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Skills for Advanced OD Practitioners
You will find resources here that will help you to understand and develop your skills to apply organisational development interventions effectively as an Advanced OD Practitioner.
Skills resource topics
Below you will find a list of the Skills topics for Advanced OD Practitioners. Each of the links will take you directly to the additional information and resources for the selected topic.
Effective facilitation of large, multi-disciplinary/agency groups with complex/competing agendas
What is it?
The process and approach to guiding groups in meetings, planning, learning, and to help them function more effectively.
Effective facilitation removes time wasted in unproductive discussions and enables decisions to be reached swiftly.
A facilitator needs a good understanding of the core skills of listening, questioning, observing and feedback and how to adapt these in changing circumstances. As a facilitator, you are a neutral third party and will have no decision-making authority on the topic under discussion with the group, although you will need to influence the group to keep on track.
As a facilitator you should know what kinds of behaviour, process and structure will contribute to good problem solving and decision making and know which elements contribute to making an effective group.
You will need to able to manage boundaries and manage interpersonal relationships in the group.
As an advanced practitioner you will have a range of approaches to deal with challenging situation and group dynamics where you can work with participants to explore the nature and impact of the group itself and help them gain a better understanding of how groups function.
You will also be skilled in facilitating change by challenging and supporting teams to make difficult, quality choices.
Why would I use it?
A facilitator has a wide range of tasks to perform in order to ‘make things easier’ for people who participate in a facilitated discussion. Well facilitated discussions can help people collectively move through a process, keep discussions effective, encourage participation and get people to come up with ideas, thoughts and perspective.
You will need to be able to make the group aware of possible consequences of their approach and encourage systemic thinking, curiosity and deep examination of issues.
The larger a meeting is, the more effort it takes to contract and manage and therefore will require attention to manage both the preparation and the process.
You may also be considered a third-party expert for example in change or organisation design to help the group make informed decisions.
When would I use it?
There are a number of circumstances when facilitation is the most appropriate technique to use. For example, when a group needs to resolve a problem and the facilitators skills could improve the process. You may also help the group learn rigorously to reflect on their own behaviour and thinking and explore difficult situations they face.
Watch: System archetypes and emergent futures: reflections on facilitating system change
Change across organisational and system boundaries
Change across organisational and system boundaries
What is it?
Managing change across functional and organisational systems (e.g. multi departments or organisations).
This change is likely to be emergent and complex and as an Advanced OD Practitioner you may be dealing with different levels of organisational change which will be dependent on scale, intensity and levels of systems alignment or divergence.
Why would I use it?
This level of change could involve complex programme management and considerations around project management including OD, communications, finance and HR, large group interventions, and consideration of the role of leaders.
When working with this level of change, OD Practitioners need to operate with flexibility in their mental models, recognise that they may be working with polarities from differing stakeholders and tensions which may need to be managed rather than solved.
When would I use it?
Early planning for this level of complexity will involve consideration of systems, processes and behaviour with analysis undertaken on alignment or divergent.
Read: How do I implement complex change at scale?
Watch: The fearless organization
Listen: https://www.ccl.org/multimedia/podcast/complex-challenges-and-the-new-leadership/
Demonstrate impact and effectiveness of your practice
Demonstrate impact and effectiveness of your practice
What are they?
A critical part of OD work is evaluation and measurement to see if the intervention has made a difference.
From the outset, you should consider how you can evaluate the impact of a change on those affected.
It is important that you are able to report back to your main stakeholders, detailing what has been achieved, the impact the intervention has had and highlighting any further actions that are required to achieve the final objectives.
Why would I use it?
You can consider the impact of an intervention at a number of levels including organisationally (on end users, those affected, other stakeholders), individually by those who led and participated in the intervention and finally on yourself.
The tools you use to evaluate impact and effectiveness will depend on what aspects your intervention is focused on.
When would I use it?
There are many methods you can use to measure impact including questionnaires which can be used to gather qualitative and quantitative information from employees and stakeholders on a range of topics. They can be used at the start of a process to gather data which will help in diagnosing the issues to be addressed, or when evaluating the impact of an intervention on a project.
Focus groups are also a useful tool which can be used at the start of an engagement for fact finding, as well as being used for evaluation to assess impact or generate further recommendations.
Read: Double loop learning in organizations (you can sign up for 3 free Harvard Business Review articles per month).
Horizon scan and future proof
What are they?
This is an approach to identify emerging trends and opportunities. By exploring what is likely to happen in the future including areas of uncertainty, opportunity and challenges, this will ensure OD practitioners can with an OD mindset, adapt quickly to support their stakeholders to respond to changing environments.
Why would I use them?
For organisations to remain effective in the future, predicting future workforce trends will be essential in ensuring they can adapt to changing trends.
This may include changes in areas such as talent attraction, supporting management to anticipate big people issues, applying agile methodology and helping managers lead their teams into these new environments.
When would I use them?
OD practitioners can be future ready by staying ahead with researching macro trends which influence how organisations will evolve and how these trends will impact the future of work.
As part of your professional development it will be important to keep up to date with emerging research and share practice through your networks.
You may also reflect on how you interact with the systems you operate in and apply critical analysis and evaluation of the trends in order to be able to apply them to your own reality.
Read: Future of organizations and implications for OD practitioners
