Organization Development - How to Diagnose Organizations

Have you ever wondered what organizational development practitioners really do during the first weeks when diagnosing an organization. The books all say: Interviews, Observations, Questionnaires, and Unobtrusive Measures. But how can you really create a comprehensive and systemic understanding of an organization, and that all within a few weeks.

This course will provide you with Tools and Methods just as we also apply them when organization diagnosis. You will be able to go out and do semi-structured interviews to gain understanding of the organizational values, the organizational structure, the vision and mission of the organization, or gain knowledge of the day-to-day problems managers and employees face. I will also provide you with the knowledge and tools you need to do structured observations to know more about how supervisors spend their time, analyze the effectiveness of meetings, or also how effective employees organize their daily activities.

You will have the opportunity to learn and try out various types of surveys to gain understanding of the organizational culture, employee values, or leadership styles. There are many more tools and methods you will get to know and be able to apply. Providing structure to the course I used the McKinsey 7S Model, which leads to following design of the course:Section 1 will provide you an overview of the course outline and objective, the McKinsey 7S framework, as well as the context by taking a quick look at Kurt Lewin's change model, and the action research model.

Section 2 shortly presents an overview of the fours main methods used during an organization diagnosis: interviews, observations, questionnaires, and unobtrusive measures. Section 3 is all about Shared Values and will show you how you can take a culture walk, do interviews, use survey tools to gain an understanding of the underlying values. Section 4 is looking at Structures and you will learn on how to analyze an organizations structure, the formal as well as the informal one.