Why OD Programs underperform

Have you ever experienced this – you nominate your team for a crucial development program, but hold back from participating in it yourself?

If so, why did you not participate?

• You truly feel the team needs it but not for yourself

• It's awkward to sit in a program along with your team

• Its below your paygrade to sit through a development program

Once you get past your thinking moment, read on.

Change initiatives are often nail biting experiences for senior leadership teams. Especially if they involves serious behaviour changes for leaders themselves.

As much as leaders understand that changes are needed, it’s a very difficult exercise to imbibe it for themselves.

Resistance to change is a mindset

More often than not, you may find leaders calling out what they would like to see as changes in the organization – process, tools, behaviours to name a few. But if someone asked them to go through a change personally, there is resistance.

If the change is related to technology (new or updates), it is even more challenging. Even modern day leaders miss the bus in terms of a wholistic perspective when it comes to managing the overall changes that might be needed.

A key component of most change initiatives or transformations is a well thought through development program to drive behaviour changes.

• A new IT system may be implemented, but if the user behaviour is not addressed, the IT initiative fails.

• A new process for business flow might fail, if the employees don’t change their ways of working.

• A new quality control process might be seen as an overhead leading to product deficiencies if the purpose behind the measures is not well communicated and understood.

• Many companies struggle with sales tracking, but still their CRM adoption is very poor.

Ironically, even in large tech companies, when internal processes are automated or a new IT platform is implemented, they struggle to get the ROI due to user behaviours not being addressed.  

Some companies have well designed behavioural development programs as part of the change initiatives. These are typically called Organizational Development (OD) programs. 

The intent of these programs is to truly develop the organization by influencing positive behaviour changes.

OD programs are usually successful when the right ecosystem plus enablers is in place.

Here are some critical success factors for an OD Program

Who is attending the program?

Many times, an intended audience is picked who go through the rigmarole of the development. Only to make jokes about the program over water cooler discussions!!

The sponsor or business leader usually sees it below their pay grade to participate in these development programs.

When the sponsor is part of the program, the seriousness of the initiative is better understood by the employees.

The sponsor can chime in during the training and add context to real life business challenges.

They can also influence implementation of the learnings by the employees by following it themselves.

The sponsor and the employees can speak the same language post the program, giving room for healthy exchange of ideas and better change management outcomes.

By participating in the OD program, the Sponsor contributes to:

• Learning enablement

• Mentorship and guidance

• Feedback channels and support for implementation

When “yours truly” attended OD programs in TCS, it was an enriching experience as the entire leadership team was part of the program and took full ownership in driving the changes in their respective teams.

Enable behaviour consistency

The best outcome from any change initiative is realised when the organization behaves consistently.

Therefore, it is very critical to codify the practices that need to be institutionalised.

It is of paramount importance to provide implementable toolkits to participants of any OD program. The toolkits should enable the employees to think analytically, assimilate the context of the training and enable them to apply the learnings.

A well-designed toolkit helps a long way in enabling the change in mindset.

While the OD program creates awareness and enablement of behavioural competencies, the leadership team should find ways to codify the same in addition to providing toolkits.

Here’s an example of how a large data company codified a set of practices to drive a culture of feedback in the organization.

1. They first wanted to create consistency in the process and therefore agreed to constitute monthly feedback meetings for all people managers to share feedback to their teams.

2. All people managers were trained on a proven methodology on how to give feedback.

3. Toolkits were provided to the people managers to start implementing the methodology.

4. An enterprise system was created for all managers and their teams to record the feedback conversations.

5. HR business partners provided all the facilitation needed to ensure the monthly feedback sessions were conducted.

6. Audits were conducted on the enterprise system to validate if everyone was using the system.

7. Additional system specific training was organised to help maximise usage of the system.

8. Feedback loops were setup with employees to collect inputs on what’s working and what could be improved.

Codification is about laying out a process and making sure that process yields results through systems, enablers and constant stakeholder feedback on how the process is helping employees.

The codification also enables governance mechanisms to be put in place on effectiveness of the feedback practices. For e.g. metrics on feedback meetings, surveys on quality of feedback provided, agreement on forward looking actions, etc can be measured and therefore governed by the leadership team.

Codification and associated governance ensures consistency in the behaviours and directly contributes to OD success or feedback to refine the OD program.

Leading the Implementation

Behaviour changes do need a lot of intrinsic motivation on the part of the employee to imbibe the change into their daily ways of working.

The best way to drive intrinsic motivation is to take the lead in applying the learnings.

When the leader applies the learnings and demonstrates it, others tend to follow suit, including peers.

A large IT organisation was embarking on a change to drive higher client centricity into their account management leaders.

When the BU leaders starting using the toolkits and started having conversations with their teams using the terminology of the development program, the retention levels of the concepts and the change adoption itself was significantly higher.

A leader’s authenticity comes through when they lead by example rather than just extolling their teams to go through a change. 

If a change to ways of working are needed, it always starts from the top. Demonstrating that, makes a leader stand out as someone who walks the talk. Remember, in today’s world of brittleness and anxiety, authenticity is in demand!!

In summary:

Organizational Development programs aren’t just HR-driven initiatives; they are strategic levers for business success.

But when leaders treat them as check-the-box exercises, employees follow suit. Participation becomes passive, and the learning fades fast.

You get good ROI from OD programs, when the Sponsor is directly invested in the program, the expected behaviour changes are codified and the teams are able to see their leaders practising the change themselves.

What are you doing to help your OD program delivery results?