Practicing Organization Development: A Guide for Leading Change: A Third Edition

KEY ASPECTS OF OD BEING VIOLATED BY NEW PRACTICES

OD emerged in the 1950s from attempts to apply the social and behavioral sciences to issues of leadership, teamwork, and change, so it’s not surprising that at its core OD assumes there is something real and tangible about organizations that needs to be studied before prescriptions for change are made. In every contemporary OD textbook, and in many of the models in this book, practitioners are advised that a diagnosis needs to be made before any action is taken.

In some very successful OD practices, things are being decided and done well before any diagnosis is made, and in some cases there really isn’t a diagnosis called for. In this book, one example is Mirvis’s “learning journeys.” A set ...