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Block 4 OD Interventions

Unit 3 Typology Of Interventions Based On Target Groups

1. Discuss the classification of OD Interventions on the basis of the content of the intervention.

OD interventions can be classified based on their content into three main categories:

1. Information-based interventions: These interventions focus on providing clarity, communicating information, and documenting processes. They are used when there is a lack of clarity or information.
   • Interventions that define clarify vision, roles and responsibilities.
   • Interventions that inform communicate goals, expectations and results.
   • Interventions that document codify information and make it accessible.
2. Consequence-based interventions: These interventions focus on rewards, measurements, and enforcement to influence behavior.
   • Interventions that reward induce and maintain desired behaviours.
   • Interventions that measure provide metrics to monitor and evaluate performance.
   • Interventions that enforce actualise consequences and achieve compliance.
3. Design-based interventions: These interventions focus on changing structures, standardising processes, and improving environments.
   • Interventions that organise change the structure or arrange business units.
   • Interventions that standardise systematise processes and standardise tasks.
   • Interventions that (re)design create useful, easy-to-use, safe and ergonomically designed environments.
   • Interventions that reframe generate new paradigms so that people can experience new perspectives.
   • Interventions that counsel help individuals deal with work, personal and career issues.
   • Interventions that develop expand skills and knowledge.
   • Interventions that align work towards congruency between purpose and practice.

2. What are the various interventions that can be used to deal with team or group issues?

Several interventions can be used to address team or group issues:

• Team building: Activities to enhance team effectiveness, focusing on tasks, processes, roles and relationships.
• Gestalt OD: Helps individuals recognise, develop and experience their own potency and ability to cope with their organisation, fostering expression of feelings.
• Grid OD phase 2: Focuses on developing effective team work through exercises.
• Interdependency exercises: Useful for improving cooperation and surfacing latent problems in a team or group.
• Appreciative Inquiry: A method that seeks to engage all levels of an organisation in its renewal, change and improved performance..
• Responsibility Charting: Assigns decision and task responsibilities.
• Process consultation: Helps members diagnose group processes and devise solutions to problems.
• Role negotiation: Helps clarify roles and expectations in the team.
• "Startup" team-building activities: Used when a new team is being formed.
• Education in decision making, problem solving, planning, goal setting in group settings: Improves these skills in a group context.
• Team MBO: Involves setting objectives for the team.
• Appreciations and concerns exercise: Helps members express appreciation and address concerns with other team members.
• Socio-technical systems (STS): Focuses on the relationship between people and technology in a work system.
• Visioning: Helps develop a shared vision for the team.
• Quality of work life programmes: Focus on improving the quality of life of employees.
• Quality circles: Discusses and develops solutions to quality, productivity or costs.
• Force-field analysis: Identifies driving and restraining forces affecting a team.
• Self-managed teams: Gives employees the opportunity to function on their own terms and take responsibility for the task performed.

3. What are the OD interventions that are relevant for intergroup relations?

• Several interventions are designed to improve intergroup relations:
  • Intergroup activities (process and task directed): Aim to improve the effectiveness of interdependent groups.
  • Partnering: Helps groups work together effectively.
  • Process consultation: Facilitates communication and problem-solving between groups.
  • Third-party peacemaking: Helps resolve conflicts between groups.
• Grid OD phase 3: Focuses on moving groups towards an ideal model of intergroup relations.
• Survey feedback: Systematically collecting data and feeding it back to individuals and groups to analyse meanings and design corrective action steps.

4. What do you understand by Survey feedback? Why is it in extensive use these days in organisations?

• Survey feedback is a process of systematically collecting data about an organisation through surveys and feeding the data back to individuals and groups at all levels. This data is then used to analyse, interpret meanings, and design corrective actions. The process includes:
  • Using a climate or attitude survey.
  • Conducting feedback workshops.
  • Organising preliminary planning with top level members.
  • Collecting data.
  • Providing feedback to top executives.
  • Each superior discussing data with subordinates, and giving feedback with the consultant present.
• Survey feedback is widely used because it provides honest feedback on obstacles to productivity and satisfaction, helps leaders guide their teams and allows members to become actively engaged in managing their work environment. It is a participative approach.

5. Discuss the characteristics of the OD practitioner’s role in conducting OD Interventions.

The OD practitioner's role in conducting OD interventions is characterised by:

• Meta-level characteristics: They need to maintain a broad perspective of the organisation and not get lost in the details.
• Marginal position: They need to maintain a position that is separate from the client system to enable them to give an objective opinion.
• Collaboration: They need to assist clients in exploring issues, actions and strategies through facilitation.
• Continuum of directive to non-directive roles: They need to adapt their approach to the situation, sometimes being directive and at others, less so.

