What are some of the basic components of a new Operating System for OD

Minahan and Norlin in their recent article “Edging Toward the Center” (OD Practitioner: Vol 45: 4, 2013) suggest a move away from the extremities of OD which may have been applicable in the past in the happier days of OD and suggest that OD should migrate to the centre, i.e., towards bringing more value to clients without abandoning OD’s core values.

I suggested in my critique of that article that this is “too little too late” because OD has been almost “voted off the island”; I also suggested we needed a new Operating System for OD, not a bug fix or service pack.

The goal of this post is to suggest some initial basic components for this new Operating System:

1) Provide a culturally-agnostic, contingency based platform which enable people with very different values and communication styles to work effectively in a global organizational configuration, in a spirit of inclusion and cooperation.

2)  Drive cross cultural organizational literacy, so people from different cultures can understand the different view of organizational life.

3) Develop global leadership/followership capabilities across acutely diverse cultural divides, which factor in value and behavioural  preferences of  all major cultural constituencies. (By acutely diverse, I do not mean merely a colour or food preference divide)

4) Create an accepted mediation paradigm for clashes between different styles and behavioural preferences in order to enable rapid and adaptive behaviour.

5) Foster massive trust building and relationship building techniques to gap-fill for the limitations of virtuality and to compensate for the hidden agendas of global organizing.

6) Create a set of agreed upon code of ethics to mitigate negative organizational politics stemming from global organizing, especially but not only “control agendas.”

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7 thoughts on “What are some of the basic components of a new Operating System for OD

  1. Allon, I don’t see that this is particularly different from the ways that “traditional”, “pure” OD at least tries to operate. Perhaps I’m missing something…

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  4. Hi, Allon,

    It is good to catch up with you after too long a while . . .

    Thanks for your comments and observations about our article. You are right, I think, that we go the diagnosis about right, and I agree with you that the “so what” of the piece needs to be stronger.

    In our online conversations over the year, we have had a hard time coming to agreement, in my opinion, about the differences between general management consulting and OD consulting. Much of what I’ve heard you espouse falls into the category of general management “expert” consulting, rather than what I think a true OD purist would call “process” consulting.

    However, I find your six suggestions here to be hard to quibble with en masse. I do have some doubts about some of them, though.

    Your second one: “Drive cross cultural organizational literacy, so people from different cultures can understand the different view of organizational life.” I haven’t figured out yet what that means or how to do that. I find that a bit of Trompenaars or Hofstede or Richard Lewis can help people get the fact that their way is not necessarily the only way, and that just because someone does things another way doesn’t make it wrong way. But actually changing behavior enough on both ends to create a blended common culture has not worked, at least to my mind. What we get is smarter and more covert compliance with what the home office wants. So, I’d be interested in what it would take to make that happen.

    If you can’t crack #2, then you can’t really do #3. And, re #4: “Create an accepted mediation paradigm for clashes between different styles and behavioural preferences in order to enable rapid and adaptive behaviour.” I can see that working among peers, even across locations and cultures. But how about across grades and ranks? You’ve written much about how subordinates slavishly follow their bosses’ every whims . . . I don’t see how even the best training and cultural awareness programs could overcome this in most cultures . . .

  5. Hi Matt
    By “Cross cultural literacy”- let me start with relating to your post.
    When you write that you find my points hard to quibble with en masse, and then take exception with some of them….for me this is a cross cultural literacy problem.
    Because in Israeli eyes, I do not understand what you mean….you seen to to be contradicting yourself. You cannot quibble-but you do-but not really if I read you well.
    But because I do so much work in the States, I can clean up the background noise (I no longer read in the contradictions) and focus on the fact that you found my article acceptable+ and take issue with with a few points.
    So part of cross cultural literacy is the ability to hear INTENT,and listen to the INTENT, without being confused by packaging of the intent.
    Like when I hear a German ask for more and more data, I know he wants to feel less risk, not more data. This is cross cultural literacy.

    In terms of purist, the question is “in whose eyes”. Because a lot of pure OD today is pure crap-because it is no longer relevant. Now you can clean up the background noise via your cross cultural literacy skills.

    I think that some companies allow for less compliance with home office when the home office is appropriately staffed and the organization is appropriately architect-ed.

    allon

  6. Very interesting posts. In global organizations that are products of several mergers and acquisitions, most OD professionals are tasked with creating a common cultural blueprint for the organization, which everyone must follow and espouse. The intention is for this ‘bridge’ to close the gap between the multiple differences that manifest themselves in ways that prevent the organization of running as one well oiled machine. If this task is not part of the ‘new’ OD model, then what can organizations do to create cohesion and common anchor points for people to work uniformly together to achieve company goals?

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