OpenSourceOD
What is Organization Development?
William Brendel
January 4, 2024
Grounded in behavioral science research, dialogic studies, and global wisdom traditions, Organization Development (OD) is a dynamic field of practice that employs caring and collaborative change frameworks and interventions to generate sustainable, observable improvements in the well-being, performance, and prosperity of human systems.
...a dynamic field of practice
OD is known for its breathtaking diversification of professional titles, competency combinations, change impact areas, and approaches. But how do you know an OD career when you see it? And for that matter, how did OD become so dynamic in the first place? OD is informed by numerous theories including Western humanism and postmodern philosophy, as well as an array of social sciences — most notably, the applied behavioral sciences. More recently, OD has become informed by Eastern philosophies and traditions including the expansion of consciousness through mindfulness and contemplative practices. Our free OD career assessment called The M.O.S.T. (Mastering Organizational & Societal Transformation) demonstrates that there are 16 predominant types of OD positions, and most professionals gravitate toward just one or two. Just like wildflowers, there is always room for variation that branches from these 16 types, however, understanding your OD Career Preference provides a clear frame of reference for developing your unique career development strategy!
...caring and collaborative
An OD practitioner’s first obligation includes care and consideration for the well-being of individuals, teams, organizations, surrounding ecosystems, and themselves. OD practitioners always strive to include diverse perspectives through a wide variety of collaborative models, participatory discovery approaches, consensus-driven decision-making processes, and collective action frameworks. In other words, change is not directed or carried out by the practitioner, but instead, the practitioner utilizes change frameworks and interventions that help organizations spark their own common sources of motivation, collective understanding and consensus, common language, and customized strategies. Each practitioner cares and collaborates through a personal value system shaped by their unique experiences.
...change frameworks and interventions
There are numerous OD frameworks, interventions, and practices. They may include team-based interventions that entail active experimentation with new ways of operating together on an everyday basis. They may also include dialogic methodologies that seek to transform mindsets across large organizations. Additionally, they may seek to improve a system's ability to be agile not only through adaptive design and structure but also by reducing attachment to the status quo through mindfulness- based interventions. Due to the diversity of OD, new change frameworks and interventions seem to emerge on a regular basis. Nonetheless, OD practitioners tend to lean toward approaches that differ, and your M.O.S.T. Career Calling Assessment tells you what your Preferred approach is!
...generating sustainable and flexible improvements
OD provides organizations, communities, and social impact initiatives with a pathway to establish new ways of operating, relating with others, and making sense of systems. However, given that change is a constant feature of organizational life, the changes that do take place must always leave room for additional change. This is done by developing structural and cultural mechanisms that allow for continuous improvement, such as effective feedback systems and psychological safety, which encourage individuals to continue to experiment and learn from mistakes. In addition to flexibility, OD also helps individuals establish a new relationship with change itself! In this way, as OD practitioners help organizations change and build some level of internal capability for continuously adapting in healthy ways long after the OD engagement has taken place.
...to the well-being, performance, and prosperity
The impact of an OD career becomes observable to the degree that people, systems, structures, strategies, leadership, teams, and culture align to produce a wide array of improvements including more humane, adaptive, and effective forms of awareness, learning, and relating. Though well-being, performance, and prosperity are subjective enough to allow for customization, they also make sense on a universal level. Well-being includes physical, psychological, and spiritual safety, ease, and fulfillment. Performance is a wide-ranging term that includes a human system's ability to achieve its stated goals, operate effectively, and adapt to internal and external change in ways that do not produce unintended negative outcomes. Prosperity is also an intentionally broad term as it refers the overall strategic, ethical, and spiritual success of these human systems.
...of human systems.
Whether an OD practitioner works with, in, or between organizations and/or communities, their work focuses on the intersection of humans and systems (a.k.a. sociotechnical systems). This implies a wide variety of contexts for OD work, including individual organizations, loosely coupled systems, trans-organizational systems, communities, nations, and trans-national organizations. Depending on a practitioner's professional strengths and interests, as well as the size and requirements of the human system, the desired approach to influencing these systems can range in complexity.
4 Universal Characteristics of OD Careers include the position's primary impact, identity, approach, and mastery level.
If you've spent any amount of time looking for an OD position online you're already aware that no two OD positions are created equally. In fact, there seems to be no standard template or ideal set of experiences, which can make OD career planning and resume writing feel like one big guessing game.
According to an award winning study published in the OD Review, titled Charting a Meaningful OD Career Path, the solution to this dilemma is much simpler than you might imagine: any OD position can be understood in terms of four universal characteristics: impact, identity, approach, and mastery. Each characteristic tends to have a dominant trait, and the more these traits match your unique strengths and interests, the more likely it is you have discovered a genuine match.
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Impact refers to whether the position more directly benefits organizational or societal health.
