Due: After you complete Lesson 5 Credit Weight: 25% of your final grade Purpose: Identify two job design components that might help the major problem identified in the organizational diagnosis (Assign

Lesson 4: Collecting, Analyzing, and Feeding Back Assessment Information

Overview:

Lesson 4 addresses collecting and analyzing information, providing feedback to a client, and ethical considerations for OD practitioners. As you peel away the layers and start to make decisions about what you are going to analyze and how, you need to think about the information you wish to provide to the client. The information you seek may have a significant impact on your decisions about how to collect data.

In this lesson, you will take a simple look at how data is collected and analyzed. Some people spend their entire careers trying to figure out the best way to collect and analyze data; it can be complicated and daunting.

Using more sophisticated methods than are presented here is not necessary for this course. Do not be fooled; creating a good questionnaire, for example, is difficult, though questionnaires can be used effectively for many things.

In this lesson, you will learn how to provide good feedback to a client. This is a critical step in the OD process. If an organization’s members can understand and use the information in a meaningful way, it helps motivate and support change. It is also imperative that OD practitioners conduct themselves ethically in their interactions with organizational stakeholders.

Learning Objectives:

After completing Lesson 4, you should be able to

1. explain the importance of the assessment relationship in the organization development (OD) process.

2. describe the methods for collecting assessment data.

3. outline the primary techniques used to analyze assessment data.

4. outline the process issues associated with giving data feedback.

5. describe and evaluate survey feedback intervention.

Learning Activities:

Reading Assignment

In Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2019). Organization development and change (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.

• Chapter 6: Collecting, Analyzing, and Feeding Back Diagnostic Information

• Chapter 3 Appendix

Lesson 5: Designing, Managing, and Evaluating Interventions

Overview:

Lesson 5 is the last lesson of this course that deals with the process of interventions. The remaining four lessons in this course deal with the types of interventions that you may wish to consider undertaking.

Designing effective interventions is a difficult task in which a number of issues must be considered. First, the organizational assessment must be accurate and informative. Second, the root cause of any problem and the underlying systems must be carefully and correctly identified for changes and interventions to be effective. If an organization is trying to take advantage of an opportunity, it must correctly understand what is holding it back. Third, any interventions must be adapted to the organization at hand.

Changing Organizational Culture

Almost any change will require a change in organizational culture. This can be a daunting undertaking. We will discuss it later in the course. After decisions are made regarding broad interventions expected to achieve a desired future state, the organization may choose and sequence activities to help people to move towards the desired state. Where change is major, there will be a time when workers are less skilled, competent, quick, or at ease than they were before. Changing actions and behaviours requires commitment, effort, and time. No matter how much commitment and energy people have for making changes, it is easy for such energy or excitement to wane as they learn new ways of doing things. At this point, the organization is especially vulnerable and susceptible to negative reactions and pressures to return to the old state. These pressures can come both from within and from outside the organization.

Organizational culture can play a key role in such resistance. Whether the change process calls for people committed to the changes to learn new behaviours or whether it requires changes in values or beliefs, such change will be difficult if the change is major. Depending on their state of readiness, people will have different reactions. Those who have been active proponents of the change will be eager to get on with things. Others — often those who stand to lose power and control (or feelings of power and control) — may dig in their heels to stop or at least slow down some of the proposed changes. Most changes, if examined closely, require new attitudes, beliefs, and/or values (i.e., a change in organizational culture).

Leadership

Leadership can take different forms, and leaders may adopt different roles as they take on the tasks and challenges of leading and managing change. While the specific characteristics of a leader’s approach to facilitating change may vary from case to case, it is important to understand the critical role of leadership in facilitating change processes, which may differ from a manager’s role. It is also important to remember that leadership does not necessarily fall to a single individual in a senior position. Individuals and groups throughout an organization may take on leadership roles.

Leaders need to think about actions that can motivate people to embrace change and that can create an organizational culture conducive to accepting change. Preparing an organization for change is likely the most important phase of the change process. Whether change is rational or valuable matters little if participants in the change processes do not have the capacity, energy, time, or capability to orchestrate the change. If energy, time, will, and/or capability are not present, lasting positive change is unlikely to occur, regardless of what efforts are expended.

Neutralizing Resistance to Change

If you are familiar with and pay attention to your employees, it is easier to detect signs that something is wrong. Any marked changes in behaviour or attitudes that signify displeasure toward you or the work may be reactions to proposed changes or informal talk about possible changes (i.e., gossip). If you have a good relationship with your employees, it may be easy to ask what is wrong and get an honest answer. In a large organization where many people are involved in a proposed change, questionnaires may be an effective way to collect information — preferably before the proposed change occurs. If people have actively participated in the decisions for change, you may be able to deflect or neutralize some of the resistance that you can expected will occur.

It is unusual to have all employees committed to a proposed change. Resistance is common, and it reveals itself by subterfuge, sabotage, and active or passive aggression. Passive aggression refers to subtle ways of slowing down or resisting change. It is much more difficult to identify or address than active aggression, in which the opposition is obvious. To detect passive aggression, you must be observant and reflect on behaviours that seem unusual.

The best way to deal with resistance is to become knowledgeable about the people working for and with you, and knowledgeable about the proposed change. Such knowledge makes it easier to detect changes in behaviours, even when people may say they support the change.

Participation and Involvement

One major strategy for dealing with resistance is to encourage participation and involvement. Certain reactions are predictable, depending on whether the change is imposed or participative. If you involve people in defining problems, articulating desired futures and hopes, and identifying possible strategies, you are more likely to be aware of concerns, from which you can better predict how people will react.

Evaluating Effectiveness

The final process in an organizational intervention is evaluating its effectiveness. While assessment should be ongoing, at some point, you need feedback to ascertain whether or not you have attained the desired state or to decide what more needs to be done. This is also the time to determine what has been learned and what can be applied, if and when future changes are required. Evaluation includes assessing whether or not the change was implemented as intended and whether or not there are long-term positive organizational results.

This lesson describes characteristics of appropriate assessment tools and proposes actions to facilitate long-term results, or institutionalization, of change. You will also learn guidelines for assessing whether or not institutionalization has actually occurred.

Typically, attitudinal measures have been used for assessment, but there is increasing pressure to develop measures that reflect productivity or other workplace factors. Refer to Tables 9.1 and 9.2 in the textbook, as they outline operational definitions and computational formulas for a number of workplace factors.

When organizational changes persist over time, institutionalization is said to have occurred. There has been debate about whether institutionalization of change is a useful concept when change seems perpetual. If changes are directed toward helping people and organizations to become more knowledgeable and skilled, and ultimately, to take charge and design their own responses to change, then institutionalization is a valuable goal.

Learning Objectives:

After completing Lesson 5, you should be able to

1. describe the interventions presented in the textbook.

1. discuss how contingencies related to the change situation affect the design of effective organization development (OD) interventions.

2. discuss how contingencies related to the target of change affect the design of effective OD interventions.

3. identify the five key elements of successful change management and discuss the processes of change associated with each element.

4. discuss the research design and measurement issues associated with evaluating organization development (OD) interventions.

5. explain the key elements in the process of reinforcing OD interventions.

Learning Activities:

Reading Assignment

In Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2019). Organization development and change (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.

• Chapter 7: Designing Interventions

• Chapter 8: Managing Change

• Chapter 9: Evaluating and Reinforcing Organization Development Interventions

Supplementary Reading

• Anderson, D., & Ackerman Anderson, L. (2010). Beyond change management: How to achieve breakthrough results through conscious change leadership (2nd ed.). Pfeiffer.