Opportunity Full time post: Organisation Development Practitioner
Organisation Development Practitioner Congo Basin
Full time post: Organisation Development Practitioner based in Yaoundé, Cameroon, with travel throughout the Congo Basin region.
We are looking for an exceptional person who understands what makes a community group, a non-governmental organisation or an activist group effective and who can share that with organisations in forest countries in Africa.
Well Grounded provides organisation development support to our clients, who are civil society organisations in Africa so that they have the information, skills and resources they need to do their work. In particular, we support organisations that are working for the recognition and respect of the rights of local communities and good governance of natural resources. We also promote change by connecting organisations to build a strong civil society voice.
You would join our small team in Cameroon, working with organisations throughout the Congo Basin and possibly also West Africa. We are looking for someone to join us as of March 1st 2014, for a one-year contract, subject to renewal.
For more information, please see the jobs page on our website: , or contact us at
Closing Date: 2nd December 2013
Spécialiste en développement organisationnel bassin du Congo
SVP circuler a vos réseaux!
Poste à temps plein à pourvoir : Spécialiste en développement organisationnel, basé à Yaoundé au Cameroun et appelé à se déplacer dans toute la région du bassin du Congo.
Nous sommes à la recherche d’un(e) spécialiste en développement organisationnel aux qualités exceptionnelles, qui sait ce qui fait l’efficacité d’un groupe communautaire, d’une organisation non gouvernementale ou d’un groupe activiste, et qui peut partager son expertise avec les organisations œuvrant dans les pays africains à fort couvert forestier.
Well Grounded accompagne le développement organisationnel de ses clients, qui sont des organisations de la société civile en Afrique, pour qu’ils aient les informations, les compétences et les ressources nécessaires à l’accomplissement de leur travail. En particulier, nous soutenons les organisations qui œuvrent en faveur de la reconnaissance et du respect des droits des communautés locales, ainsi que d’une bonne gouvernance des ressources naturelles. Nous favorisons également le changement en mettant en contact les organisations afin de mieux faire entendre la voix de la société civile.
La personne retenue rejoindra notre petite équipe au Cameroun et interviendra aux côtés des organisations situées dans tout le bassin du Congo, et possiblement en l’Afrique de l’ouest. Ce poste est à pourvoir à partir du 1er mars 2014 avec un contrat pour une durée d’un an renouvelable.
Pour de plus amples informations, visiter la page Emploi de notre site web : ou nous contacter à l’adresse
Les candidatures seront acceptées jusqu’au 2 décembre 2013.
Organization Psychology – Behaviour, Performance, and Effectiveness
Answers the Question
What is the hidden structure of Performance?
How it Began
During the 1980s organizational psychology stopped complaining about the standards which organization psychology work and began thinking about occupational and work role performance as a construct which could be modelled. Since this time there has been considerable contributions to both theory and research dealing with performance, performance dynamics and performance measurement issues. Despite difference in methodology, terminology and emphasis there has been a remarkable convergence concerning the principal components of job performance. Regardless of occupation, organizational level, situational context or performance dynamics the meaningful basis of individual work performance is unaffected.
Key Terminology
Effectiveness - The degree to which objectives are achieved and the extent to which targeted problems are solved. In contrast to efficiency, effectiveness is determined without reference to costs and, whereas efficiency means “doing the thing right,” effectiveness means “doing the right thing.”
Behaviour - A response of an individual or group to an action, environment, person, or stimulus.
Performance - The accomplishment of a given task measured against preset known standards of accuracy, completeness, cost, and speed. In a contract, performance is deemed to be the fulfillment of an obligation, in a manner that releases the performer from all liabilities under the contract.
In Brief
Human Performance is the study of limitations and capabilities in human skilled behaviour. Skill is broadly construed to include perceptual, motor, memory, and cognitive activities, and the integration of these into more complex behavior. Emphasis is on the interaction of human behavior and tools, tasks, and environments, ranging from detection and identification of simple events to problem solving, decision making, human errors, accidents, and control of complex environments. Included among the variables that affect human performance are individual differences, organismic variables, task variables, environmental variables, and training variables.
