Organization Development Interventions refer to various activities which consultant and client organization perform for improving organizational functioning by enabling organization members to better manage their team and organization cultures. French and Well have defined Organization Development interventions as “sets of structured activities in which selected organizational units (target groups or individuals) engage with a task or a sequence of tasks where the task goals are related directly or indirectly to organizational improvement. Interventions constitute the action thrust of organization development; they make things happen and are what is happening.”
Organizational Development Intervention Techniques
Sensitivity Training: Sensitivity training is a small-group interaction under stress in an unstructured encounter group, which requires people to become sensitive to one another’s feelings in order to develop reasonable group activity. In sensitivity training, the actual technique employed is T-group. T-group has several characteristic features:
- The T-group is generally small, from ten to twenty members
- The group begins its activity with no formal agenda
- The primary role of trainer is to call attention of members from time to time lo the ongoing process within the group
- The procedure lends to develop introspection and self-examination, with emotional levels of involvement and behavior.
The objectives of such training are increased openness with others, more concern for others, increased tolerance for individual differences, less ethnic prejudice, understanding of a group process, enhanced listening skills and increased trust and support.
Read More: Sensitivity Training
Process Consultation: Process Consultation (PC) represents a method of intervening in an ongoing system. The basic content of Process Consultation is that the consultant works with individuals and groups to help them learn about human and social processes and learn to solve problems that stem from process events. Process Consultation consists of many interventions and activities which affect the various organizational processes such as. communication, roles and functions of group members, group problem-solving and decision-making, group norms, authority and leadership and inter-group cooperation and conflicts.
Read More: Process Consultation
Team Development: The underlying aim of team development is to increase trust among team members because people work better together when there is open and honest sharing about the problems and difficulties that they have with one another. As such, at the initial level, the attempt should be to develop such an environment where such trust can be developed among the team members.
Read More: Organizational Development through Team Building
Grid Organization Development: Grid organization development, developed by Blake and Mouton, is a comprehensive and systematic OD Program. The Program aims at individuals, groups and the organization as a whole. It utilizes a considerable number of instruments, enabling individuals and groups to assess their own strength and weaknesses. It also focuses on skills, knowledge and processes necessary for effectiveness at the individual, group and inter-group and total organization levels.
Read More: Grid Training
In addition to these people focused interventions, there may be other types of interventions too. e.g. structural and job interventions such as job enlargement, job enrichment, management by objectives, rules, procedures and authority structure.