Stephen Billing’s Blog

Is Organisation Development part of Human Resources? Is Human Resources part of Organisation Development? Do they have no reporting relationship at all?

During my recent talk to the HR Institute, we discussed Organisation Development and how its reporting line relates to the HR function. In an earlier post, I suggested that Organisation Development in NZ at the moment tends to house a range of HR functions that have no other convenient home, such as Lominger competencies, Leadership and management development, engagement survey and others.

None of the participants worked in organisations with an Organisation Development function that was separate from Human Resources. I do think though that a lot of change projects are undertaken by project offices that may have change expertise in the project team. These are usually managed quite separate from the Human Resources function.

One of the things that emerged from my unscientific poll of the room through show of hands, was that quite a few organisations have Human Resources reporting to Organisation Development.

I think this is one of the problems facing Organisation Development. It has become such a vague and imprecise term that as many people think it is a subset of Human Resources as think that Human Resources is a subset of Organisation Development.

And then you’ve got the likes of me who think it is multi-disciplinary and therefore fits neither category.

What the hell IS organisation development?

Over the last few days I have had fun writing my speech and thinking about story vs narrative. I want to return to the question about what OD is. In my last post about this (here), I suggested that OD is in danger of becoming an assortment of HR functions that don’t fit anywhere else. And this is a long way from the roots of OD in humanistic values and behavioural science.

Not that I’m enamoured of either humanistic values and behavioural science – while these were great breakthroughs in thinking at the time and created the field of OD, I feel that we are building on these foundations and that new insights, e.g. complexity science and in particular the complex responsive process thinking of Ralph Stacey enable us to radically develop the thinking that originally started OD as a discipline.

While OD seems to have become subsumed under human resources in many organisations, I have been thinking about the skill sets that it takes to do the difficult work of organisational change and development. A deep understanding of people in organisations is required, along with project management skills and the ability to communicate internally – which often means with large numbers of people in short time frames. A view of leadership seems to me to be important (is there such a thing as leadership? – see this guest post by Russell Ness) because it will inform how you work with the leaders of the organisation.

The internal communications part of OD is often downplayed, if not missing from the OD literature and I notice that PR people see this as their space. And yet in the past I have often written "communications strategies" that are very similar to those I have seen written by PR people.

As a discipline, PR sees internal communication as a logical extension of its work with external stakeholders. In fact if you see employees as another stakeholder group, it makes perfect sense to give PR the internal communications portfolio for your projects.

Unfortunately so many PR and communications people spend their time on the production of artifacts – being so concerned about production values, key messages and award-winning design that the actual point of the communication (making meaning of what’s going on) gets lost. However, OD people also fall into this trap, so this is not an indictment on PR and communications professionals alone, more a comment on the way PR, HR and OD people are thinking about their work in organisations. The tools and artifiacts are elevated in status and importance above regular interaction.

I am indebted to my colleague Robyn Hogg for her idea of working in the ‘white space’ on the organisation chart. She says that the white space is ONE of the places you can work in when ‘doing’ OD which she sees as working to develop an organisation’s health and functioning. She observes that this ‘white space’ is not on the  radar of many people, suggesting that this is because there are no recipes and you need experience to be able to pick up the cues.

This resonates with my own view that OD and its HR relatives pay too much attention to the formal organisation chart and communication lines and not enough to the informal. Robyn further points out that to be able to get into the ‘white space’ the OD practitioner needs a wide brief in which to operate, time for scanning and close enough relationships (which requires the ability to establish credibility) to fish out the good oil from people.

I love Robyn’s idea of the ‘white space’ because it is a graphic way of highlighting the informal rather than the typical formal communications that OD, PR and HR people usually focus on.

While we all know that there are informal networks as well as formal channels in any organisation, the disciplines of OD, PR and HR mostly concentrate on the formal channels. I think we can improve our effectiveness, no matter what discipline we come from, if we focus our attention deliberately more on the informal channels – if we pay more attention to the "white space."

Thanks Robyn.

It seems to me there is a problem with the typical HR approach to change.  HR is concerned with compliance with employment law and minimising risk. And like lawyers, HR can be more concerned about what arguments they can get away with in court rather than what it is actually right to do.

In my experience, HR addresses the formal lines of communication, but rarely considers what is going on in the corridor conversations, or gatherings in the staff room or around the water cooler.

And yet these informal conversation channels are where organisational change occurs.

At times HR advice can make managers quite wary about even talking to their people except in very guarded ways, and I think managers must be vigilant against giving HR advice supremacy over any other business or management considerations in situations of organisational change. HR advice is specialist advice that comes from the world of the HR practitioner – a world of compliance to certain legislation, and that is its value.

However, like all advice-givers, HR are not accountable for the successful implementation of the change. Therefore as a manager, while listening and understanding the HR advice you receive, you must also weigh it up in your specific situation along with all the other considerations, such as cost, operational issues, relationships, previous commitments made – upwards and downwards – and your own experience.

I am not advocating ignoring HR advice. I am advocating considering HR advice as one input into decision making in times of change. And because HR is only one input, I am not in favour of assigning responsibility for leadership of organisational change to HR unless the HR practitioners can demonstrate that they have a wider understanding of change than just the HR aspects.

What do you think?

HR will give you advice about compliance and avoiding risk. The HR industry has become, like the legal profession, an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. By the time you need them, it’s too late. At best HR advice might help prevent you from getting in to court. The problem is that this does not help you raise the bar, it does not help you to improve your organisation’s performance, it does not help you change the culture. It merely helps you avoid being in court.

HR is concerned with the formal lines of communication in the organisation. HR advice follows the organisation chart. What I mean by this is that in the HR world, communication happens in cascades. It trickles down from the managers to the staff through channels that follow the formal reporting lines of the organisation chart.

And in the world of HR and corporate communications, "communication" has come to mean "key messages" that the powerful people want to give to the less powerful people. The key messages are delivered through the formal channels of communication. These key messages are usually about the more powerful people wanting the less powerful people to do things differently. If the less powerful people question this, it is called "resistance."

And yet it is also common knowledge that the informal networks of communication are so important that they can destroy even the best-executed planned communications programme. The grapevine can destroy or subvert initiatives from head office. These informal networks inhabit the white space of the organisation chart.

As a CEO or manager of an organisation undergoing change, I think you must make sure your change initiatives take account of the white space in the organisation chart. In times of change you should be considering the informal communication networks in your organisation as well as the formal reporting lines.

The question is how to do this. I have found engaging in two way conversations rather than one way presentations to be the best way. The danger is that things will go out of your control if you truly engage with them. Don’t worry about that. After all, you never were in control any way. Right?

Comments welcomed.