The Impact of Organizational Development (OD) in the Improvement Process

The significance of Organizational Development is often underestimated when planning a turnaround or significant improvements, yet it represents the single most important parameter when considering the sustainability of any changes that may have been put in place during the process. OD is the main tool to develop and manifest an organization's culture and it is the culture of the organization that sustains how the organization executes, embraces change, manages customer focus, creates new value and integrates new team members.

The culture of an organization is also one of the cornerstones for the "Long-Term Objectives" ("Long-Term Objectives" in Strategy Formulation, The New Corporate Strategy, H. Igor Ansoff, page 39) of a turnaround or improvement strategy.

Value-chain approach to understanding the Customer Concept
The concept of the "Value Chain" has been created by Michael E. Porter ("The Value Chain and Competitive Advantage" , Competitive Advantage, Michael E. Porter, page 33) and has become an accepted basic element of business thinking and business science alike.

Habitually, organizations are led towards focusing on the customer, the external customer, and significant resources, time, and emotional engagement is invested to achieve "best in class" customer focus. The author considers the sustainable external customer focus resulting into customer satisfaction and more importantly customer loyalty to be a result only of how an organization manages customer focus and customer satisfaction throughout the internal value chain of the company. An organization will reflect external customer focus in a sustainable fashion to the same degree as it manages to generate respect and excellence in execution of its internal customer/supplier relationships.

To initiate the required change and stimulate better understanding of the meaning of true customer satisfaction the author has successfully utilized the following experiment and exercise in several occasions of organizational development.

A project was launched which was labeled "How to make our customers into raving fans!" The number of participants of the project have in every occasion been limited to 24 people from different hierarchy levels and departments of the organization covering the steps along the value chain. At the kick-off a short 5-10 minute presentation was given to define the purpose of the project and a book with the title "Raving Fans" ( Raving Fans, Ken Blanchard & Sheldon Bowles) was given to every participant. The homework for the first step was to read the book within the next 15 days. At the second meeting the book was discussed and a list of relevant examples of customer satisfaction relevant to the organizations products and services had been developed. Thereafter, the customer supplier relationship along the internal value chain between departments and operational steps had been discussed in generic terms. The list was published for the whole organization to see. At the end of the second meeting a simple form was handed to every participant with the request to individually complete the same within 24 hours without sharing it with anyone else. The forms set the respective individual into the centre and required to define his/her internal and external customers and suppliers in the four quadrants around (a copy of the form can be obtained by E-mail from mgollent@qli-international.com). Obviously, not everyone in the internal value chain may have an external customer or supplier but certainly everyone has those relationships internally. The completed forms were collected after 24 hours and a short meeting was conducted a day later.

24 copies of all completed forms were prepared, bundled and redistributed to the participants at the third meeting with the encouragement to check if those that one individual may have considered as an internal supplier had also considered that particular individual as a customer. The simple exercise always creates quite a surprise experience for many in the room as the necessary relationships were either not existing or not functioning - or both. The homework from the third meeting is then to mutually evaluate the relationship gaps, the reasons behind them and how to create solid long term bridges with the goal to establish well functioning customer /supplier relationships within the whole internal value chain.

The fourth meeting in the project is used to discuss the findings of the evaluations and practice sharing as to how to bridge the gaps permanently and sustain the relationships. Finally, teams of up to six individuals are formed with careful consideration to have good departmental, hierarchical and functional mix in each team. The last assignment of the project is for each team to chose one internal departmental customer/ supplier relationship and come up with a presentation or sketch as to what would have to happen to make a raving fan in this relationship and the best presentation is awarded a tangible prize.

In the end the teams usually chose to make their presentations in form of sketches which is always entertaining for everyone involved and humorous. On every occasion the process became an experience of fun and camaraderie which aside of the substantive learning created a strong sense of team spirit and cooperation. Interestingly, in four of the last five projects of this kind the team that won the prize spent the money in turn on inviting the whole group to some activity (pizza party, baseball game, etc) generating even more relationship building.

The long-term value of such a project is generally extraordinary, with tangible results as well as culture building. The organizational customer service attitude typically exceeds the expectations set out at the start of the project and creates lasting improvement with tangible results.

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