DEVELOPING AN ASSESSMENT, ACTION PLANNING, AND IMPLEMENTATION PHILOSOPHY
Significant and sometimes radical changes in the environment in which organizations must compete and changes in the field of OD itself make it important to develop a sound philosophy for assessing organizations and planning actions. Philosophies may run, for example, from a more deficit or problem-centered philosophy (focusing on weaknesses and what is wrong and broken and how to fix the problems) that characterized some of the early OD efforts to a more positive Appreciative Inquiry (AI) type of philosophy that focuses on stories of best practices and experiences and discovering the life-giving properties present when organizations are performing optimally.
While it ...