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Identity refers to whether the position leans more heavily toward a pure OD role or a hybrid role that includes adjacent job responsibilities like HR, Talent Development, and even IT.
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Approach refers to the primary emphasis taken in relationship to change, such as a more classic approach that involves diagnosis and problem solving or a more innovative approach that involves sensemaking and dialogue.
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Mastery refers to the degree to which a position calls for a wide variety of OD skills and abilities, or more specialized areas of expertise such as Organization Design, Strategic Planning, DE&I, or several other areas of emphasis.
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Explore these characteristics, compare their primary traits, and view examples in well known organizations!
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Organizational Impact OD
Those who prefer Organizational impact experience a greater fulfillment by working on projects related with organizational change, which includes the development of a competitive strategy, employee engagement, business performance, agility, design, ethics, employee wellness, and process efficiency.
Societal Impact OD
On the other hand, those who prefer Societal Outcomes experience greater fulfillment by improving organizations that work on societal issues. Satisfaction is derived from working directly on societal change efforts such as community development, social justice, environmental sustainability, income equality, establishing healthy food sources, and addressing unethical governments.
Identifying your OD Career Calling will open more doors and opportunities than you may realize.
Explore 16 OD Career Callings
When it comes to Impact, Identity, Approach, and Mastery, knowing your unique preferences not only helps you determine whether an OD job is right for you, it also provides a more simple, inspiring, and effective path to finding jobs that match your unique strengths and interests.
Whether you are a Societal Gamechanger, and Agile Accelerator, or a Renaissance Consultant, your unique combination of preferences gives you direct insight regarding where to look for jobs, which search terms to use, which competencies to focus on, the types of professional associations you'll love, things you'll want to emphasize on your resume (or if you are a consultant, on your website!), the tools and frameworks you'll enjoy, and the types of communities you'll feel most at home with
Your journey with OpenSourceOD begins with understanding your unique career preference. With this knowledge, we'll help you unlock these doors and make meaningful career connections with OD Exchange (coming soon), learn tools and frameworks that advance your career with ChangeMaker+ (coming soon), and concentrate your areas of reflective practice in Immersive Learning Circles.
Achievement Ace
OD Career Path Snapshot
Effective, reliable, and flexible, are all marks of an Achievement Ace. Their broad mastery of OD skills gives them the ability to adapt and seamlessly address innumerable problems an organization may be facing. They are often viewed as a client's "fixer", brought in periodically to methodically help improve organizational performance. The technical dimensions of their craft are just as important as their social ability to invite and provide constructive feedback. Their skill versatility also allows them to identify organizational pressure points, remove obstacles, and locate unobstructed paths to success.
Their strengths are many, but perhaps there is none greater than their heightened situational (and self) awareness. Even amid adversity, which all change agents face from time to time, they remain unflinching, and selflessly dedicated to the mission. By intentionally modeling these virtues, Achievement Aces often motivate their clients to seek career paths in OD, as they begin to express just as much curiosity in OD as they do in their own organization.
"Winning companies win because they have good leaders who nurture the development of other leaders at all levels of the organization.” ~ Noel Tichy
Agile Accelerator
OD Career Path Snapshot
Business leaders love Agile Accelerators because they always have continuous improvement, rapid problem solving, and real-time strategic planning on their mind. Agile Accelerators are likely to enjoy formally assessing the current state of agility in their (or their client’s) organization using validated survey measures, engaging in dialogue around a desirable future state, and outlining a set of processes for bridging the agility gap.
Increasing the efficiency, agility, and effectiveness of organizations will be even more enjoyable when their toolbelt is full of straightforward, reliable, and accurate solutions that help their client or organization define the problem, implement solutions, and capture key performance indicators.
“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one more responsive to change.” ~ Charles Darwin
Altruistic Enhancer
OD Career Path Snapshot
Altruistic Enhancers enjoy helping people who are treated unfairly due to economic disparity, race, disability, or gender identity (to name just a few). Their natural strengths enable them to effectively lead community development efforts that seek to improve a wide variety of outcomes including high quality education, employment opportunities, technology accessibility, and healthy food sources.
Altruistic enhancers are adept at diagnosing systemic issues and tackling problems with just a few very effective interventions. They take great care to learn from setbacks, measure success, and communicate positive outcomes.
“The crisis of our time isn’t just a crisis of a single leader, organization, country, or conflict. The crisis of our time reveals the dying of an old social structure and way of thinking, an old way of institutionalizing and enacting collective social forms."
~ Otto Scharmer
Benevolent Barista
OD Career Path Snapshot
Like a friendly neighborhood coffee shop offering a wide variety of choices, Benevolent Baristas quickly become their client’s favorite due to their broad mastery of OD skills and abilities. Benevolent Baristas often feel a great sense of satisfaction in finding the right change solution at just the right time, through meticulous diagnosis of their client's need for change.
