Organizational

Development (OD)
Interventions

Satyendra Seth

Satyendra Seth

Sr. Manager - SIAM

Published Apr 17, 2017
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Organizational Development (OD) Interventions are structured

program designed to solve a problem, thus enabling an organization
to achieve the goal. These intervention activities are designed to
improve the organization’s functioning and enable managers and
leaders to better manage their team and organization cultures. These
OD interventions are required to address the issues that an
organization might be facing ranging from process, performance,
knowledge, skill, will, technology, appraisal, career development,
attrition, top talent retention and the list can actually be pretty
exhaustive.

There are 3 types of interventions that an organization should be able

to identify and plan to implement.

1. Individual : Interventions pertaining to an individual.

2. Group : Interventions pertaining to a group.

3. Organization : Interventions related to the organization’s

strategy and policy.

An organization should be able to identify the kind of OD intervention

required. Once the intervention is identified the organization should
then plan to address or eradicate the issue at hand in an effective
manner. Below mentioned are the OD intervention process that an
organization should have to address any intervention.

1. Entering and Contracting : Here we establish the fact that yes

we do require OD intervention to address an issue.

2. Diagnosis : In this process we identify the intervention and

establish the root cause of the issue.

3. Designing Intervention : In this process we design the approach

to address the issue or intervene to sort the issue out and bring value
to business.

4. Leading and Managing Change : Here we establish a focus

group with management buy in and implement the designed
intervention. OD intervention is a structured programme driven from
top to bottom.

5. Evaluating and Institutionalizing Interventions: Here we

evaluate the course of actions implemented and see if we are on track
or if we need to re-design the approach so that the objective if met.

There are 4 buckets in which the OD intervention process can be

bundled together.

1. Human Process : Human process related activities are tagged

under this group viz.

a. Job Analysis.

b. Team Building Activities.

2. Strategic : Activities related to organizational strategies and

policies are grouped under this bucket.

3. Human Resource Management : Human resource related

activities are grouped under this bucket viz.

a. Reward and Recognition.

b. Appraisal.

c. Career Development.

4. Technostructural : Activities related to technology or where

technology is related are tagged under this bucket.

Conclusion : These are some of the aspects of Organizational

Development Interventions and the effective mechanism to identify
and address the issues at hand. These interventions are unavoidable in
totality, however a vigilant and matured organization should be able
to apprehend the issue much before it erupts off on bigger scale and
should be able to address at the very initial stage when it can be done
with minimum efforts. The cost of negligence can have adverse impact
in terms of cost, wide spread agitation resulting in to image,
reputation, and delivery and branding loss.