Organization development is a movement focused on improving the effectiveness of organizations and the people in them. On the other hand OCI (Organization Change and Innovation) is something broader. For example, there would be restructuring operations (e.g., restructuring to self-managed teams, layoff, etc), new technologies, mergers, major collaborations, “rightsizing”, new programs such as Total Quality Management, re-engineering, and etc. Some experts refer it as organizational transformation.
Now how does this change best carried out? Successful change must involve top management, including the board and chief executive. Usually there’s a champion who initially instigates the change by being visionary, persuasive and consistent. A change agent role is usually responsible to translate the vision to a realistic plan and carry out the plan. Change is usually best carried out as a team-wide effort. Communications about the change should be frequent and with all organization members.
To sustain the change, the structures of the organization itself should be modified, including strategic plans, policies and procedures. This change in the structures of the organization typically involves an unfreezing, change and re-freezing process. The best approaches to address resistances is through increased and sustained communications and education. For example, the leader should meet with all managers and staff to explain reasons for the change, how it generally will be carried out and where others can go for additional information. Moreover share opinions with the all the managers.
A plan should be developed and communicated. Plans do change. However, what is important is to enable the communication between the whole organization levels. Communicating and sharing the information among the whole organization is extremely important. For example, forums should be held for the organization members to express their ideas for the plan and get feedback of their idea from their actual bosses, rather than just continuously receiving and accepting. Therefore, my ideal diagram of an organization is mainly concerned on communication and sharing of information.
This diagram is the model of my ideal organization. I have focused on a system that will enable complete sharing of information and idea inside the organization.
First of all, I would like to introduce the main part of this organization, the executives. Obviously the leaders are located at the bulls eye (the red core). There they would be able to easily receive and also send out information to the whole organization. They observe, control and manage the whole organization. However, an important thing to remember is that despite the fact that the black lines are passing through the red core, the red core is not responsible for the flow of information between each end of the circle. In other words, the information sharing between “A” and “B” is not the red core’s job. It is the thin lines that do the job but the red core is just between that to get an overall view of the flow.
Moreover, the red core group is assisted by a group of vise executives which would be the black outer circle of the red core. This part of the group is organized with vise executives that manage and sometimes filter the information that is delivered to the actual executives. At this point filtering means to cut the minor issues and try to make the quantity of information digestible for the executives.
Now to explain the other parts of the diagram I would like to start with the next important part of this diagram, which would be the two squares that are overlapping each other. These two squares are representing the supporting group of the whole organization. Their main goal is to collect and organize information for the advanced levels of projects. However, the reason they are overlapping each other is to make the information be shared and also to avoid the waste of effort that is made by misunderstanding each other’s current work. Each point of the square equally supports two slices of the circle. They also equally overlap with their neighbor groups which are the groups that have relevant tasks or projects. Through this kind of compact support from the two squares the big circle and the inner ones’ performance will obviously become efficient.
The conical shaped parts that look like slices of pizza represent each projects of this organization. They are constituted with managers and employees that lead each project. They receive information from the supporting squares and process it into an outcome. Since the main concept of this diagram is collaboration and sharing, it is also done in the project groups. They collaborate with the opposite group that they are facing. (As the blue arrows show in the diagram) Through this sharing of information they can pull the information from the opposite side of the organization and share between the neighbor groups.
