Over the last 15-20 years, the profession of Organization Development has been hit by five “plagues”. For the most part, instead of standing its ground, OD has morphed in order to adapt itself, and thus in many cases, rendered itself to the sidelines.

1-Coaching

Coaching focus on the individual, allowing the system problems to get unnoticed, or to get off Scot-free. As such, coaching is the very antithesis of OD, although it masquerades as OD or a subset of OD skills.

2-OD as part of HR

HR is the most conservative of all internal functions in an organization. OD is the literally the police force of the CEO, shamelessly calling itself a business partner. And OD as part of an HR organization? Yea sure, teaching middle management soft skills, and gossiping to bring “feedback” to management, wrapped in endearing terms.

Internal OD is a chicken-shit brigade, serving the status quo, kowtowing to the HR manager, who more often than not feels very insecure in her (or his) role.

3-OD as a Product

OD is a process, an ongoing process, that supports changing of an organization to adapt itself to its various stakeholders and minimize the built in contradictions of organizing. It is not a sellable product such as “Keeping your staff engaged” or “Diversity Week”. But OD is now often packaged as a product, with a label, and a you tube video to see a snippet. Just one problem: it ain’t OD.

4-Mass Production of OD Consultants

Universities and colleges churn out huge numbers of OD consultants, flooding the market with cheap and unskilled labour. Many of these OD consultants end up in recruitment or benefits. Others sell prepackaged crap. And most of the teachers of this new batch of consultants never saw a client in their life. The result-massive incompetence, sold at a cheap price to clients who wake up one day and ask for “a half day on engagement and some fun.”

5-OD’s rigidity

Many of the classical ODers (often over 50) are enamored with a set of beliefs and values which do not support the global configuration of organizations. I have documented this in over one hundred posts on my blog, and have several publications. Thus, some very skilled OD practitioners are stuck in the past-not fully understanding how time has passed them by.

Do you need a survival strategy for your practice? If so, take a hard look at what your competitors are doing, and provide a viable alternative based on a long term, on-going commitment to provide support for the client’s ability to change-without promising miracles or half hour fixes which fake an organizational orgasm, which fades away quickly to boot..