A Practical Approach to Organisation Development & Change with Sarah Walsh - OrgDev Episode 21

Welcome to our latest interview with Sarah Walsh, a leading expert in organisation development! In this episode, Sarah shares her refreshingly practical approach to helping organizations thrive. She emphasizes meeting clients where they are, making the complex world of organizational development accessible and understandable for everyone.

Sarah Walsh
  / sarahwalshl 

Sarah Walsh is a dynamic Organizatioal Development (OD) Practitioner with a passion for people, culture, and change. Embracing the mantra "variety is the spice of life," Sarah thrives on working across multiple spaces to drive meaningful transformations within organizations.

Sarah's impressive credentials include an MSc in Organizational Behaviour from Birkbeck, University of London, and a CMI Level 7 Certificate in Strategic Management and Leadership. She is also a certified Prosci Change Practitioner, equipped with the skills to manage and implement change effectively.

Currently, Sarah serves as an Organizational Development Consultant at The Academy of Medical Sciences. She has held a number of change roles including the Lead Performance Consultant at Essex County Council. In these roles, she excels in leadership development, change management, and team coaching, helping organizations navigate and make sense of change. She brings strategies to life, ensuring they are not only implemented but also effectively integrated into the organizational culture.

In addition to her roles as an OD Practitioner, Sarah is a dedicated Workplace and Career Coach. She supports individuals through career moves and transitions, offering guidance and strategies for overcoming workplace challenges such as burnout and the complexities of new managerial roles. Sarah's holistic approach ensures that her clients feel supported and empowered to achieve their career goals.

Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Transcript:
(00:00) hi and welcome to the org Dev podcast so organization development has often been accused of being too theoretical so we invited Sarah Walsh who takes a refreshingly practical approach to the profession she emphasized the importance of meeting people where they are and helping to get them to get to where they need to be she has a huge focus on uniting research and OD practice now Sarah's very kindly joined us she's been away traveling in is it Costa Rica and and Canada Sarah it is indeed yes is so we're very appreciative but there might
(00:33) be a slight delay due to jet lag on some of these questions we'll edit all this out but but thank you so much for joining us so and we really appreciate you making time for this so just a little bit about Sarah so she's an organization development consultant and she's currently supporting a number of organizations through fixed term contracts which is a really fascinating way of doing OD she's currently organizational development consultant of the Academy of Medical sciences and before that she was lead performance
(00:57) consultant at Essex County Council she's been changing continuous Improvement manager at City University of London and her experience is backed by lots of professional and academic qualifications and she's been on the really interesting Masters in organizational behavior and business psychology from burbeck she's got a post-graduate certificate in transformative coaching and she's also done the Ry Park OD practitioner program which Danny you've done as well haven't you I've done it as well yeah not at the
(01:22) same time as Sarah but we've done that so we've got Rie Parker alumni here and she has a whole host of certifications in change management and is certified I deliver a whole range of psychometric surveys she's also a workplace and career coach and in amongst that she still has spare time but gives her time freely to research and campaign and volunteer for the local citizens advice and there's a huge need for that right now she's also a tutor and she works with students studing history and
(01:47) psychology has been doing this for 10 years and part of her reason for visiting Costa Rica is she's an animal lover and you have is it 8 pets is that right Sarah nine nine time I talk to people it in es okay we you didn't sneak something back from Costa Rica did you I did not snuck in a sloth or something I can you're not brilliant well welcome Sarah thank you so much for joining us thank you and next time I have an interview do you think you can join me because that was an excellent summary thank you K you're very welcome we can
(02:22) be hired by the hour for that that's great brilliant oh it's lovely to have you Sarah so just an easy question staff just tell us a bit about your role does it involve so well as Garen mentioned I sort of opt for fixed term contracts so my role even though it has different titles it is essentially um an organizational development practitioner and it is so varied as you can imagine I'm sure people listening will agree it can be a very varied role so I could be doing anything from Employee Engagement
(02:53) workshops uh Discovery projects trying to understand what's happening in an organization to help uh leaders managers whoever it is get the insights that they need to to create change strategies and action plans and even the day-to-day can be very different but even the contract can be very different because it very much depends on the context of the organization and what they're asking for so I've done orev projects within the context of restructures against the backdrop of really tough savings targets
(03:25) but I've also had the pleasure of working with organizations where the context is very different and it's a case of we've got money to spend and we're looking to to grow but sustainably how do we do that and then that's without even talking about how to do work development in a pandemic which was kind of like a petri dish of experimentation and really putting our our practice and research to the test so yeah I guess in a nutshell it can be really very varied I'm sure we'll get into some of the tasks and what that
(03:54) can mean on the dayto day but even within the practice it can be very dependent on the context you're operating within as well which I guess makes it all the much more fun and and the challenge and I guess that's what we're looking for as practitioners it's often about the challenge isn't it and the variety yeah so what are you working on now and the the role you're in currently what's the what's the focus of that one well this is the one where they've gone through a period of um rapid growth which is
(04:19) really great so they've gone from a small organization to a medium-sized organization and uh doing so since the pandemic and it's been a case of of where do we begin with this there's some practices that we know we need to improve upon there are some gaps that we know we need to build upon but how do we do so sustainably how do we get to the next stage of growth um but doing it in a way that isn't going to overstretch us or or create change too quickly basically yeah how do you get to that next stage of growth how do you do it in
(04:51) a sustainable way and what would that direction of travel look like and the other thing you talked about you talked about volunteering being really important we did that in the intro what is it about volunteering why why is that so important to you yeah it's very important to me I've been volunteering now in in different guises for for the length of my career it's important that I'm making that contribution there's certain passion causes of mine that I feel really strongly about housing being
(05:17) one of them social justice being another actually before I got into organizational development I was in um homelessness prevention and and social care it's been quite a varied career even before I got into organizational development um and the volun the volunteer sector they they need volunteers to keep going and uh another big passion of mine is research not just in terms of academic research but in terms of uh engagement Community engagement and taking that research and creating something meaningful and and hopefully that
(05:49) leading to us being able to create meaningful change nationally by looking at what's happening locally and and hoping it can make a bigger difference brilliant and um we always ask this question cuz it's so fascinating we've never had the same story twice but but what was your journey into OD did it find you or did you find it like what what what happened yeah it definitely found me and actually now I'm further ahead in my career and I look at the qualifications available for organizational development I wonder how
