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Enhanced CBS Business Functions

Organisation Development (or OD as it is often called) describes any set of long-term enterprise-wide strategic change activities focussed at improving the effectiveness of the infrastructure, culture or resource behaviour of an organisation. It covers a broad spectrum of strategic work, starting with a corporate plan, and involving all aspects of organisation design, coaching and management development.

Given the Enterprise's Mission and Purpose, Strategic Goals and Objectives, Corporate Values and Policies, a design project is established to create the environment for adaptive change, appropriate cultural development, and improvement in the behaviour of staff and management alike.

However, a lot of OD activities are begun further down the organisational pyramid and involve just parts of the OD process. And because these sorts of activities are undertaken without the full understanding or imprimatur of the CEO and the Board, they naturally lack much of the integration and co-ordination that would be desirable.

CBS is highly relevant in either case. Its OD Workbench helps keep the whole project in place, and presents the organisational structure in plain view for all. Even with interruptions from or distractions to the project that happen from time to time, the organisational design and definitions, as well as the plans to implement them are solidly anchored and tied into the enterprise's central operational systems.

Where an OD activity is planned in isolation from the mainstream OD project work of the business, CBS quickly identifies that it is standing alone. This realisation prompts management to consider what should be done to make it an integral part of the overall OD program. Even where there is no backbone structure or OD program to hold all the disparate pieces of OD activity together, CBS encourages consistency between the pieces. As time progresses more and more integration will tend to occur.

Many OD projects fail to achieve what they set out to do, because their sponsors lack the clout to make it all happen, or they are not sufficiently networked into the enterprise to be able to hold all the communications and plans together without the necessary degree of authority.

On the other hand, some OD projects fail because they depend too heavily on rank authority rather than gaining buy-in from the management and staff of the business units or functions.

CBS is a great facilitator of OD, because it promotes clarity in all communications. It enables the message to get through to each individual in the audience groups that need to know. And it encourages appropriate responses as well.

And, as it holds plans in place for as long as it takes the implementation to occur, the OD project is kept firmly on track, without the need for continual management follow up and prodding.

This even applies when parts of the project run out of resources or lack the full commitment from one or more business functions. The intents of the project (and its change) are kept alive because, CBS, which holds the plans so explicitly and consistently, acts as a common point of reference for staff at large, who increasingly come to believe in the value of the change as a whole.

In these ways, CBS represents an important breakthrough in practical management support.

By putting their OD activities and program into the CORRIDOR™, managers can derive significant benefit from day one. If help is needed, CCA Consultants are experienced in coaching managers one-on-one to use the CORRIDOR™. We can also assist enterprises develop or refine their OD Plans. Initial analysis of the corporation's culture and structure, provides a clear starting point. The facts, plans and history of the enterprise's OD are captured into the CORRIDOR™ application module, and are accessible as a living documentary set, supporting the Corporate OD intent. This data will also act as an excellent reference guide for future OD personnel.

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