1: What does your OD role involve?
I am an external consultant these days, so I work with charities to help them with culture, diversity and inclusion.
I work in three ways: do, enable and influence. I do stuff like facilitating team development and projects to create policies and procedures that drive culture change. I enable people by developing toolkits and providing support for people to do change themselves. I influence by asking questions and sharing my thoughts on current situations.
2: How did you get into OD?
I started off in internal training, when Personnel was around. Then I moved with the organisation into learning and development as an adviser. Then we progressed into talent development and I got involved in performance management and management development. Then we built up an OD function and I was able to learn the skills for culture change, leadership development, and facilitating OD.
3: What do you enjoy most about your role?
I love the concept of ‘beginners mindset’ in OD. Which means you should approach every situation as though it’s the first time. This means you can go along with no assumptions about yourself or the situation ahead of you and work with OD principles and processes to make positive change happen.
4: What advice would you give someone looking into OD&D?
I would pick one D or the other! Org Design and Org Development are very different and aiming for both is a very ambitious goal. There are loads of great books and resources like videos and podcasts. It’s an evolving practice, so there’s loads of scope to learn and evolve your own way of doing things. A key thing to grasp is the difference between dialogic and diagnostic OD. Find out how each might work for you and how you might achieve balance.
Read more about Getting into OD here