of
defining objectives
within an organization so that
management and employees agree to the objectives and
understand what they need to do in the organization in
order to achieve them.

LARGE SCALE CHANGE AND

HIGH PERFORMANCE SYSTEMS

When a number of OD
and other interventions are
combined to create major
changes in the total culture
of an organization, the term
large scale is used.

COMPREHENSIVE
OD
INTERVENTIONS

INTRODUCTION
Comprehensive interventions are those in which the
total organization is involved and depth of the
cultural change is addressed.
Beckhards confrontation meeting and Strategic
management activities involving top management,
in the case of smaller organizations ,the entire
management group like survey feedback is an
important and widely used interventions for OD.

Whole system can be

described as Managers of all of the functional areas in a
business.
Representatives of top management, a cross
section of employees from all levels, and
supplier and customer representatives.
Directors of all of the social service agencies
in a community.

BECKHARDS CONFRONTATION
MEETING
The confrontation meeting is developed by Richard Beckhard, is
a one day meeting of the entire management of an organization,
in which they take a reading of their own organizational health.
In a series of activities, the mgt group generates information
about its major problems, analyzes the underlying causes,
develops action plans to correct the problems, and sets a
schedule for completed remedial work.
This intervention is an important one in OD. It is quick, simple,
and reliable way in which to generate data about an organization
and to set the action plans.

Contd
The steps involved in confrontation meeting are as follows:
1.Climate setting (45-60 min).
2.Information collecting (1 hour).
4. Priority setting & Goal Action Planning (1 hour and 15
min.).
5. Immediate follow up by top team (1 to 3 hours).
6. Progress Review (2 hours).

Strategic Management
Activities
It is defined as the development and implementation of the
organizations grand design or overall strategy for relating to
its current and future environmental demands.
The concept is described by Schendel and Hofers as- It
comprises of six major tasks as:
i. Goal Formulation- Defining Mission & purpose
ii. Environmental analysis- SWOT Analysis
iii.Strategy formulation
iv. Strategy evaluation
v. Strategy implementation
vi.Strategic control

Stream Analysis

Developed by Jerry Porras is a valuable model for thinking about

change and for managing change.
It is a system for graphically displaying the problems of an
organization, examining the interconnections between the problems,
identifying core problems and graphically tracking the corrective
actions taken to solve the problems.
Porras categorized organization work in four classesa) Organizing arrangements- goals, structure, policies etc.
b) Social factors- Culture, mgt style, interaction process etc.
c) Technology- tools, equipment, job design, technical systems.
d) Physical Setting- space configuration, physical ambience,
interior design etc.

Contd..
A thorough diagnosis of the organizations problems and
barriers to effectiveness is performed via brainstorming
sessions, interviews, questionnaires and other methods.
Each problem is categorized in one stream.
The interconnections between the problems are noted.
Problems that have many interconnections are identified as
core problem.
Action plans are developed to correct the core problems.
In stream analysis, OD programs change the work setting,
which leads to organizational improvement.

Survey Feedback
Collecting data about the system and feeding back the data for
individuals and groups at all levels of the organization to
analyze, interpret meanings, and design corrective action
steps.
These are having two components- the use of Attitude Survey
and the use of Feedback workshops.
Survey feedback has been shown to be an effective change
technique in OD.
A well designed survey helps organization members to
develop valid models of how organizations work and also
provide feedback about progress towards goals.

Steps of Optimal survey

Organization members at the top of the hierarchy are involved
in the preliminary planning.
Data are collected from all organizations.
Data are fed back to the top executive team and then down
through the hierarchy is functional teams.
Each superior presides at a meeting with their subordinates in
which the data are discussed.
Most feedback meetings include a consultant who has helped
prepare the superior for the meeting and who serves as a
resource person.

Grid Organizational
Development
Designed by Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton.
Six phase program lasting about 3-5 years.
An organization can move systematically from the stage of
examining managerial behavior and style to the development
and implementation of an ideal strategic corporate model.
It enable individuals and groups to assess their own strengths
and weaknesses.
Based on two dimensiona) Concern for people
b) Concern for production

Phases in Grid OD
Phase 1: The Managerial Grid- Grid seminar is conducted by the
company manager. Attention is given to assessing an individuals
managerial styles; problem solving; and communication skills etc.
Phase 2: Teamwork Development- The goal is perfecting
teamwork in the organization through analysis of team culture,
traditions etc.. Feedback given to each manager about their
individual team behavior .

Cont..
Phase 3: Intergroup Development- The goal is to move
groups from their ineffective ways towards an ideal
model. The phase includes building operational plans for
moving the two groups.
Phase 4: developing an ideal strategic corporate modelthe focus shifts to corporate planning. Top management
design an ideal strategic corporate model that would
define what the corporation would be like.

Contd
Phase 5: Implementing the Ideal Strategic Model- the
organization implement the model developed in phase 4. Each
component appoints a planning team whose job is to examine
every phase of the components operation . After the planning
and assessment steps are completed, conversion of the
organization to the ideal condition is implemented.
Phase 6: Systematic Critique- Systematic critiquing, measuring,
and evaluating lead to knowledge of what progress has been
made, what barriers still exist and must be overcome.

Large scale change and High

Performance systems
When a number of OD and other interventions are combined to
create major changes in the total culture of an organization, the
term large scale is used.
The creation of high-performance systems, high-performance
organizations, high- involvement organizations, or self designing
organizations- usually involve a broad array of interventions, and
typically extensive member participation and involvement.
Changes in areas as job design and work flow, staffing
procedures, training, and compensation are usually combined
with such interventions.

THANKS