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Organizational Development Tools: Current Technology Trends
Beth Kniss, Insala Consultant
Andrew Gebavi offers an excellent historical perspective of Organizational Development and technology in his article “Strategic Partners: Organizational Development and IT.”
Gebavi asserts, “Since the explosion of technologies in the workplace that began in the late 1980s, organizational development and IT functions within organizations have maintained a somewhat strained coexistence – more like oil and water than peanut butter and jelly. Interesting new developments in performance management, learning and collaborative technologies are now bringing the two fields closer together as technology is leveraged to help deliver tightly focused, high-impact OD efforts in support of organizational strategies and goals . . . there is a convergence taking place within HCM and collaborative technologies that supports many of the traditional OD functions, which tend to focus on:
- Open lines of communication
- Organizational growth and alignment
- Maximizing the potential of all of the organization’s members while executing organizational strategy."
Such technology, according to Gebavi, is enabling organizations to:
- Capture accurate inventories of talent within organizations
- Identify gaps between staff needed to execute organizational strategy and current staff
- Create strategies to close talent gaps
- Use standard competencies to define individual skill sets; track skill development
- Track completion of specific learning and development activities linked to the achievement of competencies ensuring the talent/skills inventory is current.
Armed with these technological advancements, OD professionals are increasing their efficiency in implementing strategic goals for their organizations.
Such technological advancements are evidenced in Insala’s Solution Suite. Powerful modules offer:
- Advanced multi-source feedback techniques
- Surveys for leadership effectiveness
- Employee pulse and customer surveys.
Together or individually, such tools ensure the next report of organizational readiness for impending change is accurate and complete.
So, how do OD professionals utilize such technology to position their organizations for the future?
Don Shultz, in his article “The Front Office Challenge: Are You Developing Your Organization for the Future?” (November 2005), offers that organizational “strategy is put into action when process, product, technology, people and structure are accurately aligned to the market place.” He suggests that organizations can best position themselves for the future when they “. . . align product, process, people, technology and structure with customer needs and expectations.” He predicts that the best prepared “organizations will surround core business activities with teams that manage processes and outcomes. These teams will have the training and the tools to accelerate and improve throughout.”
Increasingly technology is the backbone of the tools accelerating changes and improvements throughout organizations worldwide. Insala’s Solution Suite is one such example.
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