Introduction to Organizational
Development
Organization Development – Intro and
Objectives

This course introduces organizational development to
professionals in the relief and development sector.
After completing this course you will be able to:
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
Explain Organizational Development (OD) and why it is important
Identify the six pillars of OD (illustrative elements of each pillar and
how they interrelate)
Describe the five step process for OD (Define, Assess, Visualize,
Plan, Implement)
Implement tools to help you in applying OD in your work
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Organization Development – WIIFM

Before we start, let’s hear from some organizations about
the importance of OD from their perspectives …
Foundation
Local NGO
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International
NGO
Organization Development – Definition

Mike to provide
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Organization Development vs. Technical
Capacity

Need to write this – reference below
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The Six Functional Areas of OD
Program
Design,
Management,
and Quality
Control
Financial
Management
Governance &
Strategic
Management
Financial
Sustainability
External
Relations
Human and
Material
Resources
There are six functional areas of organizational development. A strong sustainable organization will
be robust in each of these areas. All of these are important elements. ..
As an org develops capacity in each of these areas, it is important to recognize the
interconnectnesss of these six components, Investments in one area impact performance in other
components areas. For example, strong human resources will have a positive impact on governance
and strategic management, and strong external relations have an impact on financial sustainabilty.
Click on earn more about examples of.thekinds of investments in these areas that can make an
organization strong.
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The Six Functional Areas of OD:
Program Design, Management, and Quality Control
A strong organization will have made investments in Program Design, Management.
and Quality Control, such as the following examples:
Organziations with strong Program Desig, Management and Quality Control might
have the following systems in place:
Indicators/Components of a strong functional PSMQC area, might be:
Examples of



Client driven performance monitoring and evaluation systems for all programming.
Needs assessments and marketing assessments to measure the effectiveness of
services as well as to identify potential new services to be delivered.
Program management systems in place ensure high demand-driven, impact-based
services are provided as efficiently and effectively as possible.
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The Six Functional Areas of OD:
Financial Management
The category of Financial Management includes the following activities:



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Organizations manage revenue.
Organizations plan, document and analyze fund usage.
Organizations identify potential for additional resources.
CSOs track the flow of finances in line with local laws and regulations as well as
donor requirements
These systems are critical. Developing and practicing transparent cash management, accounting, and
financial management systems with sufficient checks and balances and different levels of authority helps
organizations minimize fraud, theft and / or corruption and increase cost efficiency and effectiveness.
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The Six Functional Areas of OD:
Governance & Strategic Management
The category of Governance & Strategic Management includes the following activities:



A clearly defined mission, vision, and strategic objectives.
A planning process that involves them in a continuous cycle of needs assessment,
staff development, business planning, and evaluation of progress toward goals and
deadlines.
Defined roles and regulations for the governing body and the relationship between
that body and program management to ensure democratic and transparent
management.
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The Six Functional Areas of OD:
Financial Sustainability
The category of Financial Sustainability includes the following activities:


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Comprehensive, long-term sustainability planning,
A plan for financial diversification;
Asset based (rather than donor based) fundraising strategies:




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donor requirements ,
corporate or state partnership,
membership development,
fee for service / social entrepreneurship
traditional fundraising
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The Six Functional Areas of OD:
External Relations
The category of External Relations includes the following activities:


A list of key stakeholders, including clients, media, government, business, community
members and leaders, and other CSOs and communicate with them regularly and
effectively.
Aninternal management process that allows staff and volunteers to freely share
information and communicate in a way that is clear, consistent, timely, and accurate.
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The Six Functional Areas of OD:
Human and Material Resources
The category of Human and Material Resources includes the following activities:


