Marketing Organization Development

A How-To Guide for OD Consultants

William J Rothwell, Jong Gyu Park, Jae Young Lee

• Publisher: Productivity Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315311715
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consulting
• Index: Business

Organizational Development (OD) consultants often face dilemmas when they market their services because there is a gap between clients' expectation and the actual role of OD consultants. This book is about how to overcome that dilemma by finding effective marketing strategies for a different approach to consulting.

Marketing Organization Development: A How-To Guide for OD Consultants focuses on the challenges faced by internal and external consultants in marketing and selling their services. By distinguishing between performance consulting and Organization Development (OD) consulting, this book demonstrates why marketing and selling OD consulting services are unique. This book meets not only unique OD consultants' needs by reflecting the philosophical background of OD and unique marketing challenges but the needs of Human Resource Development (HRD) managers' need who are interested in promoting or selling their change interventions within their organizations.

This comprehensive book:

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• Reviews important terms and popular tools used in the marketing process and outlines the many roles a consultant must fill to obtain and keep the business (i.e., marketer, salesperson, brand manager, account management).Describes the criteria for self-evaluation as an OD consultant. It examines how to identify your strengths and the competencies you need to develop based on OD competencies.

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• Provides an introduction to actionable steps and resources for organization development, change management, and performance management consultants to evaluate unmet needs and opportunities through a niche market for consulting services.

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• Covers how to communicate value to your target customers and how to brand your service.

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• Describes various channels of OD marketing such as viral, word of mouth, and social media marketing..

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• Reviews selling tactics for l your consulting service and discusses the importance of having a defined sales process to which you adhere.

1 Unique Challenges in Marketing Change Management, Performance Consulting, and Organization Development

William J. Rothwell

What Is Change Management?

What Is Performance Consulting?

What Is OD?

What Do Change Management, Performance Consulting, and OD Share in Common?

Why Is Marketing Important to Change Management, Performance Consulting, and OD?

Summary

References

What is change management? What is performance consulting? What is organization development (OD)? What do these fields share in common? What does marketing these three types of consulting services share in common? Why is marketing important for all of them? This introductory chapter answers these fundamental questions.

What Is Change Management?

It is worth stating at the outset of any discussion on change management that experts do not agree among themselves on definitions, conceptual frameworks, or other characteristics of change management.

But for this chapter, let’s accept the definition of change management used by the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP). They say it is “a deliberate set of activities that facilitate and support the success of individual and organizational change and the realization of its intended business results” (see http://www.acmpglobal.org/?page=WhatisCM). It is worthy of note that the ACMP has published organizational standards to guide effective organizational change efforts (see http://www.acmpglobal.org/?TheStandard).

Many change management professionals are steeped in project management approaches. They emphasize those. While there is nothing wrong with doing that, and it leads to well-organized change efforts in organizational settings, the real question amounts to this: in a change effort, what is more important—the project plan or the people going through the change? For some in the change management field, the project plan takes priority. People—their feelings, beliefs, values, and aspirations—are secondary.

Change management is often driven by models that simplify project planning. Many such models are well known. An example of such a model is John Kotter’s model, which lists the desirable stages in change management. The stages in the most recent version of the model, as described on Kotter’s website at http://www.kotterinternational.com/the-8-step-process-for-leading-change/, are to

• Create a sense of urgency
• Build a guiding coalition
• Form a strategic vision and initiatives
• Enlist a volunteer army
• Enable action by removing barriers
• Generate short-term wins
• Sustain acceleration
• Institute change

Note that this is a generic model, suitable for driving any change effort. It does not matter if the change focuses on a new product launch, a new employee benefit program, a new software program implementation, or some other change. These general steps can drive a more detailed, task-focused project plan.

Kotter’s model is based on research of successful change efforts. Even if it is not accepted and some other is used, Kotter’s steps provide useful criteria against which to judge the effectiveness of a change effort. If the issues covered in Kotter’s model are addressed by some other model, then it is more likely to be aligned with the success factors shared by many organizational change efforts across many industries and national cultures.

