Organisation Development Australia (ODA), incorporated in 1999, is Australia’s longest standing not-for-profit, professional association in the field of organisation development. We foster a welcoming environment to give you the opportunity to share experiences and grow through the richness of interactions with like-minded colleagues.
Our Values
ODA is all about connect, share and grow.
Connect: we foster genuine relationships through participating and cultivating genuine networking.
Share: we are open and generous in time, spirit and know-how.
Grow: we are willing to ask questions, to not know, and benefit from the experience of others, to enhance our own as well as the collective wisdom of the OD community.
What we do
ODA brings people together to connect, share and grow through a vibrant mix of learning experiences and a strong, inclusive community. We actively contribute to the development of humane and effective workplaces by supporting OD professionals at all stages of their practice.
We host regular online events where members engage with contemporary OD thinking, exchange ideas, and learn collaboratively in a safe and supportive space. These sessions reflect our belief in openness, generosity of spirit, and the power of shared learning within a like‑minded community.
Each year, we also bring our community together at our annual in‑person conference, a flagship gathering designed to deepen relationships, explore emerging OD practices, and energise practitioners through rich conversations and shared experiences.
At ODA, we celebrate the diversity of our members — practitioners who are passionate about learning, improvement and results at individual, team and organisational levels. We offer a welcoming, relationship‑driven environment that encourages questions, curiosity, and growth, benefiting both individuals and the broader Australian OD community.
Together, through our events and our community culture, we bring the best of organisation development thinking, practice and practitioners into a connected professional home.
Our Origins
By Di Percy (one of our founders), 28 January 2010
Organisation Development Australia (ODA) had its beginnings in 1997. At that time, there was no longer a professional organisation for OD practitioners and consultants that provided collegiate action learning and personal development. In the past, the Australian Institute of Human Relations (AIHR) filled this role, led by Plum Gerrard and a team of Trainers, from the late 1960’s into the 1980’s. AIHR was based in the approaches of the T-Group, Encounter Group and Gestalt Therapy. Over time, members of AIHR split off to form or join the Australian Institute of Socio-Analysis (AISA) led by Alistair Bain, which provided a disciplined theoretical approach to organisations from an analytical frame.
Two Melbourne post graduate academic programs, unique in Australia, operated with their origins in the 1970s. The first was the RMIT organisation psychology diploma in the School of Business, developed by psychologist and senior trainer in AIHR, Syd Forsey. The other university OD program was run from the Swinburne Business School from 1980’s with links to AISA and Tavistock through Susan Long and others.
ODA Founder, Di Percy, was a member of AIHR, trained and taught Gestalt Therapy, was a graduate and adjunct lecturer in the RMIT OD program and an OD practitioner. Together with five interested graduates from the RMIT program – Paul Cooper, Gary Baldwin, Chris Curnow, Donna *, Jeremy Cattell – they started to formulate a professional development community and became ODA’s first Leadership Group.
The inaugural meeting of ODA was held at Southbank in Melbourne in 1998 without any promotion except invitation by word of mouth. The large response indicated the need for such a learning community with over 70 internal and external OD consultants attending.
For the first few years monthly meetings were held for members in the premises of another RMIT program, the Masters of Innovation and Service Management. In between meetings, the Leadership Group set about adopting a legal structure for ODA and designing an experiential learning framework for meetings. Di Percy was elected President for the first two terms of office; the second President was Gary Baldwin; followed by Glenda Hutchinson.
The elements that ODA was designed on were collegiate action learning and personal development, studying its own group dynamics, introducing new and established techniques to members such as open space technology and consultant-client role plays to explore and enhance individual OD assignments. The aspiration was to create a rich OD experience catering for a variety of different personal learning styles.