Greed and OD: Redefining the Values of
Organization Development
T.
V. Rao
Key note address to be delivered at the NATIONAL
SEMINAR
On
“ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT (OD) & OD
INTERVENTIONS: CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES”
Organized By
THE DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGY
FACULTY OF EDUCATION & PSYCHOLOGY
THE M.S.
UNIVERSITY OF BARODA
Why do OD efforts in India do not give any visible
results? Why is it after so many years of OD work neither OD interventions nor
OD specialists seem to be widely acknowledged? Does OD result in any thing
substantial or does it lead to anything at all apart from occupying the time
and lives of a few people? Has it become a “time pass” activity when there is
nothing else to do? These are some of the questions that are bothering me.
These have bothered me for long and have begun to bother me more as I see that sixty three years after
independence and sixty years after the Indian republic was formed we seem to be
nowhere near Nation building.
Divisiveness continues. It spreads from caste and
religion based divisiveness, to political divisiveness to linguistic, regional,
colour, education, health, batch, sector, section, department etc everywhere.
Some divisiveness for improving the disadvantaged is fine but divisiveness
leading to self destruction of a large part including that of the Nation is not
acceptable.
We seem to live today in a scam driven world. Every
day morning you wake up to hear what new scam has been unearthed. Starting with
Satyam in the corporate world to CWG, 2G, Adarsh Housing, Mining and Land grab
to everywhere. The nation’s time is taken away for protesting MPS, MLAs and various other agents who should be
spending their time in Nation Building.
Are the Indian corporations saved from this? Has OD brought in certain amount of
integrative outlook in our corporations?
In a world where organizations are built and developed to sell than to build more, has OD done some
good? Organizations built by the sweat
capital of many people suddenly get sold and the employees discover that they
belong to a new management and a new organization that they have not heard
before and they need to learn a new culture. . This has become the world order
and Iida is no exception. Sometimes it appears that we are truly in the
business of business and not that of service. In the past organizations used to
be set up to serve others and in the process make some money to sustain
themselves and grow. Today it appears that some organizations are being set up
to make money and money alone. Even hospitals performance is being measured by
the numbers in monetary measures rather than
patients served and benefits to society. Government performance is also being measured
by the numbers of schools and hospitals set up rather than what they are doing
after they are set up.
In other words short term orientation emerging out
of greed has become the order of the day. The concept of service to society and
working for larger cause is being forgotten except occasional when we talk of
corporate social responsibility. Even this CSR gets reduced to projects to take
care of the neighbourhood rather than getting integrated into everything that w
e do in our corporations.
What are the implications of all this to OD today?
Should OD change its course? I have chosen to present a few extracts on this
occasion from our forthcoming book on “ Organization Development: Accelerating
learning and Transformation” edited by Prof. S. Ramnaraayn of ISB and T. V Rao
to be published by Sage response books this year. As a part of this book which
contains about 37 chapters on various issues, my colleague Prof. Ramnarayan interviewed
a few OD practitioners in India. I take this opportunity to present some
extracts from these interviews and my own views and experiences of OD. These experincecs indicate that OD is a lot
more successful than what it has been widely known. However it has not reached
all the sections and sectors it ahs to reach. We have a long way to go and
perhaps we need to revisit and redefine its values or at least add to the list
a core value of “Extension”.
Extracts
from Interviews With Prof. S Ramnaraayn from the forthcoming book on OD
(Ramnarayan and Rao, 2011)
Santrupt
Misra on OD in Birla Group in an interview to Prof. Ramnarayan:
“Some
of the interventions were extremely powerful for the organization. Every
intervention communicated multiple messages to the organization. For instance, the Chairman and the top
managers started participating in the 360 degree feedback. It was an intervention
that changed the cultural norm – the junior could also provide feedback to the
senior. It created a sense of trust and transparency. It has prepared the top
management of organization to receive and discuss feedback openly by sitting
together. That was a powerful intervention.
There
were interventions at the lower levels of the organization. High quality
personnel were hired from leading management and engineering schools. They were
paid competitive compensation in tune with the market rates. This was an
intervention which communicated the importance of merit / competence to attract
the younger generation with new skills like IT. It changed the paradigm of
competence that the organization required. That was another powerful one.
We
carried out an organization health study which was an important intervention.
The feedback on how people perceived the organization was shared with the
employees. Then, certain questions such as: “Do you want to do something? Do
you want change? How do you change? What can you as an individual do to
contribute to this change? What can organization do?” were posed to the
employees.