Management and leadership can be approached at different levels. The study of management and leadership at the macro level involves the influences senior level individuals have in the larger organizational context-setting strategy, directing change, influencing values. Theory and research may focus on characteristics of leaders, leader style, leader-member interactions, behaviors of leaders, and related phenomena. At a more micro level, leadership and management involves the day-to-day exchange between leaders and followers. This includes challenges faced by line managers in their relationships with subordinates in the assignment of tasks, evaluation of performance, coaching and counseling for improvement, resource planning, and related tasks. Related to many other areas, effective leadership and management involves task analysis, motivation, decision making, career planning, selection, performance appraisal, interpersonal communication, listening and related skills in a supervisor-subordinate context. Increasingly, attention is placed on team leadership and self-leadership (especially in relation to empowerment), and horizontal leadership (i.e., peer influence processes).
Work motivation refers to the conditions within the individual and his or her environment that influence the direction, strength,and persistence of relevant individual behaviours in organizations when individual abilities and organizational constraints are held constant. Increasingly, work motivation is a concern at the group level as well.
Attitudes, opinions and beliefs are extremely important in organizational settings. They are important in their own right because of humanitarian concerns for the quality of working life of those who are employed in organizations. They are also important for diagnosing problems in organizations. They are important because they relate to the behavioural intentions and the behaviours of individuals at work. Some of the job attitudes include, but are not limited to, job satisfaction(general and various facets), job involvement, organizational commitment, and perceptions of fairness.
What does this mean for Organization Development?
Organization Development encompasses theory and research relevant to changing individuals, groups, and organizations to improve their effectiveness. the body of theory and research OD draws from include related fields such as social psychology, counseling psychology, educational psychology, vocational psychology, engineering psychology, and organizational theory.
More specifically, OD concerns theory and research related, but not limited to: individual change strategies including training, socialization, attitude change, career planning, counseling, and behavior modification; interpersonal and group change strategies, including team building and group training, survey feedback, and conflict management; role or task oriented change strategies, including job redesign, role analysis, management by objectives, and temporary task forces; and organization system-directed change strategies, including survey feedback, open systems oriented change programs, human resource accounting, flexible working hours, structural changes, control system changes, and quality circles.
It is well accepted that the structure, function, processes, and other organizational-level constructs have an impact upon the behaviour of individuals in organizations. Therefore, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of the nature of complex organizations. This understanding should include, but is not limited to, classical and contemporary theories of organizations, organizational structure, organizational design, technology, and the process of organizational policy formation and implementation. Integration of organizational and individual constructs is an important area requires a knowledge of organizational theory.
Much of human activity in organizations takes place in the presence of other people. This is particularly true of work behaviour. The pervasiveness of interpersonal and task interdependence in organizations demands a good understanding of the behaviour of people in work groups. Though the labels “group” and “team” are often used interchangeably, it is also critical to have a familiarity with the growing teamwork literature. This requires an understanding that extends beyond familiarity with research and theory related to interpersonal behavior in small groups. A good background in group theory and team processes includes, but is not limited to, an understanding of leadership, motivation, interpersonal influence, group effectiveness, conformity, conflict, role behavior, and group decision making.
OD practitioners need to have a sound background in work motivation, they must have a thorough understanding of the theories of human motivation including, but not limited to, need theories, cognitive theories, and reinforcement theories. Understanding of general applications of one or more motivational perspectives, such as strategies for work motivation as goal setting, job design, incentive systems, and participative decision making are relevant here.
Source: http://www.siop.org/history/crsppp.aspx
Focusing on the Right Problem – Organization Development Diagnostics
Organizational diagnosis is an essential part of the OD cycle and essential if the true essence of the problem facing the organization is to be uncovered, and resolved with an OD intervention. Get the diagnosis wrong and your intervention won’t hit the mark. Accurately diagnosis the problem and rather than treating the symptoms you will treat the real ailment.
There are several obvious questions that need to be considered;
- What is the nature of the problem?
- What ethical issues are there attached tot he problem?
- What learning issues are apparent in regards to the management processes in the organization?
- What power and political issues are preventing openness regards the problem, and possible creating resistance to finding a solution?
In OD there are two different types of problems which must be distinguished. The first is a Manifest problem, which is articulated by someone close to the problem within the organization, and something that your client or their colleagues have direct experience of. Latent problems can be likened to an obvious ailment that the organization is suffering from. A manifest problem is more difficult to diagnosis because the problems being experience are the symptoms of the real problem. The role of the OD practitioner in the diagnostic phase is to gain an understanding of the holistic framework of the organization in order to distinguish between causes of problems and the effects that problems cause.
Getting enough information
To distinguish between a Latent or a Manifest problem the following questions may be useful;
- Who defined the problem and why was it defined that way?
- How complex is the problem?
- Does it involve Technical Issues?
- Does it involve Ethical Issues?
- Does it involve Stakeholder issues?
