This book will shed some light on the often misunderstood world of organizational development (OD). Any manager who has successfully led a unit for more than a year has probably accomplished some amount of organizational development. Often, supervisors have accomplished organizational development within their units, also. Don’t let the term itself confuse you.
That being said, the term is quite confusing as the term has various definitions depending on who is speaking. Actually, anyone who can intelligently discuss the topic has a definition that is at least a little tweaked from other's definitions.
In practice, organizational development takes a unit from where it currently stands to become a better functioning unit over time. This can be accomplished in various ways where the complexity of the developmental project can become extremely difficult for large organizations.
This is a fictional story of a financially strong, but organizationally underperforming company, Farris BoatWorks. The 1,250-employee non-union company designs, builds and sells around 20 boats a year at three manufacturing facilities located in Houston, TX, Mobile, AL and Norfolk, VA. The company has a catalog offering 75 different types of yachts and marine workboats that can be customized in a plethora of ways. In actuality, all of the company's boats are highly customized per the owner's needs. The company has 9 service branches across the central and eastern USA.
