#OD – Nothing but pragmatic 

It was the CIPD OD Conference yesterday so I got to hang about with some OD types and talk. If you don’t know what OD is then I’m going to let you Google that all by yourself and then once you come up out of the rabbit hole with a big grin in two years we can chat. 

There were a few thoughts I had on the day….

Organisational Development vs L&D was one of the discussions –  as though it was a West Side Story ‘Jets and Sharks’ situation in some organisations. An interesting discussion was where L&D became ‘strategic L&D’ and then OD. My view is they are all needed – and that continuum, if it is one, shouldn’t be viewed as a hierarchy. If your OD and L&D teams can’t find a way to work productively then I’d suggest (brutally but honestly) that they aren’t yet equipped to start talking to anyone else about improvement. Physician – heal thyself… There is an interdependency between OD and learning that means you are fighting yourself if you aren’t able to find common purpose. 

About that common  purpose… One delegate basically suggested that people come to work for money so this ‘shared purpose’ stuff is basically HR and leadership nonsense. Firstly – I respect them saying it out loud and there is some truth in that. Secondly – my belief is that just because people have to come to work for the money doesn’t mean we can’t provide them with more. It doesn’t mean they can’t be helped to find purpose, friendship and satisfaction in work. We still have control there. 

Finally… Pragmatism. OD and L&D are, for me, relentlessly pragmatic disciplines. If you aren’t making a difference then your thinking is worth absolutely nothing. You are the input, you are the catalyst for the output. There are no points available for the ideas that didn’t happen. There is no shareholder, customer or organisational benefit to you navel gazing. Quality thinking only effectively manifests when it becomes action. Or in the words of Mee-Yan Cheung Judge ‘the best theory is that which works in practice’. 

My commitment to this can make me seem an impatient OD practitioner – less reflective and more impulsive than others. That’s probably true – I bring impatience for performance with me. But I figure I’ve always been paid to make a difference and that involves decisions and action. So create thinking environments by all means – but then translate those thoughts into action. 

That’s what OD is… It’s development, not thinking about development. Go do stuff.