#1 Organisational Development (OD) for Leaders: Introduction and Overview

15 May 2019 | 2 min read

“Organisations must evolve dynamically, be flexible, adapt to market and social developments” etc. But how do you do that? An organisation is a complex system; it does not develop quickly. Of course, you can change the organisational structure and the processes at any time, but that doesn’t mean that culture and people will change.

All organisations are confronted with this question. All top leaders face these challenges. One can almost say that developing your organisation is part of your job description! In my decades of working in and with various organisations I have seen more commonalities than differences in the challenges companies face. From what I observed the main differences were not on the challenge side, they were on the way they handle them. And this, mainly has to do with people and culture.

My hope in this blog series is to put you in touch with the issues that may help you master this task with more grace and success. I will focus the content of this blog on the so called “soft factors” of the organization. They are not only my area of experience and expertise, they are also key success factors to the development of your organisation and the most difficult to grasp.

I will deliberately leave out the description of the more manual tasks of organisational development (such as process modulations, job descriptions, design of an organisational structure, etc.). My aspiration is not to summarise theories, methods, and approaches for you on which there is already sufficient literature. I will focus on the field I know very well: the “soft” side of the organisation. The side of the organisation that has such a strong impact on your business that I really wonder why it has been called “soft” in the first place.

This approach is very personal and I don’t claim to cover it all. I just wanted to share my observations of more than 22 years working with people in and for organisations. In the hope that you can get something out of it.

Here are the topics and the links to the 15 blog articles, you can either read them one after the other or go directly to the topics that catch your attention. Enjoy!

–This content was originally published in German by Haufe Verlag in a book called: “ Der erfolgreiche Manager”. You can read the German version of this Article here.–

You will find more about how I work in my Corporate Coaching side and of course you can contact me directly here! I look forward to talking to you.