(06:19) people because I know it's a very common theme that people stumble into organizational development and actually when I think about my network I don't think I've met anyone that knew what they were looking for and went straight into the field actually I might be wrong but I can't recall many people saying that to me so yeah it definitely found me so like I said I had quite a varied career I was definitely trying to find what it was I wanted to do and I did Finance for a little while which for
(06:48) people who know me will know that is hilarious because numbers are not my thing so that didn't last long um like I said housing homelessness is a real area of passion for me so I I went into social housing for a little while so much respect for Frontline workers I I couldn't do it and so I sort of thought okay should I do something that's still within the field but not necessarily that particular area so I went into um esset County counil and I went into project management and continuous Improvement and at the time that I
(07:22) joined as a business analyst they were in a period of period of redesign and I was working within their people and transformation function and my manager at the time said actually we think you'd be really at home with organizational development cut to the question everyone asked what is organizational development what is that and I think that was my first experience and it was in the context of doing organizational design move forly into organizational development and that's when I did my um OD practitioner course at Ry Park and
(07:59) then ever since then I've I've just that's where I've found my home I always say that I feel really lucky to have found a job that feels more like a hobby and I've just been really fortunate to have kept within the field expanding my practice gaining new experiences that's kind of why I do fix term contracts I like to experience lots of different contexts um and organizations but yes I it it definitely found me it's interesting because they found uh they identifi something in you
(08:30) what do you think what they identified in you that thought she she'd be a great fit for OD I think I get this feedback quite a lot actually I think it's because I love the academic side I love reading a journal but I also really love being able to translate it into something meaningful I like both sides of things I love working with people I like making connections with people I like problem solving and that does that's not me saying I have an answer I like exploring what it could be and having that Curiosity around what's your
(09:11) experience of this challenge what can we do uh I really enjoyed that side of things and the other thing that I've come to realize and I don't know if this was true for this person who identified it in me at the time but it's something I get a lot now it's patterns and being able to see the cause and effect and think okay well if this is happening here what does it mean for over here what does that mean for what we have to do and and the right sequence and not necessarily rushing to things just so
(09:40) that we can be seen to do something really going up and thinking what is the pattern here and also and I say this with a smile because sometimes it goes down well sometimes not so much I do just really like to be that person who asks potentially awkward questions that person who can sort of say oh you know we're doing this you know last week you said this is this the right course of action and and really being able to ask what they call courageous questions I guess it's that term that people call themselves and I
(10:14) don't know if I feel comfortable saying that I would I identify as this but that disruptor I'm not sure as I'm as bold as some of the practitioners I know who who identify as um as disruptors but definitely like to be that person that pokes you and says yeah you this might need some attention and and how did having a grounding in sort of project management inform your practice since then because that's quite a good discipline to have isn't it oh that's a really interesting question actually
(10:42) because project management is one of those disciplines where I think it's good to have both sides it provides when you're a practitioner I find it provides Assurance for people who are looking to you to provide a direction of travel and and some insurances um so I think having that project management side is is good for that I think there's a lot of methodologies that have certainly helped me in terms of okay I've got all of this information what do I now do with it you know the sequencing I'm not a planner
(11:15) once again you know people that know me well will chuckle at that because I'm not a planner but what I think the project management side has given me is that sense of okay what's the sequence here um what needs to happen and at what point um and giving that sense of direction obviously you invested in a masters in organizational behavior and business psychology when did you decide that you wanted to sort of commit all that time to it and and what kind of things did you take away from it yeah well I think I got to I think uh what
(11:46) year would it have been 2018 I believe it was and I I remember feeling a bit more established in the role and I'd done a few um uh courses that had helped hone my practitioner skills um and and I was working as pract practitioner in the field and had been for a few years and I just started to notice a lot of fellow practitioners having this qualification and that was probably the first thing that sparked my interest and I've got a lot of you know role models in the field who who had Masters and had spoken to
(12:16) them and I think for me what I was looking for at the time was I am a keen reader I read a lot of stuff but I needed a bit of structure to help paint the picture and position that research within the context of the field and that's where I thought well actually the the Masters would probably be a really great opportunity for me to to get that bigger picture and to fill some of the gaps and help me understand where would my development be in terms of what I took from it I I actually wrote A Blog on LinkedIn about my findings when I
(12:48) when I did qualify which would have been in 2021 I believe it was across the pandemic oh our research only went back to 2022 we missed it um but yeah my um I mean I can summarize it in two words it depends that every single question I asked ber alumni potentially watching this my lecture is you'll all you'll all know you said it to me it depends which I thought was really good actually at the time there were a lot of us that were thinking there wasn't an answer what do you mean but actually it fits perfectly because
