Organisation Development is a practice that has been around since the World War II and while many of us have been practicing OD for over 20+ years, we weren’t able to define it. So, we were eagerly anticipating the conversation with Dr. Graham Curtis to explore the origins of OD, what OD is, and solve this mystery called OD. Graham has over 25 years of experience, working in the UK and internationally. He has led global transformation programmes, supporting organisations to deliver more distributed and diverse governance and leadership. He is the Director of Operations at Roffey Park Institute and the right person to guide us as we try to make sense of what we do in our work and begin to demystify OD.
We have been looking at Matt Minahan’s Global OD Competency Framework as a reference point when we talk about what OD is. At each ODA event this year, we focused on one aspect of the framework. We wondered if tonight’s discussion would encompass all of it.
Graham started us off on an active poll by asking us to type what we think OD is, and a fascinating set of responses showed up on the screen with the words “health” and “growth” right in the middle in bold. Graham thought this was really fitting, because they epitomise what we hold in the centre of organisation development – growth and sustainability.
Some of the key points we discussed during the insightful session were:
Map of OD – click to view a bigger version
- OD Foundations
- What is OD?
- What is included and what is not in OD?
- A Map of OD — Graham showed us a very interesting and thought provoking map revealing a world of people and organisation development. Members can click on the thumbnail to see a higher resolution image.
- What confuses us in OD?
Graham allowed us to ask questions throughout the session and contribute to the discussion, and we had a really terrific time exploring and reflecting on OD. Thank you, Graham!
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