About This Book

LAUNCH 281
• Efforts are made to attract, retain, develop, and fully utilize committed and talented
people who are a good fit with the organization.
• Efforts are made to make working conditions and the work environment a
plus rather than a minus.
7. Take Care of Your Customers
• Being customer driven to both internal and external customers is a high priority.
• Employees from top to bottom are encouraged to know their internal and
external customers and their needs.
• Building good relationships with present and potential customers is valued.
• The organization has a reputation for treating customers well.
8. Build Teamwork
• Teamwork is encouraged and developed at the top, within teams, between
teams, and outside the organization with groups key to the success of the
organization.
• There is a one-team mentality with minimal barriers between groups.
• Involvement and collaboration are a way of life.
9. Never Stop Learning, Improving, and Building a Great Organization
• A strong emphasis is placed on continuous learning, improvement, and development
at the individual, group, and organization levels.
• Many opportunities are provided for people to share ideas and make
improvements.
• Complacency and maintaining the status quo are not options.
10. Keep Score and Get Results
• Measures of excellence are simple and clear and allow the organization to
know where it stands regarding performance, human resource indicators,
culture, customers, and other important measures.
• Decisive decisions are made to make needed adjustments to get the best
results without damaging the culture or compromising the core values.
Practicing Organization Development, 2nd Ed.. Copyright © 2005 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Reproduced
by permission of Pfeiffer, an Imprint of Wiley. www.pfeiffer.com
shown in the model in Exhibit 10.1, there are four major steps in the assessment
process. While this chapter is designed to provide an overview of the assessment
process, there are many good sources that provide the details. Three excellent
sources are David Nadler’s (1977) classic, Feedback and Organization Development:
Using Data-Based Methods, Church and Waclawski’s (1998) Designing and
Using Organizational Surveys, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the
positives and negatives of methods using technology such as emails or websites,
and Watkins and Mohr (2001), Appreciative Inquiry, which addresses assessment
from an appreciative inquiry perspective.