Benevolent Baristas are also likely to cherish the step-by-step approach to various change interventions that create a sense of well-being while also enabling those they serve to effectively carry out their mission to society. Whether they serve as an internal or external OD consultant, there are many potential clients that fit this critical Career Calling. These include organizations who do work that impacts K-12 education, environmental conservation, government services, social enterprise, charity organizations, as well as Non-Profit organizations, NGOs, and community service and development organizations.
"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." ~ Alan W. Watts
Big Picture Fixer
OD Career Path Snapshot
Throughout history, sages have suggested that the world's problems are connected through a web of causes and effects. Big Picture Fixers have just the right blend of abilities to help others see and address the health of their systems through methodical, data-driven, interventions. They feel most alive when balancing genuine compassion and applying a direct, step-by-step approach to pinpoint and resolve societal problems.
“There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” ~ Margaret Wheatley
Change Surgeon
OD Career Path Snapshot
The mark of a Change Surgeon is their ability to diagnose the root cause of an organizational issue that is impacting the health of the entire system. For this reason, Change Surgeons find the greatest enjoyment in helping clients carefully, compassionately, and reliably assess underlying issues impacting their performance. However, unlike a general physician, they seem to be fit to develop a specific area of OD expertise including tools that help clients address what is ailing them.
Change Surgeons often craft their area of expertise further by focusing on a specific system of the organization, much like a body. The skeletal system (organizational structure), the cardiovascular system (sustainability), the nervous system (strategic coordination and vibrancy), the digestive track (mergers, new leaders, unplanned change), the respiratory system (endurance), as well as physiological functions that eliminate waste (process improvement), and so on.
"The ultimate test of practical leadership is the realization of intended, real change that meets people's enduring needs.”
~ James MacGregor Burns
Citizen Transformer
OD Career Path Snapshot
The Citizen Transformer is always on the lookout for opportunities to address societal problems in measurable and directly observable ways. As tried-and-true OD practitioners, Citizen Transformers are likely to feel satisfied with applying a few key OD approaches that boost the mission of their clients.
They may choose to consult to a wide variety of organizations, including K-12 education, environmental conservation, government services, social enterprise and charity organizations, as well as Non-Profit organizations, NGOs, and community service and development organizations. Citizen Transformers are also likely to enjoy the process of diagnosing their client's needs, identifying solutions, and helping them lead and manage the change they are desperate for.
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
~ Margaret Mead
Compassioneer
OD Career Path Snapshot
Compassioneers are the perfect OD professionals for organizations that seek a blend of wisdom capable of transforming their service. They often find joy in assisting organizations involved in K-12 education, charity, conservation, and community development. This is a growing body of work and as more OD professionals enter the field, the more renowned the application of OD is becoming. As OD practitioners, Compassioneers are not forced to master all aspects an interventions under the OD umbrella. In fact, they often find happiness in deepening their current subject matter expertise in a few key areas and applications.
One of the most important skills and abilities a Compassioneer has at their disposal, involves creating conditions for dialogue that opens minds, possibilities, and paths for positive change. They view their clients as meaning-making systems, and focus efforts to expand these abilities by increasing psychological safety, inclusion, critical reflection, and stimulating discussion topics and questions.
"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself." ~ Rumi
Consciousness Raiser
OD Career Path Snapshot
Consciousness Raisers feel most alive when helping others expand their worldviews, increase their hope, and broaden their sense of empowerment. Even coaching just one person in this way can leave a Consciousness Raiser feeling fulfilled and whole. They neither require, nor become attached to formal OD titles. In fact, their broad OD mastery opens many doors, including leadership and learning positions that benefit society in contexts like education, charity, conservation, and community development.
Being familiar with multiple OD interventions also provides Consciousness Raisers with flexibility necessary to differentiate their approach based on the unique needs of their constituents. Though they are not reliant upon or limited to any single OD approach, the thread that runs through their work includes skillfully expanding a community's ability to make sense of its problems and opportunities.
“No problem can be solved from the same consciousness that created it.” ~ Albert Einstein
Creative Amplifier
OD Career Path Snapshot
One of the greatest joys a Creative Amplifier is likely to find, is the multiplier effect they have on the inherent genius in those they serve. No matter what job title they hold, Creative Amplifiers feel most energized by asking just the right question at just the right time, to stimulate rich, strategic, and transformative conversations. The profound consequences of their work often live on beyond your direct involvement. These include more vibrant, creative, and effective organizations.
The indirect benefits of this creative capacity include multifaceted discoveries that are very difficult to quantify. And even they had time to do so, Creative Amplifiers are more likely to experience the magic of their work "in" the process of facilitating discovery, rather than as a consequence of it. For that reason, they draw upon a broad mastery of knowledge skills and abilities, including those that are not traditionally associated with the field of Organization Development.
“Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
Groundbreaker
OD Career Path Snapshot
For Groundbreakers, meaningful careers entail helping others make sense of their work and identity opportunities in genuinely reflective ways. By facilitating safe and consistent dialogue, inviting divergent perspectives, and helping others maintain an open mind, Groundbreakers ignite both the performance and esprit de corps of their client organization. They enjoy helping leaders, teams, and organizations hold a mirror up to themselves, and make sense of their assumptions.
Groundbreakers also experience satisfaction in helping these same individuals look out onto the strategic horizon, and let go of their biases (even if just temporarily), to imagine a future that redefines achievement. Through all these interactions with clients, Groundbreakers ultimately help clients attract and retain top talent who contribute to a healthy organizational culture and increased performance.
“Possibility is not a luxury; it is as crucial as bread." ~Judith Butler
Humanity Hawk
OD Career Path Snapshot
Humanity Hawks bring numerous gifts to clients who wish to serve the betterment of society. Some of their greatest gifts include their long-term vision and strategic precision. Using classic diagnostic approaches to change, Humanity Hawks feel a great sense of satisfaction when pinpointing problems and capturing opportunities that their client is struggling with. Rather than mastering a wide variety of OD skills and abilities they are likely to enjoy deepening a client's abilities in just a few essential areas that make them better at achieving specific aims.
They can also rise above the traditional OD career title and can serve a wide variety of roles including talent development, training, and coaching. A Humanity Hawk's vision also allows them to see multiple opportunities for employment, in organizations that work to improve K-12 education, environmental conservation, government services, social enterprise and charity organizations, as well as Non-Profit organizations, NGOs, and community service and development organizations.
“If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Innovation Maven
OD Career Path Snapshot
Innovation Mavens find great satisfaction in helping organizations create significant improvements in value for their employees and clients. Their source of excitement is less likely to come from a title that refers to them as an "OD Professional", or a prescribed approach to change, and more likely to arise when they are helping clients "color outside the lines." This type of a career becomes a calling the moment an Innovation Maven becomes engaged in helping employees supercharge their collective creative capacity.
Innovation Mavens often take the view that the life of an organization is constantly emerging, evolving through cycles of imagination, conversation, and reflection. They often enjoy deep expertise in just a few techniques for facilitating dialogue, discovery, and meaningful collaboration. These techniques are designed to cultivate a safe and productive space for dialogue, which gives rise to discoveries that directly impact the bottom line - not through changed behaviors, but through new worldviews.
"And the day came when the risk to stay tight in a bud was greater than the risk to blossom."
~ Anais Nin
Renaissance Consultant
OD Career Path Snapshot
The "Leonardo Davincci's of OD", Renaissance Consultants thrive by learning, creating, and experimenting with a wide variety of transformative OD methodologies. Their client engagements are never a paint-by-number affair, but instead, masterpieces in the making. For Renaissance Consultants, each client is a canvas that may be used to help employees draw and connect insights that eventually emerge as genuinely transformative strategies. Organizations have been thrust into a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) playing field, which calls for the kind of innovative solutions that defy our current understanding of the problem.
Renaissance Consultants understand that the acceleration of these pressures compels organizations not only to evolve but also to create revolutionary leaps in the market value of their goods and services. This requires an almost unthinkable level of organizational dexterity, with which leaders must balance an increasingly mindful and futurist outlook with ‘on the spot’ innovation.
"Understanding the things that surround us is the best preparation to understand the things that lie beyond." ~ Hypatia
Societal Gamechanger
OD Career Path Snapshot
"We've tried everything!" These are words you'll hear from your OD clients who are struggling to effectively address societal challenges or scale their ability to help constituents. Societal Gamechangers are precisely the type of practitioners that are needed, as they take a highly consultative approach. They come alive through work that entails sensing and helping others understand challenges and opportunities through brand new conceptual frameworks. Societal Gamechangers often accomplish this through a broad range of OD applications that focus on improving the quality and outcomes of strategic dialogue. Societal Gamechangers also find joy in keeping their eyes open for new ways to include and elevate the perspectives of stakeholders who are often forgotten or traditionally marginalized.
“What we cannot imagine cannot come into being.” ~ bell hooks
Stealth Improver
OD Career Path Snapshot
No matter what role they play, Stealth Improvers always look to have a profound impact on the health and functioning of the team and organization they are part of. The difference is that they remain humble and call little attention to themselves as they deploy reliable, step-by-step methods of identifying and resolving organizational issues.
Stealth Improvers often master just a few very effective methodologies, which improve the health and performance of organizations and can seamlessly weave them into an employee's everyday work - from running meetings, to coaching peers, providing instruction, and facilitating difficult conversations.
Collaboration is vital to sustain what we call profound or really deep change, because without it, organizations are just overwhelmed by the forces of the status quo." ~ Peter Senge