Using the Reflexive Approach to Facilitate Quality Assurance of Your OD Projects
Your organizational development project would have sustainable desired impact if you adopt the reflexive approach from the onset. Even at the conception of the organizational initiative, a reflexive approach would help you address critical issues and questions that would enhance the quality of your organizational development outcomes. The 'reflexive approach' has its root in behavioral sciences and it makes the most of formative, process and summative evaluative decisions to foster organizational development quality assurance.
Such decisions would be based on asking evaluative questions at every step in the process of managing organizational change and development. For example: Why are we doing this? What could we have done differently? Are we using the most appropriate approach or method? What model of intervention or change are appropriate—given the strategic realities facing the organization or business? What results and outcomes do we want? What should we plan for? How are our organizational development framework and the design of the organizational change and development initiative impacting key aspects of the organizational systems? How are we building effective functional interdependencies of key aspects of the organizational systems?
Fundamentally, the reflexive approach—and reflexive evaluation—means asking approproate questions at each step, and using imagination and insights in doing so. How well this is achieved would depend on the skills, experience and commitment of the technical and business leaders of the organizational intervention project. Before you embark on your next organizational development initiative, plan on how to use the reflexive approach—particularly by adopting a high-performance model of organizational change and development linked to the total organization development framework.
Making organizational development tools and activities internally enabling
For organization-wide buy-in to your organizational development initiatives, be proactive. Be anticipatory in your approach!
Do not wait until you need the buy-in. You should be in ongoing and continuous responsive engagement with stakeholders organization-wide,—showing them how specific aspects of business strategy and vision could be better actualized with organizational development concepts, principles and approaches. Essentially, integrate your internal OD practice proactively with measures of organizational leadership, performance and change and the strategic vision, taking cognizance of the competitive environment. Make organizational development tools and activities enabling to stakeholders.
Creating commitment to organizational design
Often, maxims and core values are used in culture posters and are employed in organizational design principles. To be effective in building high performance organizational culture or creating commitment to organizational design, use such core values and principles in an integrated form pervading organizational life. Incorporate them in well-designed interactive exercises, roundtables, and organization workshops in the context of your strategic situation, competitive environment, and organizatinal change, leadership and performance initiatives. Use them in key, vivid communication and messaging business-wide, to drive your programs of organizational design, change and strategy. Factor them into your performance management systems and your measures of organizational leadership and change.
Use key principles of organizational change and design to optimize your organizational systems and subsystems for desired results.
Sharing high-performance organizational development insights
How to Contribute Organizational Articles to Advance Organizational Development
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We welcome contributions from organizational development partners, researchers, academics and professionals—particularly those advancing the organizational development discipline—for consideration and publishing on ODSynergy.Com. These may be in terms of organization research and development reports, articles, briefs, case lessons, blog posts and anecdotal items—including from organizational development practice,
case work and projects, and in-house organizational development consulting. Download our 'Articles Guidelines' to learn more about how to submit your relevant contributions for possible publishing on ODSynergy.Com.
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