- How contentious is the defined problem – would other stakeholders see it the same way?
- How accurate is the information?
- Can you separate facts from opinions?
- Do the facts contradict the organizations policies?
- How much is opinion and how much is fact?
- Is there any evidence of interpersonal or interdepartmental conflict?
- Is there any evidence of leadership difficulties?
- Is there any evidence of stress and anxiety?
(Taken from )
Following on from gathering the answers to these questions, you will have discovered whether you have enough information to diagnose the problem, or whether more information is needed. The greater the level of inquiry you make, the greater level of knowledge and skill is required in dealing with organizational behavioural issues which give rise to manifest problems. One of the biggest difficulties in diagnosing organizational development areas is the assumption that the manifest problems are the cause of the difficulties which the organization is experiencing. In reality latent problems often are exposed through a systematic approaching to digging around for the facts. The true purpose of organizational diagnostics is to understand if firstly there is really a problem, to define what that problem is and why it exists and to establish a clear framework of cause and effect within the system.
The Development of Culture Change
It’s interesting working in the arena of . All to often managers are confounded by the fact that the employees resist any form of change whether the changes are better for the organization, will secure their jobs, and will most probably make the employees lives better.
Organizations spend thousands of pounds and many hours putting together information packs and communication plans to explain the changes, but no amount of information, no matter how rational, will seeming move those who chose not to be moved. What is more frustrating is that those who refuse to toe and line, and who engage in acts of corporate terrorism will be able to justify their bad behaviour with a perfectly rational and logic line of reasoning– even if the rational remains unreasonable. Further investigation will also unveil the truth, which is that the most reluctant will invent fabrications about the real motives of those trying to push for change, even if those reasons are nothing more than lying to ourselves.
Human behaviour, the mind and each individual’s personality are nothing if not curious and fascinating.
You see we don’t like to consider ourselves as being irrational. We need to deceive ourselves into believing that our bad behaviour is rational. If we are unable to cope with a current situation we may begin to regress, acting out like a petulant teenager, or we might use a displacement defence where we know we have to be strong, so we take out our frustration on a process of change that makes us feel fearful. Finally we might take hide from, and refuse to acknowledge the change that we are experiencing by repressing that which we are finding intolerable from our conscious mind and continuing as if nothing has changed at all.
Social Psychologist Leon Festinger described the discomfort we feel when we modify our beliefs so that we can make two contradictory ideas compatible as ‘cognitive dissonance.’ The more we believe that we are right in our belief that the change is bad, the more effort we will put into proving that we are right – and any information is used to confirm the rightness of our beliefs. If we are lying to ourselves we must in someway justify our lie to continue believing that we are a good person. (Rosenburg, 2011)
Culture or rather ‘the way we do things around here’ exacerbates the cognitive dissonance that individuals develop during a change programme. The effectiveness of an organization can be seriously compromised if efforts to make changes conflicts with an organization’s norms, standards, working practices and values, potential creating conflict and toxicity around the change efforts.
Take for example the current context of the environmental peril that our planet is in. If we don’t change the way we do things then our grandchildren will quite possible face extinction. The problem is that we have accepted the truth of ‘plenty’ and of not having to count the external costs of our actions for such a long time that the rules and expectations of 21st Century human culture, especially in the Western World is currently stopping us from acting rationally in the best interests of our long term survival. Organization’s can face similar problems in areas that are in obvious need of change, possibly where the way things are done around here is causing the organization to lose business or damage its reputation and yet still change efforts are met with resistance.
Since we are social creatures, doing things differently, changing to such an extent means that we have to go outside group norms. For example the terms Tree Hugger, eco-warrior and nature loving hippy have for a long time been used as insults and denote that the person acting with a belief structure that puts the environment first is in someway uncivilised. Even those organizations that are pursuing green and environmentally friendly agendas wrap their actions up in more acceptable business language of sustainability, Plan A and corporate social responsibility, it goes against our culture that these organizations should say that they care about the planet.
If you are trying to implement a change programme, it is important to consider how , not just individually. When individuals are unsure how to behave they will look to the community of which they are part to understand what the norms are, which are usually driven by their peers. If there is someone who strongly represents the group displaying signs of cognitive dissonance, then that will determine what reaction the group will have as a whole to the change situation.
Individuals who have a lot lose and in will seek to maintain the traditions that keep them in a position of privilege, regardless of the expense to others. Destructive behaviour in a change situation will always be strongest where individuals who fear change the most are in a position of influence within the wider community.
