IOP3705___Assignment_2

Question One: The General Model of Planned Change consists of four phases; Entering and Contracting, Diagnosing, Planning and Implementing and lastly Evaluating and Institutionalising Change. This model identifies the steps an organisation moves through when implementing change and specifies the OD activities needed to effect change. (Page 8) Phase One – Entering and Contracting This phase of the general model of planned change defines the plan moving forward and how each of the subsequent phases will be structured. The OD relationship with the client organisation starts when a member of the client organisation contacts an OD practitioner to consult. Management have identified areas of concern or inefficiency within their organisation and they require a collaborative relationship with an OD practitioner to determine how to fix things. The Managing Director of Genisis Incorporated has approached and contracted with CC Consultants Ltd to help them identify what areas should receive focus. Meetings were held with key stake holders to develop the contract and outline the scope of work of the project. (Page 75) Phase Two – Diagnosing Diagnosis is the process of understanding a systems current level of functioning and or culture. This is determined through a variety of methods of collecting, analysing data on the organisation. The role of the OD practitioner is to draw conclusions about the reasons for current performance and the potential for change and improvement and guide the stake holders and management on the interpretation of the data. Diagnosis doesn’t mean something is wrong, an organisation, like Genisis can be a market leader and be performing well, but still want to undergo the planned model of change to see what areas they can improve further. In the case study, consultative meetings were held between the OD practitioner and stakeholders, where the Culture Assessment Tool was determined to be the most suitable data gathering tool to use. “The use of questionnaires as a diagnostic tool is one of the most efficient methods because they typically contain fixed response queries about various features of an organisation and these can be administered to a large number of employees simultaneously. The resulting data can also be analysed quickly thus permitting quantitative comparison and evaluation.” (Page 127) Data analysis of the results diagnosed two areas that required focus; poor communication and interpersonal conflict. This identified the direction the organisation and OD practitioner needed to go in with the subsequent phase of the general model of planned change; the planning and implementation phase.