Develop an Organizational Development Report for Management During this unit, you will submit your final project. You will use the organization chosen in Unit I (The United States Army) to finalize an

Diagnosing Ineffectiveness in the US Army: A Diagnostic Plan

Diagnosing Ineffectiveness in the US Army: A Diagnostic Plan

The United States Army is one of the largest organizations not to mention the most complex one in the world. Since it is one of the five branches of the Armed Forces of the United States and has a direct responsibility of protecting the country through ground forces, the Army operates on a well-organized military system. This structure implies disciplined staff, leadership, and coordination at different organizational levels to achieve efficient performance. The Army organization, like any other organization, has certain inefficiencies that tend to appear in certain instances, particularly concerning staff performance analysis, leadership assessment, and resource allocation.

Areas of Ineffectiveness in the US Army

In the US Army, the following areas are identified as potential points of ineffectiveness:

1. Leadership Evaluation: Modern assessment practices may be more focused on a selective perception of the unit’s successes and failures identified by the unit itself – and therefore be even less accurate than the identified problem being with popularity or a positive reputation within the unit as a substitute for mission performance (Williams, 2024).

2. Work Performance Metrics: Extended working hours by soldiers are likely to be equated to productivity hence providing a wrong impression about performance (Klusmann et al., 2021).

3. Adherence to Regulations: Although the concept of maintaining set procedures is vital in certain situations, following instructions to the letter acts as a constraint in the current dynamic environments prevalent in a company’s operations.

Diagnostic Table

To differentiate between assumptions and facts, the following table is modeled after Table 2.1, which helps distinguish assumptions from true work performance indicators:

This table highlights that traditional performance assumptions do not always reflect true work effectiveness. The Army, like many other large organizations, needs more objective and mission-focused measures to evaluate both leadership and performance properly.

Diagnosis Process

To tackle these problems, it is crucial to perform a thorough diagnostic. This section identifies and defines the procedural processes necessary for achieving an accurate early diagnosis of the organization's inefficiency.

Step 1: Identify Key Areas for Review

The US Army like other large hierarchical organizations operates in organizational, group, and individual levels.

1. Organizational Level: A broad aim that concentrates on the army's structure, the flow of information, the supply and demand of resources, and the effectiveness of commanding officers. Assess the cross-level integration concerning the accomplishment of the mission objective (Burke, 2022).

2. Group Level: Assess the cooperation of individuals in a team, the efficiency of inter-unit cooperation, and how various sub-groups work on certain assignments.

3. Individual Level: Assess what is currently being measured about soldiers and officers. This also entails how leaders implement their authority, the employee productivity, and how assessments are made.

Step 2: Data Collection

To accurately assess the areas of ineffectiveness, data collection is essential. Chapter 3 of the textbook suggests the following data collection methods:

1. Surveys and Interviews: Conduct a set of surveys and interviews with soldiers, officers, and staff at various levels to collect their experience and opinions of the existing organizational culture, leadership, and possible improvements. Morale, communication effectiveness, leadership, or any other appraisal that may be deemed relevant could be subjected to surveys.

2. Performance Data: Conversion rate, effectiveness of resource utilization, and the organization's personnel rotation ratio should also be included in quantitative data. Evaluate individual organizational performances to look for disparities in measurements.

3. Direct Observations: Observing team interactions, communication in the field, and the behavior of leaders during missions can provide invaluable insights into real-time effectiveness (Burke, 2022).

Step 3: Action Research Model (ARM) Tool

An ideal diagnostic intervention entails the application of the Action Research Model (ARM) which is a systematic process of addressing problems in an organized manner involving the following cycles of action-reflection-evaluation. This means that the underlying causes of inefficiencies will be ascertained and solutions to those specific bottlenecks (Klusmann et al., 2021).

1. Problem Identification: Examples of specific issues to be derived from data include issues like poor assessment of leaders, and lack of congruent organizational goals and metrics.

2. Action Planning: Strategies for handling these problems should also be evoked. For instance, build new assessment techniques that have more to do with mission accomplishment or flexibility instead of formalism or popularity indices.

3. Intervention: Execute changes in structure, organizational standards, or leadership education and development methods, or patterns of information flow between divisions (Burke, 2022).

4. Evaluation: Ensure ongoing evaluation of the effects of these changes. If the interventions are effective, success rates in missions should increase; leadership efficiency should be enhanced, and the morale of soldiers should be boosted (Klusmann et al., 2021).

Step 4: Actionable Improvements

Based on the diagnosis, several actionable improvements can be made. For instance:

• Revising Performance Metrics: Instead of subjective assessments stemming from identified outcomes such as hours worked, the Army could change the measures used to mission-based ones. This would result in a better evaluation of the performance of the soldiers.

• Leadership Development: People should appoint leaders and Reward them based on performance and not a good Reputation. It may be useful for officers to attend leadership development courses that would help cultivate flexibility, problem-solving, and value for creativity (Burke, 2022).

• Creating a Culture of Innovation: Military manuals should not be mechanical and soldiers cannot do anything beyond what the manual instructs them to do as that is dangerous. This would result in improved decision-making of actual everyday life situations.

Conclusion

Using the diagnostic process and Action Research Model, the US Army will have a way of learning places that require fixing within the army's forces. The secret to enhancing organizational performance is to shift away from usual traditional paradigms and replace them with constructive, mission-based competence assessments. Performance should be managed through outputs rather than processes, and flexibility and creativity should be encouraged. In this way, the Army will be able to sustain itself as a highly efficient organization able to address and overcome the multifaceted tasks of contemporary warfare.

References

Burke, W. W. (2022). Organization development. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Psychology.

Klusmann, V., Gow, A. J., Robert, P., & Oettingen, G. (2021). Using theories of behavior change to develop interventions for healthy aging. The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 76(Supplement_2), S191-S205.

Williams, J. (2024). Training Strategies Non-Profit Need to Sustain Organizational Development and Change Post-COVID-19 (Doctoral dissertation, Colorado Technical University).