The Total Organization Development Challenge for Top Managers

Top managers that concentrate on total organization development to position their organizational systems for sustainable high performance would be creating the future of their organizations in business.

Essence of Total Organization Development

Total organization development involves making all key organizational systems the best they could be and facilitating actualizing human attributes to deliver high-performance. This is the concept of total organizational poise development—which underpins total organizational development, and it is the ultimate corporate challenge for top managers who are passionate about sustaining long-run organizational leadership and performance.
Total organization development is to imaginatively foster the effective synergy of excellence of people's actualizing attributes and excellence in the facets and interfaces of organizational and business systems for high performance.

Let's Interrograte Your Recent Organizational Development Project

When last did you undertake an organizational development project or an organization intervention program? Let's consider two scenarios.
If you undertook an organizational development project at least over 24 months ago, consider these questions.

1. Was the initial organizational development program conceived around certain specific burning issues?
2. What did you achieve six months after the conclusion of the program? How much of that did you get one year after?
3. What are the challenges and issues seen as likely to result in—or determine the course of—any subsequent organizational development project in, say, three years? What about in five years? How much of these were factored into the design of the initial organizational development program?
4. How did the organizational development project address and position the organizational or business systems and their interfaces—their quality, functional interdependencies, alignment, and synergy?
5. Which explicit principles of organizational development drove the project?

If you recently undertook an organizational development project, say, less than 24 months ago, consider these questions.

1. What burning issues did you start with?
2. How much effort did you put into getting organizational commitment to drive the program?
3. What did you consider as the overall outcomes of the program? How much of them were you prepared for?
4. What would you say is the proportion of foreseen outcomes—say, good ones—to the unforeseen outcomes—say, bad ones?
5. How much consensus did you get on the impact of the intervention program considering the burning issues you started with?
6. How did the organizational development project address and position the organizational systems, subsystems and their interfaces—their quality, functional interdependencies, alignment, and synergy?
7. Which explicit principles of organizational development drove the project?

Imperatives for Total Organizational Development

Issues and considerations—such as the foregoing—underpin the model, quality and thrust of organizational development. They underpin the need to embrace 'total organization development'—which translates to fostering effective synergy of people's actualizing attributes and excellence of organizational systems and facets—together with their functional interdependencies—for high performance.
Total organizational development involves exploring and nurturing the total poise of all organizational systems and subsystems for ultimate high performance. It helps businesses position the intrinsic personal drivers (e.g., attributes, attitudes, talents, and skills), organizational (or corporate) vectors (e.g., mission, vision, values, ground rules, and processes) and external facilitators (e.g., methods, technologies, and tools) to be fit for purpose and be the best they could be.

Total Organization Poise is Key!

Total organization poise means having all organizational systems and human attributes in actualized conditions for effective organizational synergy and having harmonious, transformational functional interdependencies of people and organizational systems—which position a business to achieve a vision of high-performance and leadership. The ultimate challenge facing top management in a pulsating business environment is how to achieve and sustain maintain total organizational poise for breakthrough performance.
The truth is that the nature of today's competition is beyond technology, but what drives technology, creativity and innovations: the superior essence of the human mind and character. This is where the competition would be—and is being—won or lost!
Top managers need to explore and address total organizational development for their ultimate business mandate—that of creating the future of their businesses today.