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Organization Analysis
Individual and Organizational Resistance
As human beings, we're creatures of habit. Life is complex enough; we don't need to consider the full range of options for the hundreds of decisions we have to make every day. To cope with this complexity, we all rely on habits or programmed responses. But when confronted with change, this tendency to respond in our accustomed ways becomes a source of resistance.

Types of OD Intervention
Interventions that define is delivered when people are unclear, disagree, or have different expectations; there are conflicting objectives; or people do not have a shared understanding. Examples: holding sessions to create vision statements; confirming market direction and market niche; mutually setting performance goals.

Five Steps for Effective Change Process
Organizational change involves moving from the known to the unknown. Because the future is uncertain and may adversely affect people's competencies, worth, and coping abilities, organization members generally do not support change unless compelling reasons convince them to do so.

Overcoming Resistance to Change
Resistance can be reduced through communicating with employees to help them see the logic of a change. This tactic basically assumes that the source of resistance lies in misinformation or poor communication: If employees receive the full facts and get any misunderstandings cleared up, resistance will subside. Communication can be achieved through one-on-one discussions, memos, group presentations, or reports.

Organization Development Audit Checklist
Are there vision and mission statements? Does the mission reflect the organization's current requirements and desires and the environment in which it operates? Is there consensus on what the vision and mission are? Does the company's long-range plan support the vision and mission?

Four Elements to Empower Employees
Much has been written about empowering employees—to the point of becoming a cliche—but far too many companies pay little more than lip service to the subject or else give employees more responsibility but little compensation or strategic direction from leaders. Why? Despite all the literature and conferences on this subject, top management still has little understanding of delegation and even little desire to delegate authority/power to fully empower employees.

Employee Satisfaction and Customer Loyalty
Virtually all of the studies that tested the satisfaction mirror concept have identified some linkage between employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction, between employee satisfaction and customer loyalty, or both. The discovered linkages, however, have ranged from negative to positive, and a few studies yielded no correlation at all. The necessary conclusion? Employee satisfaction does not universally nor unambiguously create customer loyalty.

The Major Families of OD Interventions
Not all OD programs contain all the possible intervention activities, but a wide range of activities is available to the practitioner. As we see it, the following are the major "families" or types of OD interventions.

OD Intervention Success Indicators
Institutionalizing an OD intervention concerns refreezing. It involves the long-term persistence of organizational changes: to the extent that changes persist, they can be said to be institutionalized. Such changes are not dependent on any one person but exist as a part of the culture of an organization. This means that numerous others share norms about the appropriateness of the changes.

Keeping a Corporate Culture Alive
Once a corporate culture is in place, there are practices within the organization that act to maintain it by giving employees a set of similar experiences. For example, many of the human resource practices reinforce the organization's culture. The selection process, performance evaluation criteria, reward practices, training and career development activities, and promotion procedures ensure that those hired fit in with the culture, reward those who support it, and penalize (and even expel) those who challenge it.

Job Satisfaction
What work-related variables determine job satisfaction? An extensive review of the literature indicates that the more important factors conducive to job satisfaction are mentally challenging work, equitable rewards, supportive working conditions, and supportive colleagues.

Leading Corporate Transformation
Successful corporate transformations share a few fundamental attributes. First, they are vision led. Transformational change, as contrasted with incremental change, requires a projection into a dimly lit future. It involves the creation of goals that "stretch" the organization beyond its current comprehension and capabilities.

Critical Characteristics of OD
The essential point in calling OD a process is to characterize it as a dynamic, moving, changing thing. People learn new skills and forget old ones; the structure of the organization changes, and then another change is put on top of that; problems are solved and new ones develop; a sick subsystem gets well and a heretofore healthy one develops bad symptoms.

The Characteristics of a Learning Company
Since a Learning Company seeks to delight its customers, it will engage in a number of mutually advantageous learning activities. Joint training, sharing in investment, in research and development, job exchanges - these are just some of the ways in which this takes place. The corollary, of course, is that it also joins with its suppliers in these activities. We can also learn from companies in other industries - a process often known as "benchmarking".

Change Management: The Need for Action
The why question is not always easy to answer, particularly if the company is profitable and there are no apparent problems. You have to convince people that you are preparing for the future, not attempting to remedy the past. In addressing this first priority, how you choose to launch your action program is a critical decision. In most cases, the longer-duration decathlons and marathons are best launched in a low-key way. Because of the often lengthy time between the start of actions and the point at which actions actually pay off, it is better not to raise interest and expectations too high if no immediate steps are required.

Clarifying Vision for Change
The key questions you must address as you begin communication to clarify the vision for your action include the following: 1) What exactly is the vision, why this vision and not another? 2) How does this action fit with our strategy and with other initiatives going on? and 3)How will our work be different?

 
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