OD Interventions in Knowledge-Centric Industries

Introduction

Of all areas of organizational development (OD), the most challenging in terms of translating strategic, long-term, abstract objectives into results is the use of interventions. As established in the literature, interventions can span from the individual to the workgroup or team and throughout an entire organization. The most effective interventions bring a high degree of pragmatism and measurability to short-term strategies that, over time, contribute to accomplishing strategic goals (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2008). Interventions at the individual and team level must concentrate on changing not only processes, systems, and people but also the underlying perspectives and values of associates (Weatherbee, Dye, Bissonnette, & Mills, 2009). The intent of this analysis is to evaluate how interventions have been successfully used in knowledge-centric industries. These industries are selected because knowledge experts often exhibit the highest resistance to change — much of their perceived self-worth is tied to what they know (Paik & Choi, 2005).

Interventions are most difficult to implement successfully in companies whose cultures highly value knowledge over pure efficiency or output. When knowledge becomes the defining factor of status within an industry, the challenge of successfully implementing personal and group interventions rises significantly (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2008). One company that faced significant resistance to change and successfully overcame its challenges using OD-based intervention techniques is the consulting and advisory firm Accenture (Paik & Choi, 2005).

Accenture faced growing fragmentation of its business units as senior experts in key areas — including supply chain management (SCM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), pricing and revenue management, and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) — began hoarding information rather than entering it into the firm's Knowledge Navigator knowledge management system (Paik & Choi, 2005). The consultancy confronted the daunting task of how to recycle and reuse knowledge across its many ongoing projects. As is the case with organizations running dozens of concurrent projects with team members from varying levels of experience, the initial intervention of coaching and mentoring only worked with remote senior-level project contributors (Paik & Choi, 2005).

Bringing OD Interventions to Knowledge-Centric Industries

Interventions at the personal level also included the use of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) analyses to help Accenture teams better delineate their roles in virtual teams. The entire intervention process was made more difficult because virtual teams had learned over time to rely on informal approaches to communication rather than using the defined processes for entering and accessing data in the Knowledge Navigator (Paik & Choi, 2005).

Accenture, like many other organizations that find the need for OD-based intervention, discovered that informal processes were beginning to completely redefine the roles of individual contributors in virtual teams. This led to an entirely new — and often less manageable — organizational structure becoming increasingly prevalent within the firm. As a result of individualized intervention not working completely, Accenture focused on redefining teams based on the customer groups they served. This approach differed from industry-based vertical practice segments such as banking, manufacturing, or services; instead, it sought to redefine knowledge workflows based on customer centricity. The use of business process reengineering (BPR)-based interventions to foster a more customer-centric mindset is critically important for reorienting a culture toward greater accountability in the use of knowledge (Kok & Biemans, 2009).

Interventions are also made more difficult when IT investments must be aligned to process workflows that are redesigned for greater efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Interventions involving the realignment of IT and processes to become more customer-centric carry a higher risk of failure as a result (Lee, Chu, & Tseng, 2009). What is critically important is that coaching and mentoring be relied upon to reward collaborative behavior on a consistent basis (Weatherbee et al., 2009). Personal-level interventions that combine a focus on collaboration with a process-centric approach — placing customers, rather than data taxonomies, at the center of project efforts — drive interventions toward higher success rates (Song, 2008).

In highly knowledge-centric industries, the need for intervention at both the individual and corporate level is particularly challenging given the resistance to change embedded in the cultures of many knowledge-based organizations. OD-based interventions that concentrate on creating higher levels of collaboration between virtual teams — and on integrating knowledge management systems into active customer engagements — are critical. A concerted approach to OD interventions is therefore essential in any knowledge-centric organization if lasting change is to occur.

Conclusion

Song, J. (2008). The key to organizational performance improvement: A perspective of organizational knowledge creation. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 21(2), 87–102.

Weatherbee, T., Dye, K., Bissonnette, A., & Mills, A. (2009). Valuation theory and organizational change: Towards a socio-psychological method of intervention. Journal of Change Management, 9(2), 195.