Similarly,
several team building exercises were introduced across functions to support
structural changes as we moved from functional to SBU structure and also
created global structures.
In
doing all of these interventions, we used various resources and range of
expertise from Indian,
international, firms, individuals, teams, and so on. A number of consultants
helped us carry out those interventions.
The
emphasis was on churning the organization and creating new ideas and
frameworks, and holding mirrors to help critical questioning and introspection,
say through 360 degree feedback, survey feedback and numerous such approaches.
Are
there some OD concepts that have outlived the utility?
The
whole concept of the team needs to be revisited because today you have virtual
teams. You have quick-set teams that come together for a purpose and break
apart. They are not working together as teams over a longer period of time. So,
the stability of team concept has changed. The entire issues around team
interventions need to be revisited.
Extracts the Interview with Yogi Shriram of L&T
How do you think we should create and nurture OD practitioners?
It
is important to think about this issue particularly when there are no formal
courses. There are disparate small courses and certification, but I believe OD
practitioners should be accredited by an institution. This should be based on
practice and theory. It should be based on an actual OD change that the person
has done in one or two years or even shorter duration in an organization and
not on a project. The work should be examined and recognized by a set of
practitioners. I would feel that the interns should be technically very sound
and understand the literature. They may focus on one or two narrow areas of
specialization, say appreciative inquiry, process consultation or coaching. I
think it is very important to start a comprehensive OD course led by very
senior people with a set of ethics with possibly collaboration with a reputed
school abroad with a strong track record in OD.
The
other key issue is that HR practitioners are scant in the leadership positions.
Most HR practitioners are uncomfortable in discussing the business part and the
conceptual part. Just as we need equal emphasis on both academic rigor and
practice, we need equal attention to business issues and people issues.
P. M. Kumar of GMR on his experiences of OD and recommendations
for future:
What would be your advice for learning and
development professionals and young professionals getting to change and OD?
Have
good networks, be resourceful to be able to connect with the right people and
bring the most value based people in to work.
Most
importantly, you have to constantly ask yourself, is there any self interest
that you are doing this in. Once the answer is ‘yes’ drop it like a hot potato.
If you are ready as a practitioner, if it is in collective interest, then go.
That’s my call. Timing and governance have to be made by every practitioner. Fortunately, we have people across. And also,
one more thing helped me right through my career. I have been versatile. I did
process work, lab work, systemic job evaluation work, strategy and HR work, industrial
relations, unions, settlement, and facilitation. Fortunately, when I look back,
this has been an excellent exposure. I believe versatility is important for
trust worthiness. Otherwise, you say that I have one hammer and everything
looks like a nail. There are practitioners today for whom there is one answer
for everything. They will not be accepted. They will only play a very marginal
role. You need versatility, openness and see a wide range of possibilities.
Warner
Burke in conversation with John R. Schermerhorn Jr. ( see Ramnarayan and Rao, 2011)
Are
there certain competencies that all OD specialists should have?
Too
much specialization in OD can be unproductive. An OD consultant must be a
generalist. If a high degree of specialization is needed for a certain change
effort then the OD consultant brings in this specialist for the job. For
example, OD consultants are typically not compensation specialists but on
occasion such expertise is needed. This need is only an occasional one and not
in general. In other words, an OD consultant does not need to be a specialist
in compensation even though changing some aspect of the reward system is often
required for an overall successful change effort. I have suggested a set of
competencies (see Table 2) that all OD specialists should have (Burke, 1994)
which include such abilities as tolerance for ambiguity, ability to confront
difficult issues, self awareness, and abilities to conceptualize and teach.
What
are the most important cross-cultural issues and considerations for those interested
in global applications of OD, say in India?
I have some but
limited experience with the culture of India. I first was there in 1972 when I
spent part of the summer as a visiting professor with the Indian Institute of
Management, and traveled around much of the country. Change in India today is
occurring at an unprecedented rate, and OD can be very helpful with the
process, that is, helping organizations to plan, change instead of change
merely happening to them. Indians have been interested in and practising OD
well before 1972 when I was there, and my presentations then were well
received. So, there is much history, and I do not see major cross-cultural
issues with the US way of practicing OD in India. It has always been my
understanding that OD practitioners in India respect theory and research, and
work to apply behavioural science knowledge. The differences cross-culturally
are there for sure, but not that easy to see immediately (after all, Indians
speak English very well). We, Americans, must be diligent, however, about
understanding subtle yet real differences, for example, how the dynamics of
power and politics are manifested.
