One would think that when engaged in Organizational Development the OD consultant would encounter much resistance to change.  Those stakeholders each having their own priorities would support an environment where there is much conscious or sub-conscious sabotage to what the consultant is attempting to accomplish.  In reality, if the developer understands the stages that an organization can go through and know how to leverage the concept of enrollment, everyone involved  would be much more cooperative, allowing the aims of management and the OD Consultant to be attained.  I have relied heavily on the book, Tribal Leadership  by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fisher Wright available from Amazon.com
 
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Introduction

 There is an old joke, how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The punch line is, only one, but the light bulb has to really WANT to change.  This joke can be extrapolated over to Organizational Development, The organization really has to want to change and since an organization is made up of people it is the people in the organization who must really want to change. Much to the chagrin of the OD Consultant, this is rarely an easy task; each stakeholder in the organization has their own interest and that is what they are looking out for.  In addition we as human beings are resistant to change.

         
In November, 2008, at the cusp of the greatest financial crises in seventy years, Barrack H. Obama was elected President of the United States promising change.  His party also made significant gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.  Despite this, every change he is attempting to make is being fought.  Is this just because the Republican’s are The Party of No and want to defeat Mr. Obama for their selfish interests?  Remember that until Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts in Jan 2010, the Republicans didn’t have much say yet despite the fact that the Democrats were 100% in control; President Obama was still having difficulty getting his reforms through the Congress.  There had to be something more going on than just party politics.  The difficulties that President Obama is having are difficulties that all executives face when attempting to implement corporate change.

Organizational Culture and Tribal Leadership

In their book, Tribal Leadership, Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Authors Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fisher-Wright discuss organizations as being made up of tribes, each tribe, a group of 20 to 150 group members (Logan, King & Fischer-Wright, 2008) Each tribe goes through stages which are to a tribe as the Maslow hierarchies are to individuals (Kohnen, J, 2009). The tribal stages are  as follows (Logan et al, 2008, p25)

             

For organizational development to take place, the organizational developer must find out what stage of development the company is in and bring the company up to stage 4.  Until the fourth stage of development you can try any method of Organizational Development you want whether it be Lewin, Action Research, Positive Model or even the Donald Trump Your Fired method and none of it will work; it would be like asking someone who is low on the Maslow scale and concerned about where he is getting his next meal to be concerned with Global Warning.   Having a business with a stage 4 culture is also only the first step.  The stake holders still need to be sold on the plan that the OD Consultant has developed.  A stage 4 culture is only the first step which will ensure that stake holders are not subconsciously sabotaging the situation.

Enrollment

The OD Consultant is in a company with a stage 4 culture and has made the diagnosis as to how to change the company.  What comes next is enrollment, in other words the stakeholders must be inspired into action.  If the OD Consultant or manager were to tell the employees, “Follow this plan or you will be fired,” the company will have fallin back to stage 3 or below as the manager would essentially be saying, “Follow this plan because you all suck and I am better than you.”   We have established that a tribal culture must be in stage 4 so if you lower it to stage 3, Organizational Development will not work.  The consultant and management must find other ways to motivate the tribe.  One way to do this is to use one of the tried in true methods of Organizational Development such as the Lewin, Action Research or Positive models (Cummings & Worley, 2008).  These are researched, tried and true methods and using one of those does not make it look like the OD specialist just pulled something out of his or her hat!  The organization thus will know that the actions being taken was stuff that was researched and that there is a good probability that if they are taken, the organization will get the results that the changes are designed to achieved.

It is also a good idea to have a staff meeting to allow the staff to communicate their concerns with the plan and to listen to the plan.  This is primarily designed to get the concerns out into the open and dealt with.  Also, these plans are living documents, nothing about them is written in stone.  By discussing and brainstorming some good ideas could come forth to the surface which would add to the plan.  The plan must also be monitored and the staff kept in the loop so it can be fine tuned when things move off course or there is some unexpected external factor (such as the events of September 11^th 2001)

 Conclusion

So how do you make the light bulb want to change?  First, you must bring the culture of the organization up to stage 4, per Tribal Leadership.  This way the stakeholders are all on the same page with the attitude that We are Great (Logan et al, 2008).  By dealing with a stage 4 culture the OD consultant avoids the petty politics that are the norm of the I am great culture. Then the consultants i sell the tribes on the idea by inspiring and involving them so that they see that we can be even greater.

Again, the book, Tribal Leadership is available from Amazon.com  
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References

Andy Adcroft, Robert Willis, & Jeff Hurst. (2008). A new model for managing change: the holistic view. The Journal of Business Strategy, 29(1), 40-45.  Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1443668601).

            Cummings & Worley( 2008) Organizational development and change Mason, OH Cengage

Kohnen, J.. (2009). Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization  The Quality Management Journal, 16(2), 61-62.  Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1681059681).

Logan, King & Fisher-Wright (2008) Tribal leadership, Leveraging natural groups to build a thriving organization New York, HarperCollins