Many other well-known change models exist. Many such models are described on this website: http://www.change-management-coach.com/change-management-models.html.

What Is Performance Consulting?

Performance consulting goes by many names. Some call it human performance technology; some call it human performance improvement; some call it human performance engineering; and some call it human performance enhancement. Despite these many names, the approach applies a systematic, problem-solving approach to addressing human productivity problems.

Performance is understood to mean work results (outputs) and the behaviors associated with getting the results. Other elements can be added to this common understanding of performance. For instance, it may be possible to add values (a continuum ranging from what the people of the organization regard as important to not important) and ethics (a continuum ranging from what people of the organization regard as right and wrong).

Performance consulting is associated with systematically analyzing problems with human productivity and finding the best, most cost-effective and ethically justifiable solutions to those problems. It is sometimes confused with performance management, which is helping people achieve results in organizational settings. In recent years, performance consulting has also focused on finding organizational and individual strengths (and solving problems with human beings in organizational contexts) and leveraging those strengths to competitive advantage.

Performance consultants often—but we cannot say “always”—approach problems with human productivity in the same way as medical doctors diagnose illnesses with the human body (see Rothwell, 2000, 2015b; Rothwell, Benscoter, Zaballero, Park, Kim, & Kim, 2014; Rothwell, Hohne & King, 2007).

Medical doctors are trained on an approach to diagnosis, and they apply it when confronted by a patient complaining about signs and symptoms of health problems. (A sign is a visible expression of a problem; a symptom results from the underlying root cause of the problem.) Physicians confronted by patients with health problems will usually begin by asking questions to gather background information. They will then move on to physical examinations to be clear on exactly what part(s) of the human anatomy are affected. They will move beyond physical examinations to more intrusive examinations that may require x-rays, magnetic resonance imaging, blood tests, and other such tests. The whole point of medical diagnosis is to eliminate alternative explanations of root causes. Then and only then can physicians prescribe medicine or recommend therapy. To do otherwise is to be guilty of malpractice.

Performance consultants often follow a similar approach. They know that, when confronted with problems with human productivity, managers have not been trained on systematic approaches to diagnose those problems. They will jump to conclusions about what to do—or about what causes the problem. Managers will also confuse signs and symptoms with root causes.

Consider a simple example. A manager has a worker not performing her job effectively. The manager visits the human resource (HR) department, asking for help. The manager may jump to many conclusions. For instance, the manager may assume the employee is lazy, needs training, or needs something else. The manager may then jump from assumptions about causes to solutions. HR managers know that when managers reach their wit’s ends with employee problems, they will often go to HR and request training. But training is rarely the correct solution. Training will solve only problems that are caused by lack of knowledge, skill, or attitude. If the performance problem is caused by anything else—such as lack of correct supervision, lack of equipment, lack of feedback, or lack of hundreds or even thousands of other root causes—then training is not the correct, or most cost-effective, solution. The most cost-effective solutions can only be determined when the root cause(s) have been narrowed down.

Many models have been described to guide performance consulting. Some are situation-specific models intended to be used in a certain situation (such as a request for training); some are comprehensive models intended to compare the organization against a more desirable profile (such as Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, or Balridge criteria) or management preferences (such as a vision of a desired future).

Rothwell (2015a) describes a model that can be used both to guide problem solving in situations and comprehensively for troubleshooting problems with individuals, teams, departments, divisions, organizations, industries, communities, or nations. The steps of the model are simple. They require posing, and answering, simple yet profound questions:

1. What is the current situation...

Table of contents

• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgment
• Editors
• Contributors
• Advance Organizer
• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3
• Chapter 4
• Chapter 5
• Chapter 6
• Chapter 7
• Chapter 8
• Chapter 9
• Chapter 10
• Chapter 11
• Chapter 12
• Index