Dr.
S. Chandrasekhar of IBM to Ramnarayan
Based
on your OD experiences – those that have worked well or not so well – what are
a few key lessons for OD practitioners?
Leaders
cannot “outsource” change related work to some OD consultant - external or
internal. It won’t work. They have to lead change personally .Too much jargon
and conceptual models alienate people. Initiatives started well and not
sustained create huge credibility gap. It is not very useful to use workshops
and people assessments to “fix’ the trouble makers. The business case for the change being sought
needs to be very strong and explained very transparently. Else people will not
be with you.
In
an era of Global Competitiveness, Mega Projects, Community pressures, and
Mergers & Acquisitions, what role do you think OD will play?
OD will continue to
play a critical role in delivering change. Understanding competitors and doing
things better than them needs deep organizational change. Executing Mega
projects needs building alignment, rapid learning and capability building. Most
times, OD has been relatively inwardly focused on the internal organization. Dealing with communities, harnessing the
eco-system around the organization and taking the OD plans into the larger
community are important next steps. In M&A situation, OD programs must
enable the combined entities to benefit by the synergies of the two organizations
and not let one ‘dominate’ over the other.
What
advice would you give to budding OD Practitioners? What are the key Do's and
Don'ts?
Be
passionate about OD. It is essentially an inter-disciplinary subject. So learn
eclectically across sciences and arts. Learn to link your OD interventions with
predictable and desirable business outcomes. Measure to improve. Avoid jargon.
Communicate authentically. Enlist others and enroll support. Stay humble and
maintain low profile. Work across generations and leverage diversity. We cannot
be world-class if we always have an excuse, ‘oh this won’t work in India’. Be
truly global and bring best practices from all over the world.
T. V. Rao’s views and comments (unedited from
Ramnarayan and Rao, 2011)
Q: What do you
conclude from Various OD in this part of the world?
TVR: OD as a
planned change with long term involvement of OD facilitator has become a trend
of the past. There have been many success experiences of the past. For example
Dr. Udai Pareek, Dr. Abad Ahmed, Somnath Chattopadhyay, Dharni Sinha, Ishwar
Dayal and Suresh Srivastava and such NTL trained OD facilitators worked with
Organizations like the L7T, LIC, Medical Mission Sisters, ICI, State Bank of
India etc. now a days you rarely find this work perhaps organizations like Tata
Chemicals is an exception. As Dr. Santrupt Misra mentioned today OD has come to
be short-term, quick and multiple intervention based. Specialization has gone
up. So a variety of consultants are used. Some of assessment centers, other for
360 a few for executive coaching and the like. With enhancement of tendering
process in PSUs, Component tendering process in PSUs, Component tendering has
gone up rather than integrated development and planned and guided change. These
have been successful with short-term gains. While they may cumulatively do some
good for the organization, and integrated approach is still welcome. I have a
feeling corporation like GE still continue to have long term engagement of the
OD consultants.
Q: What do you consider
as some of the success experiences in your own OD work?
TVR: The HRD
work we had done both at L&T and State Bank of India is a success
experience during that period. Recent work with Steel Authority of India and
Bharat Electronics and Aditya Birla Group on Leadership Development using 360
Degree Feedback based interventions are another two examples of successful OD.
Everything is
time bound. What is successful today may lay foundation for tomorrow. Once it
is done the corporation grows and may not even remember that someone laid the
foundation. For example strong foundations were laid in SBI through its
training system in initial years. Later Udai and I worked for integrated HRD
between 1975 and 1985. There was a sustained effort and hard work. It was
successful. However it has gone to the background due to intensive dialogues
with officers associations, change of leadership both at top level and in HRD.
I re-entered along with Prof. S K Chakravarthy in mid nineties for specific
task of a subsystem change. It was not continued beyond 5 years due to change
of leadership both at the SBI top level and at Government level the Secretaries
handling banking. They brought in new experts who did not have a clue of the
history. For them it became a year to year event than planned change.
This is not to
say short-term OD interventions don’t work. The HRD audit as a self-renewal
mechanism, the 360 Degree Feedback as a change promoting intervention and
Assessment Centers has worked well. As mentioned by Santrupt we were involved
almost for a 5 year period with 360 DF in Birla Group. It was a great success
as are of the inputs. In BEL we are involved in Leadership Development over the
last seven years. A lot of change is taking place. A review of the work indicated
both short and long term changes. For example short term it resulted in vision
formulation, new product innovations and problems solving. Long term is
resulted in increased openness and transparency.
