Living O.D. Framework
Organisation Development is a living body of knowledge and practice grounded by behavioural science, aimed at enhancing the human experience of work and organisational health through improving its strategy, structure, workplace culture, practices and processes. The goal of O.D. is to create forward-looking, purposeful and people-centered organisations worthy of people’s commitment.
Sequoia’s Living O.D. framework provides a map for helping transform organisations into places worthy of stakeholders commitment. It distills over two decades of consulting practice into a menu of change theories, methods and tools aimed centrally at enabling organisations in their O.D. efforts. We take a journey and partnership perspective in our work with clients, with the goal of leaving them stronger and more sustainable in the longer-term. This approach sees organisations as living systems and supports the wellbeing of the system from the inside out.
© Sequoia‘s Living O.D. Framework
Sequoia works in partnership with client organisations in service of their missions and purposes. We have also developed OCTAVE – a tool for applying the framework strategically for each organisation.
We aim to deliver the triple outcomes of:
- Enhancing performance
- Deepening engagement and relationships
- Enabling organisational learning
In contrast to the Diagnostic O.D., expert-led or “outside-in” approach, Sequoia adopts an “inside-out”, invitational approach based on the principles of organisations as free-to-will and meaning-seeking living, entities with infinite regenerative potential.
© Sequoia‘s Living O.D. Approach
At Sequoia, we approach change as a dialogic process, which is open-ended, emergent, and co-creative in nature. Dialogic O.D. ((NTL Handbook of Organization Development and Change, 2nd Ed., 2014) views the organisation as a living system with webs of infinite potential and strength, and that the future is socially constructed through webs of human connections. This is in contrast to Diagnostic O.D., where organisations are seen as static machines, and the goal of O.D. is to identify, define and solve problems that get in the way of the machine’s functioning. The purpose of O.D. in the Diagnostic Approach is find the gaps and creating solutions to close the gaps. Because only livings systems learn, organisational learning is more likely to thrive in an open-system where discovery, experimentation, systems thinking and learning from all perspectives is encouraged.