The cooking class post of a few days ago illustrated the purchasing of a simple and useless solution for a complex problem. My Gloria Blog provides many examples of this.

While many organizations do handle problems of global organizing  appropriately by leveraging OD, this post will relate to reasons why lots of companies do the wrong thing.

1) OD has become productized, having migrated from solution-based projects. This is good for large consulting firms who can then hire new college graduates who learn to “administer” the products quickly.The firms charge high prices using their brand name, and “clip a coupon”.

2) The death of professional standards has been replaced by commercial standards, i.e., making the client “happy”. This client is often from HR or represented by HR. Threatened by their low status and the derivate need to perky and pleasing, the HR manager wants wow results from nifty products. This is even worse if the consultant is hired by Training.

3) Many inexperienced global organizations want “one size fits all”, because they do not understand the need to differentiate between a shared “core” and specialized applications. For example, the core may be “we want transparency”: this should NOT lead to “running better meetings”, because information is not shared in meetings in many parts of the world.