A two day
self-renewal workshop in XIM resulted in increased focus on Vision and deciding
future course of action besides faculty involvement. A diagnostic study
followed by a one day feedback workshop presenting the findings resulted in
consolidation and increased focus on future strategies. So was the case of
survey feedback in Bharat Petroleum, Cochin Refineries and the like. In Bharat
Petroleum it was used to consolidate the gains of restructuring. After
restructuring was done an employee satisfaction survey was conducted. The
feedback communicated to employee revalidated the gains of restructuring and
pointed the gaps in HR policies and helped BPCL to initiate new HR activities.
Gati is a great example of sustained work coming out of top management commitment.
There 360 DF has become of regular part of self renewal. Again a quick
diagnosis of the Institutional concerns and a presentation to the entire team
of the findings and with Aga Khan Foundation has become a stepping stone for
consolidating gains and taking the Foundation in the direction its Founders
have envisaged under the leadership of Dr Abad Ahmad is a success story of how
short term interventions can lay foundation to facilitate the change process.
Q: What are some
of the challenges OD and OD practitioners face today?
TVR: Execution
is the major issue. Organizations seem to be highly short term result driven.
They profess culture and values as important dimensions but focus
extraordinarily on results and short term targets. This creates enormous
difficulty for OD practitioners who like to work on long term and sustainable
change.
Second mergers
and acquisitions have become very common. In one company the executives told me
that four years ago they belonged to a different company, two years ago to a
different company and since the last six months he is working for a different
company. In a four year period his organization has gone through three changes.
While this may be a little uncommon most organizations live with certain amount
of uncertainty. Ironically when mergers and acquisitions take place that is the
best time for process work as it calls for adjustments and cultural change.
Under uncertainties sustained focus on values, culture and long term thinking
becomes difficult. OD becomes a short term quick fix problem solving exercise
than a planned change for long term.
Appreciation for
behavioral science based interventions and behavioral scientists ahs not in any
way gone up while appreciation for specific techniques and technologies has
gone up. For example the top management seems to appreciate the use of
assessment cents for a specific group of people and at a given point of time.
For example when they need to develop a group of high fliers or when they find
shortage of tenant rather than making it a continuous process to upgrade talent
or as a talent development tool. Same way survey feedback or 360 degree
feedback, or outbound training becomes a onetime exercise to bring in process
sensitivity than a continuous effort.
On the positive
side many technologies are being sued. The OD filed has expanded to include a
variety of techniques and methods.
HRD and OD have
come face to face. Two decades ago there used to be issues like whether OD is
part of HRD or HRD is a part of OD. Today the content is not so much as what it
is part of what but more on which technology or intervention works better and
under what circumstances. Some organizations are using LSIP technologies and
others role based interventions and while some others use Assessment centers
and 360 Degree feedback and a few others HRD audit, survey feedback and vision
mission exercises etc. What is being undertaken is a technology based OD rather
than a change oriented value driven process sensitive OD.
OD specialists
as class is on the decline and specialization has gone up so much like in
medicine rather than general practitioners today e see Executive Coaches,
Assessment Center experts, survey feedback experts and performance management
specialists. Sub system specialization has gone up.
Training focus
remained and continues to remain the same as before and so are the concerns.
Q: What do you
think is the Future of OD and what Direction it is taking and it should take?
TVR: I think OD
as discipline and science deserves more attention than what it has commanded so
far. Process sensitivity and Behavioral
science knowledge provides the base for good OD work. We need to understand
people in different settings as individuals, role holders, dyads, teams or
subsystem members and organizational members and multiple role holders and
mute-organizational stake holders besides citizens of a nation or products of a
culture. In Asian region people are highly talented and are products of complex
interactions of history, culture, families, heritage and other dynamic factors.
Modern organizations and competitive world adds to this complexity. Unlike in
the west where people tend to be systems driven and norm respecting in this
part of the world there is no one norm or no one system to follow. People seem
to respect one another perhaps a lot more than they respect systems. Given
these complexities of human nature, we need to study people in their current
and changing contexts more deeply before we can plan and carry out
interventions for change. Unfortunately such a systematic and scientific study
of people is lacking. Psychologists in this part of the world have not enhanced
our insights about human beings and their motivational patterns, learning
styles etc. We are still dependent on the past knowledge and knowledge from the
west. It is only in the recent past attempts to learn from our Vedic culture
about the nature of human being has gone up. Even this is limited to a set of
hypotheses of fitting ancient wisdom into the modern organizations.
