Chapter Ten: Overview of Selected Organizational Level OD Interventions

Contents

10.1 Organizational-level OD Interventions
10.2 World Cafe
10.3 Future Search
10.4 Scenario Planning
10.5 Appreciative Inquiry
Questions for Reflection & Summary

10.1 Organizational-level OD Interventions

Organizational-level interventions are often required when organizations are pursuing some change. They target issues that impact most of the organizational members, promoting changes in the main organizational elements, including culture, structure, strategy, processes, and systems. Similar to team-level interventions, experienced OD practitioners usually combine and adapt well-known approaches to better respond to the specific needs and characteristics of the organization. Nevertheless, many of these organizational-level OD interventions follow similar principles based on organizational learning theories and transformational learning:

• They often involve the participation of a significant number of stakeholders from multiple functions and levels in the organization.
• They often involve multiple interventions that occur over an extended period of time.

The inclusion of a large number of participants from different levels and functions created conditions for more knowledge exchange and more learning, often leading to better and more aligned decisions. It also fosters ownership of the change process and commitment to the change goals. Organizational members take a more active role in organizational-level interventions, sometimes also participating in previous stages (data gathering, analysis, and diagnosis). In these interventions, the role of the change facilitator focuses on structuring and conducting the process, aiming to create an environment where participants feel comfortable sharing ideas and making decisions about the necessary actions for the change to happen. The change facilitator also ensures that organizational members are moving in the desired directions and facilitates dialogue among them.

Organizational-level OD interventions can be excellent approaches to facilitating strategic planning, promoting changes in the organizational structure, defining and supporting necessary cultural adjustments, and fostering diverse and inclusive workplaces, as well as defining or revising organizational mission, vision, and values. In the following sub-sections, we give an overview of well-known organizational-level OD interventions – World Cafe, Future Search, Scenario Planning, and Appreciative Inquiry – and provide links to additional resources. It is worth noting that these OD interventions are also used to explore solutions and develop action plans for problems affecting whole communities, cities, and even nations. We offer some links with examples of such situations.

10.2 World Cafe

Word Cafe is a structured approach to facilitate dialogue in large groups. It is mostly used as a tool to support organizational-level OD interventions combined with other interventions. It is primarily valuable for knowledge sharing and developing new initial ideas to solve existing issues. In general, a diverse group of participants is distributed in tables with four or five individuals to discuss a proposed question for a short period of time, and notes are taken with key points of the discussion. When time is up, each member of the group moves to a different table. Typically, one person stays at the table, serving as a host to welcome the new group and share the key points discussed in the previous round. Several rounds are conducted, and groups work with the same question or different questions posed by the facilitator to guide the conversation. After some rounds, individuals share some of their insights with the large group. The materials produced and the insights shared are recorded and used to develop action plans. The World Cafe offers more resources and details on the guidelines and process of conducting a World Cafe.

10.3 Future Search

Future Search is a systemic and participatory process that aims to discuss and address complex organizational problems. It is a more comprehensive problem-solving approach than the World Cafe methodology, as it encourages organizational members to develop a shared vision of the situation, take ownership, generate action plans, and commit to taking action and following through with the plan. Additional benefits of this approach include strengthening relationships, collaboration, and trust, innovative solutions due to the involvement of multiple and diverse perspectives, and an increased possibility that change will be sustainable because of the commitment generated by the participatory process. Search Conference is a reasonably similar OD intervention.

In a brief overview, Future Search Workshops are usually conducted in three days and involve activities that encourage participants to revisit their trajectories and that of the organization, consider the present moment and current trends related to the issue they are trying to solve or change they want to make, imagine ideal future scenarios, defining a shared vision for the future, and developing an action plan. This intervention has four principles:

1. Bring the whole system to the room – this means inviting all people who can have an impact or may be impacted by the issue under discussion and can represent the different parts of the system.
2. Think broadly and develop a broader vision of the situation – this helps to envision different possibilities to tackle the issue
3. Develop a shared future vision – this means acknowledging the differences and looking for common ground and shared goals
4. Accountability and self-management – this means ensuring people engage and take responsibility for the defined actions

The Future Search Network provides resources and information on the process. The following video gives an overview of Future Search and also shares some examples.

10.4 Scenario Planning

Situations of uncertainty can lead to decision-making paralysis. Scenario planning is an OD intervention that supports organizations in defining their business and strategic plans when facing uncertainty, typically within mid- to long-term timeframes. The goal of this intervention is to explore potential future scenarios and develop skills and strategies to navigate them. Scenario planning helps organizational members develop openness to diverse perspectives and strengthen their decision-making skills by learning how to incorporate scenario thinking.

In general, a scenario planning workshop involves brainstorming and gathering information to develop a shared understanding of the situation, mapping critical uncertainties to the organization and industry, developing possible future scenarios (i.e., what might happen if uncertainty x leads to y), and developing strategies to navigate most likely scenarios. Like other organizational-level interventions, scenario planning also requires ongoing monitoring of the situation, assessment of opportunities and risks, and revisiting the imagined scenarios and strategies. This video provides a good overview of the scenario planning process and interesting outcomes about the future of work and places.

10.5. Appreciative Inquiry

Appreciative Inquiry is a process to promote dialogue and collaborative problem solving using a positive appreciation lens. It involves five steps:

The Appreciative Inquiry process can be applied to changes at the team and organizational levels. It is a participatory approach and often involves multiple stakeholders.  More than a process, it is an approach that emphasizes the positive moments, strengths, and future action. The process starts from defining the focus of the exploration (positive core). The next stage (discovery) aims to collect stories through appreciative interviews about the organization, teams, or employees’ strengths, values, and motivations related to the positive core. Appreciative interviews ask questions about good experiences, important values, how they are experienced, and the ideal future. In the next stage (dream), participants are invited to collectively envision the ideal future for the team or organization in relation to the topic of discussion. In the design stage, participants propose actionable items to build the ideal future vision, they define resources, timeline, and commit to taking action. The last stage, destiny, is the implementation phase and is considered an ongoing process with participants learning and developing new actions as they move forward.

Table 3. Benefits and points of attention of organization-level OD interventions.

Summary

Organizational level OD interventions focus on supporting change at organizational components, such as strategy, structure, processes, culture, that affect multiple members of an organization. These interventions are helpful to solve complex problems that require alignment and buy-in from organizational members in order to support change effectively. As these interventions deal with the whole organizational system, they usually happen over an extended period and require skilled facilitators. The main goal of these interventions is to create a space and provide a framework where organizational members can dialogue and collaborate to develop solutions to the issues they are facing or the changes they need to make.