The interface between functions (marketing and sales; R&D and service; finance and HR) and the interface between people (Jack and Jill) is the domain to which Organization Development brings more added value than any other profession.
OD certainly has practitioners who want to change the world-but that desire to inspire change is just an illusion de grandeur, especially since OD practitioners shun the use of force and do not share values with most of the planet. Hell, it even hard for us to create a change in culture, and in this link I explain why.
Yet the interface between people and functions is our major domain expertise. In this short post, I want to spell out how initially to look at interfaces between functions and people. I start by asking
- How is the interface\relationship impacted by differences in culture, competence and power allocation?
- What are the goals of each side, and far more important, what are the shared goals of each side?
- How will each partner be judged if the other succeeds\fails?
- What impacts the mutual trust?
- How does the organization gain by their NON cooperation?
After diagnosing the above, the next steps are:
- At what level to I need to intervene?
- What will success look like?
- How do I garner support before I start the work, by negotiating the consequence of success \ failure?
- Then, and only then, do I plan the intervention tactically.
