In this course you will learn how to develop knowledge and skills necessary for conducting strategic analysis, decision making, and evaluation in complex organizations with particular focus on organizational health and vitality. Students will be introduced to approaches that assist in discerning intentions, roles and foci for Organization Development (OD) and change processes, and in finding a best fit with the practitioner’s style and capabilities.
OD practitioners have focused on supporting the strategic goals of organizations through various interventions that are designed to create alignment between people and strategy, and to improve efficiency and effectiveness in the realization of goals. OD practitioners are often called upon to support changes that arise from marketplace changes, economic conditions and workforce fluctuations. Increasingly, vibrant, healthy organizations prove to be those that have learned to renew themselves while on the way to realizing their strategies and goals. Addressing organizational health and vitality often starts with an understanding of how these elements relate to performance. “Performance” is typically assessed with “hard” measures, such as what an enterprise delivers to stakeholders in financial and operational terms. Other metrics are also employed, such as net operating profit, return on capital employed, total returns to shareholders, net operating costs, and stock values.
This course will help you to expand your repertoire by exploring various frameworks, approaches and practices OD practitioners can use to craft strategic changes related to organizational health and vitality (alignment, execution and renewal). We will build an understanding of the central concept of organizational health and vitality, by exploring a number of concepts that contribute to it.