6. Describe the typology of OD Interventions based on target groups.

Typology of OD Interventions Based on Target Groups

OD interventions can be categorised by their primary target, such as individuals, dyads/triads, teams/groups, intergroup relations, or the total organisation. These interventions are designed to address specific issues related to each target group. Additionally, OD interventions can also be classified based on their content: information-based, consequence-based, and design-based.

• Individual Interventions:

  • These interventions focus on enhancing individual skills, knowledge, and effectiveness. Examples include:
    • Life and career planning activities
    • Coaching and counselling
    • T-groups (sensitivity training)
    • Education and training to increase skills
    • Work redesign
    • Behaviour modelling
    • Gestalt OD
    • Grid OD phase 1

• Dyads/Triads Interventions:

  • These focus on improving the effectiveness of two or three people working together. Examples include:
    • Process consultation
    • Third-party peacemaking
    • Role negotiation technique
    • Gestalt OD

• Teams and Groups Interventions:

  • These aim to enhance team effectiveness through improved communication, balance between personal and group needs, and consensus-based decision-making. Examples include:
    • Team building (task-directed and process-directed)
    • Gestalt OD
    • Grid OD phase 2
    • Interdependency exercises
    • Appreciative inquiry
    • Responsibility charting
    • Process consultation
    • Role negotiation
    • Role analysis technique
    • "Startup" team-building activities
    • Education in decision-making, problem-solving, planning, and goal setting in group settings
    • Team MBO
    • Appreciations and concerns exercise
    • Socio-technical systems (STS)
    • Visioning
    • Quality of work life (QWL) programs
    • Quality circles
    • Force-field analysis
    • Self-managed teams

• Intergroup Interventions:

  • These interventions seek to improve cooperation and communication between different groups or departments within an organisation. Examples include:
    • Intergroup activities (process-directed and task-directed)
    • Partnering
    • Process consultation
    • Third-party peacemaking at the group level
    • Grid OD phase 3
    • Survey feedback

• Total Organisation Interventions:

  • These interventions are designed to create change across the entire organisation, rather than focusing on subgroups. Examples include:
    • Socio-technical systems (STS)
    • Parallel learning structures
    • MBO (participative forms)
    • Cultural analysis
    • Confrontation meetings
    • Visioning
    • Strategic planning/strategic management activities
    • Real-time strategic change
    • Grid OD 4, 5, 6
    • Interdependency exercise
    • Survey feedback
    • Appreciative inquiry
    • Search conferences
    • Quality of work life (QWL) programs
    • Total quality management (TQM)
    • Large-scale systems change
    • Physical settings

7. Discuss Management by Objectives and its process as an important participative OD Intervention

Management by Objectives (MBO) as a Participative OD Intervention

Management by Objectives (MBO) is a process where employees and superiors collaborate to identify common goals, and employees set their own goals and action plans. It’s a participative approach that focuses on setting objectives, choosing courses of action, and making decisions.

• MBO Process:

  • Collaborative Goal Setting: Employees and their superiors come together to define common goals.
  • Individual Goal Setting: Employees set their own goals, defining standards for performance measurement and contribution.
  • Action Planning: Employees decide on the course of action to be followed.
  • Performance Measurement: The employee's actual performance is compared against the set standards.
  • Feedback and Review: Regular feedback is provided to employees on their performance.

• MBO’s Importance in OD

• Participative Approach: MBO is a participative intervention that can increase employee empowerment, motivation, job satisfaction and commitment

• Problem Solving: MBO can increase the frequency of problem solving discussions between supervisors and subordinates and within work teams.

• Alignment of Objectives: It helps in aligning individual and team goals with the overall organisational objectives

MBO programs have evolved from a collaborative organisation diagnosis, designed to increase focus on objectives and increase problem-solving discussions. In participative MBO, also known as Management by Group Objectives (MBGO), teams work together to achieve goals, resulting in increased contribution to corporate profits and increased productivity.

Important Points

1. Work redesign, Grid OD phase 1 and behaviour modification are all  individual OD interventions, team building is not an individual intervention.
2. Activities and programs that generate new paradigms so that people can experience new are Interventions that reframe.
3. Focal issues, target groups and what a consultant does are dimensions of Blake and Mouton's Consulcube.
4. Destiny, discover, and dream are all parts of the cycle of four processes of the Appreciative Inquiry cycle.
5. Quality of Work Life (QWL) programmes consider people as an asset to the organisation rather than as costs.
6. Cooperrider and Srivastva say that an organisation is a miracle to be embraced rather than a problem to be solved.