What is needed
in future is a systematic and scientific study of the human being and his
nature in the current organizational contexts.
Change and
drivers of change and success stories and failure of change are required in
large quantities and with more perspectives- psychological, sociological and
anthropological and organizational. Only when such studies are conducted can a
body of knowledge develop. The future therefore ahs to focus on more systematic
research to discover he fundamental nature of the human being in the context of
modern organizations and enhance our ability to predict behavior.
Therefore there
is a need for scientific base for OD. More researches need to be trained in OD.
Institutions
like the ISABS have got reduced some times to social networks without any
scientific rigor and research base. The involvement of Institutions like the
IIMA that used to happen in seventies has tremendously come down. As a result
the teams of Applied Behavioral scientists that get trained or certified from these
institutions have become at best factories for conducting training programs
with limited knowledge. The future has to be research driven and should lay
more foundation for scientific knowledge. If this does not happen OD will die
its natural death and at best will be handled by a few people who lack depth
and get called as OD Facilitators mainly on the basis of a few programs they
attended than out of scientific study and affecting change.
We need to revisit
the values of OD and underline those that have to do with short term
orientation and greed.
Warrick (2005) from his research on OD identified
the following 13 characteristics and 15 values of OD:
Characteristics of OD (Warrick, 2005)
- Recognizes
what you change and how you change as equally important and emphasizes
health, effectiveness, and adaptability of an organization.
- OD can be
used with all sizes of organizations and at all levels of an organization.
- Recognizes
the dynamic process of change and that change takes time and quick fix
solutions rarely last.
- Approaches
change from systems or big picture perspective and considers
interrelatedness of various systems and components.
- OD is an
interdisciplinary approach and draws heavily from behavioural science
knowledge.
- OD is data
driven.
- OD uses
action research process and involves key stake holders.
- OD is
typically facilitated by professionally trained change agents who believe
in helping others to discover solutions to their own issues than dictating
what should be done.
- OD is a
value driven approach that seeks to instil values and build cultures that
bring out the best in people.
- OD is
collaborative top down and bottom up process.
- OD is an
education based strategy.
- OD is
committed to transference of knowledge and skills
- OD
emphasizes the importance of reliable feedback in monitoring and managing
the change process.
OD
values
1.
Development
2.
Professionalism
3.
Helping
people and organizations
4.
Respect
to all individuals
5.
Inclusion,
collaboration and participation
6.
Open
, honest and candid communications
7.
Authenticity
8.
Inquiry
9.
Community
10.
Diversity
11.
Personal
and organization awareness, growth and learning
12.
Experimentation
13.
Creating
a realistic hope
14.
Integrity
15.
Confidentiality
Udai Pareek’s eight values as OD values OCTAPACE
seem to take care of most of these values. (Openness, Collaboration, Trust,
Authenticity, Proactivity, Autonomy, Confrontation, and experimentation). It is
time to add to this list Extension Value
coming out of Udai Pareek’s concept of Extension
Motivation. Extension value is a value of extending oneself to others in the
larger society or working for a larger cause. It is further defined as having a
larger and long term orientation for the good of the “People and Society;
making sacrifices for larger good and not being greedy ( a strong and selfish
desire for personal possessions, personal wealth or personal power beyond limits, for their own sake and at the cost of
deriving others in the society and an inability to use them for the larger good
not using them for serving others). This is in tune with large amount of
professed concern of the country and its leaders for sustainability,
environment, saving the earth, reducing
pollution, conserving energy and building for the future.
References:
Ramnarayan, S and Rao, T. V. (editors) Organizational development for Learning and transformation:
New Delhi: Sage India, Response Books Forthcoming, 2011
Rao, T. V. Organization Development Experiences – A
case for enriching HRD through OD: Ahmedabad: IIMA Working Papers, 2009.
Warrick,
D. D. (2005) Organization development from the view of the Experts, in
Rothwell, W J and Sullivan, Roland (cited below pages 164-186).
Worley,
C. G, Rothwell, W J and Sullivan, Roland. (2005) Competencies of OD
practitioners, in Rothwell and Sullivan (editors, cited earlier, 2005 pages
135-163)
Dr. T. V.
Rao is Chairman, TVRLS and Adjunct Professor at IIM, Ahmedabad. He could be
contacted at : raotalam@gmail.com or tvrao@tvrao.com; Web site: www.tvrls.com