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Organizations hire appropriate staff and staff competency are a result of formalized
human resources policies and procedures, staff development and training plans, and
the use of volunteers and consultants to supplement staff skills and outreach.
Human resources emphasize local employment laws and regulations, the role of a
leader, understanding office politics, participatory management, and time
management.
Organization also has the physical resource base to adequately provide products and
services (i.e. fulfilling its mission) and these resources are procured and maintained
to ensure greatest cost efficiency as possible.
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The Five Steps of OD
The process of OD involves five key steps, or phases:
1.
Define
2.
Assess
3.
Visualize
4.
Plan
5.
Implement
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 1: Define
1.
Define
In the define phase, you definite what OD means to your organziation … what __
Cofnirm that the six compoent framework meets your needs?
We identfied a six compoent model, before sttartig the process, confirm that this structure
meets your needs. Is something missing? Is there an additional component that needs to be
added?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Product and service management and quality control
Financial management
Governance & Strategic management
Financial Sustainability
External Relations
Human and Material Resources
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess
2.
Assess
In the assess phase, you assess your current state – the state that your organization is
currently in now. There are two approaches to assessing your current state:


Formal approach – using self-assessment survey tools (quantitative)
Informal approach – through discussion.(qualitative)
Let’s take a closer look at each approach, and learn about the tools available to help you in
your assessment of your current stage.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess – Self-Assessment Tools
2.
Assess
In the assess phase, you assess your current state – the state that your organization is
currently in now. There are two approaches to assessing your current state:


Formal approach – using self-assessment survey tools
Informal approach – through discussion.
Let’s take a closer look at each approach, and learn about the tools available to help you in
your assessment of your current stage.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess – Self-Assessment Tools
2.
Assess
To help assess which fits better – choose the rfight tool for the right situation
Formal approach – using self-assessment survey tools
SEE REFEREENCE FOR THE DISCUSSION