, it is essential that you first understand those who are key stakeholders, and help them to transition their thinking prior to any change programme happening. That way the individuals who have most impact on cultural norms can help the group express their reaction to change, which in turn will .
Organization Development offers an alternative to the ‘information centric’ approach to change management. Rather than a top down change that tells people how to think and act, organization development takes the organization on a journey of discovery. Leaders are taught to role model, coach and teach so they can reflect the change that is being asked for. For individual employees, OD interventions create safe places for them to consider the areas of thinking and belief structures that might need to change, and provides the tools for the individual to make that change themselves. For groups it helps transition the change through careful facilitation of groups dynamics to help the group help each other make the transition. Finally, OD considers the reinforcement mechanisms within the organization, processes and systems which will support the culture change going forward, and removing barriers to the successful change.
OD Practitioner considerations for Culture Change
- Know the business beyond an organization chart and what the leaders tell you. Investigate, question and discover; How are things done? What makes the organization tick? What is the underlying rhythm of the business?
- If you don’t know find out, and use the right OD tools for the situation.
- BE the change, coach, mentor and position yourself as a conduit of change.
- Ensure Change goals are relevant, and focused on people relationships and behaviour especially in regards to how processes and systems within the organization reinforce or inhibit people processes.
- Support leaders to create the climate for change
- Develop plans that reward behaviours that reinforce the desired culture change but also manage areas where there is reversion to old behaviours.
- Handle uncertainty and ambiguity with confidence.
- Use methods that work on both the mind, in regards to intellectual stimulation but also the heart, in regards to emotion.
- Create experiences and opportunities for people to explore new behaviours within a positive framework
- Always develop methods that reinforce new ways of working.
The Relevance of Power and Politics to OD
at it’s heart is a collaboration process which encourages each individual within the organization to make decisions that affect their own future and that of the organization, to #bethechange.
Power and the politics that affect who wields power within the organizational setting therefore has the ability to help the OD change programme achieve its aims or derail the work of the OD practitioner.
There are four key approaches to power that an OD practitioner must incorporate within each phase of the OD cycle;
- Build an OD power base that gives access to the OD practitioner to those in power within the organization
- Influence key stakeholders in a transparent process, addressing key issues in a way that is creative and efficient than traditional organizational politicking.
- Assist the transformation of the existing power structures to make change sticky
- Champion and uphold the interests of those affected by changes who don’t have the power to protect themselves.
It would be naive to expect the OD practitioner to enter the without addressing power and politics. Any organization is part of a system which relies on an exchange of mutual dependence to achieve results. This requires the OD practitioner to understand and interact with the complex structures of social exchange which exist within the organizational setting in order to help release the talent potential, knowledge and expertise for the benefit of the organization as a whole.
Within each organizational setting their are core people who are involved in critical activities that need to be challenged and supported throughout the OD process. In order to develop mutual understanding throughout the organization the OD practitioner must carefully negotiate the power positions and brokers in order to enlist their help to lead the change whilst at the same time diminish the existing power base in order to develop a holistic interdependence required for organizational success.
In addition to addressing the existing power bases, the OD practitioner will need to deliberate create and develop their own centres of power throughout the organization to orchestrate the impact needed to create success within the client system. In addition the OD practitioner must develop a positive framework in order to role model the ethical use of power and politics going forward.
Key Points
- Power is a key element of organizational life
- Knowing how power is distributed will help you get things done
- Organizational morale may be impacted by feelings of powerlessness, OD can create a context in which permission is given for the disenfranchised to be empowered
- Authority of knowledge is just as important as the authority of role in organizational decision making
- OD practitioners are perfectly placed to help shift the organization from negative to positive forms of power, building a healthy and effective organizational system
Applying the use of Power in OD
- During the diagnostic stage investigate and understand how power works in decsion making, resource allocation, conflict and sponsorship.
- Map the proportion of the workforce who are disenfranchised, have positional power and where the power centres (informal and formal) exist
- Explore the operation of the informal power network and power sources and tap into the networks that can effectively support change.
- Build and maintain alliances with key stakeholders and power brokers to drive through and sponsor the change efforts, whilst sharing power with those who are disenfranchised in the current power structure.
- Show people how to make things happen and coach them so that they can support themselves and make a positive impact on the organization’s performance.
- Help move the organization towards greater levels of collaboration and interdependence by positively demonstrating the effectiveness of greater cooperation in making things happen.
- A key part of the OD programme will be to develop healthy and positive power use which contributes to a work environment which nurtures and releases the potential within the organization.