Informal approach – through discussion.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess – Discussion
2.
Assess
Here are some ideas for how you can assess your current state through discussion. It involves facilitating an
activity in which you work with members of your organization to identify main themes and capabilities from
stories.
Ask members of your organization to think about and then share a
story or powerful ideas about the work of your organization. As the
story-telling proceeds, you will assist the group members in extracting
common themes of positive experience from the stories, and listing
these on a flipchart. These will be themes related to what works in
the organization and what gives it life and meaning. (Example: Many
members share stories about the positive response they have
received from the community in carrying out their work. You may wish
to list ‘community response’ as a positive theme for the CBO.)
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess – Discussion
2.
Assess
As the themes are identified and extracted from the
discussion, you should draw visual representations of each
topic on a large circle. For example, if the topic / theme is
‘Leadership’ you may draw a group of people with 2 or 3
leaders standing in the front. For ‘Volunteerism’ you may
draw the group with their hands in the air, showing their
willingness to volunteer. You will need to use your
imagination and creativity for this! You may also ask the
CBO members to try to come up with the drawings
themselves.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess – Discussion
2.
Assess
This will probably be a messy process and you as a facilitator will need to be listening carefully and
helping the group to extract the themes. It is not likely that the groups will talk about themes using
the exact words that you want to hear. They may not use the words ‘Financial Sustainabilty’, or
‘Volunteerism’, for example, but as you are listening to their stories you should be trying to extract
these ideas from what the group is saying..
Here is an example:
CBO
Member:
I remember the time when we wanted to organize a recreational activity for the children
in the community. We all got together and decided what we needed to do. We purchased
a football and Luisa and Telma brought jump ropes. About 40 boys participated in the
football match and even more girls were jumping rope all afternoon. It was one of the
best events that our CBO carried out.
From this example it sounds like your CBO is very good at planning.
Facilitator:
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess – Survey based Tools
2.
Assess
You can also use a survey based tool to help you
asses your current state. The self assessment tool
from counterpart International walks you through
each of the functional areas (the OD pillars) and
asks you to rate your organization according to
questions in those areas.
As an example let’s take a look at some of the
questions in the area of Leadership and Strategic
Management.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 2: Assess – Survey based Tools
For each of these items, you will score your organization using the following rating scale:
Don’t know – 0; Strongly disagree – 1; Disagree – 2; Agree – 3; Strongly agree – 4; Not applicable – NA
You can use the comments box on the right to add any comments.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 3: Visualize
3.
Visualize
.
It is critical to visualize for the future to help you in
capacity building. Two key questions that often will
help you in discovering the importance of capacity
building are as follows:
1.
If your Executive Director was no longer there
starting tomorrow, would you be in a position to
keep moving forward?
2.
If you received a donation of a million dollars
tomorrow, would you be ready to effectively place
those funds into programs?
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 3: Visualize
3.
Visualize
.
Exercise: Identifying Capacity Areas by Raising the Issue of Money
Here is an exercise that you can use to help members identifying organization capacity areas for
improvement and visualize for the future. Before starting, it is important to note that you must use this
exercise very carefully, for the following reason:
Sometimes talking about money and fund-raising will help the group to think about the organizational
capacities that they need to improve, and so it may be a useful discussion to have. On the other
hand, it can raise false expectations whereby the CBO begins to think that funds are forthcoming from
you, your organization, or other external sources. It can also serve to minimize the importance of
everything that the CBO is already managing to do for community target groups without money.
You may choose to have this conversation with the group but you must be sensitive to these issues,
explaining very carefully that the conversation does not imply that funds are forthcoming, nor does it
imply that the only good work that the CBO can do is that work they do using these funds.
Let’s get started …
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 3: Visualize
3.
Visualize
.
Exercise: Identifying Capacity Areas by Raising the Issue of Money
Sometimes a group will be most successful in identifying organizational capacity areas
for improvement if you ask the following question:
‘Imagine that your CBO wants to compete for funding from the District Department of
Social Welfare to expand your activities. In order to compete for funds like this, what
sorts of things do you think the funder will require, or will want to see in your
organization?”
We will use a visual of a tree and white circles to represent capacity areas for this
exercise.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 3: Visualize
3.
Visualize
.
1. Ask the question to the group and help them
to think of the possible answers. Examples
might include:
•
Budget
•
A record of what we are doing (Monitoring)
•
Etc.
2.
As you and the group come up with these
new capacity areas, draw a representation
of the capacity areas on new white circles,
and place the circles on the diagram of an
organizational tree. In the examples here
‘Budgeting’, and ‘Monitoring’ could be
added as new white circles on the tree.
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 3: Visualize
3.
Visualize
.
2.
On this example, The first circles
represent those capacity areas that the
group identified in Step 1 as already
existing in the CBO. The shaded circles
are those that the group has identified in
this step, as representing areas of
capacity in which the CBO can grow and
mature in order to achieve its visions for
the future.
Note: New circles added as group identifies
additional capacity areas
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 4: Plan
4.
Plan
.
NOTE FOR US TO REFER TO:
Explain how a sample action plan and list of questions/strategies can serve as tools
for planning
Tool- sample action plan
Introduce them to alternatives to dev. capacity – list of questions … do you want
to focus on A, B, C?
Internal vs. External ideas … (if intervention can be done solely internally vs. needing
external support)
(Strategies: Mentoring, Coaching, … don’t go deep on these, right now list of options
that exist)
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 4: Plan
4.
Plan
.
There are different methods you can use for action planning – a
list of questions or a formal tool.
List of Questions:
Internal vs. External ideas … (if intervention can be done solely
internally vs. needing external support)
Also, strategies?
(Strategies: Mentoring, Coaching, … don’t go deep on these, right now
list of options that exist)
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 4: Plan
4.
Plan
.
World Vision Sample Action Plan
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Introduce what should be in a plan
For each unctional area,
Idetnify a plan to address the gaps between
current stage an ftuure stage:
For each activyty
The target timeframe, who is responslbe
andresources to make that happen.
Give a templaet and examle.
Give a template to use in their contexts
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The Five Steps of OD
Step 5: Implement
5.
Plan
.
Put in the “get going now” message.
You are set up with a plan based on
analysis and a vsiion.
Manage the plan
Communications – giving people
feedback on where it is going, keep the
buzz going
Setting up monitoring systems –
reguluar meetings to check in
Connect responsible to their prformanc
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Summary, Resources and Next Steps
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