(13:24) so much is based on context you know if I think back to some of the leadership development um modules and readings we were doing this idea that there isn't um a perfect leader and it's just as much about followership as it is the leader anyway and reading case studies where you would have this incredible leader transformational leadership can craft a vision take people on board with them absolutely brilliant put them in a completely different organization they flounder because they don't adapt they
(13:53) don't see that context and so for me actually hearing that there isn't an answer it very much depends on context was really comforting because then that meant that as practitioners we have the space to explore the space to contribute and the space to learn um and I think that's really where the um bridge between research and practice is um being able to see that actually there aren't all these answers and there never will be and that's fine because we can work together on finding what works it's
(14:25) not always what our clients or our stakeholders want to hear because they of want certainty so how do you kind of manage that tension with the people you're working with so this is where I think the pandemic has really helped because I think even though it has prompted many individuals to feel like they need to have an answer to provide that Assurance I think one of the things that I always keep close to my mind is there's something really weird that happens when we cross the work boundary and I I mean that in terms of the home
(14:53) office not necessarily walking into a building um where we go from adult to adult to parent and child and you know you think about everything that's happening in the world at the mo at the moment that's causing uncertainty which can cause a lot of um discomfort to say the least and I think there's a lot of individuals where you know they're well intentioned they want to provide some certainty but the reality is is that there's a lot of stuff that that we can't and so one of the things that I
(15:21) always do as a practitioner from even Beyond I start a contract is I will be really upfront in Contracting throughout and say if I don't know the answer to something I will tell you and I will try to build credibility in that way but what I can give you and what I can assure you on is that I've got an Evidence base that I can lean from a network that is very generous as I'm sure you you know you're both aware and I have that that I can draw from I've got Discovery tools I can use hypothesis
(15:54) I can form and I can tell you what I think might work and we can go on that Journey together to see what does and doesn't work and a lot of the time organizations have history that they can learn from what has worked previously what hasn't worked so I think there is something about being upfront honest building that credibility but also being able to provide assurance that whatever we will do we will learn from and that that will have utility in itself and I think this is where coaching um especially leadership coaching team
(16:24) coaching can be a really useful intervention because a lot of the time there is something deeper beyond that need for providing certainty and having certainty um that can be useful to exploring as well yeah and I guess when you when you do that there's a risk isn't there because it might be that they actually do want to pay for that kind of certainty whereas really what you're trying to get them is a much deeper fix as well isn't it yeah and this is where you know the field of organizational development you know management
(16:54) consulting is is so varied because that's my brand of practitioner um and don't get me wrong there are certain things where I can feel more confident and and certain about but you know there's some really big organizational questions that are happening everywhere so many tensions in organizations that actually there isn't a right or wrong answer it's about managing those tensions to to best effect you know so a really live example for me at the moment is this uh tension around should we be making interview
(17:27) questions uh public before an interview process you know and this is one example of many which demonstrates that the power has shifted from the organization to the employee this idea that we bring our whole selves to work which can be quite unsettling and if we stick with that particular example um there's a lot of people that will say well hang on a second that means you can cheat that means you're not going to give your most authentic answer and you've got other groups of individuals where potentially
(17:57) the old way of working it's not really that old um or traditional way of thinking about work that's always worked well for them and so it creates the tension what do you do then because it it can often look like you're taking sides when really it's about okay how do we manage that tension so that's how I sort of sell myself as a as a consultant I'm aware of these bigger Paradigm shifts and how the practice of OD can help and you know to be really honest I'm a bit suspicious of anyone who can
(18:28) come in and say this is is going to work for you that would make me very nervous as a practitioner because automatically I'm taking responsibility for something I don't necessarily have a lot of control over all I can do is influence yeah and I guess look because one of the things we're always really interested in these conversations is like how do we start and one of the the beauties of like fixed term contract working is it's just like has a beginning a middle and an end and part of it is is helping
(18:55) organizations commission work better so what can organiz ations do to commission work better to be really clear this is what we want or let's work out something with you what does good commissioning look like to you when you when you begin a new role it depends that's okay that's a good answer what I mean it's just the best answer um but yeah it genuinely does depend because I've had contracts where they have sensed that organizational development as a practice can help them but have actually kept the agenda quite
(19:28) loose and have given G me a lot of freedom and flexibility to sort of say okay we know we have a sense that there's something here we have a sense that we've got a problem here we know that because we're having retention issues or we're getting a lot of complaints well-being is becoming an issue so they'll have a sense of what the issue is but not necessarily A Way Forward and they'll give me a lot of flexibility to shape that work and actually another thing that's really important when you grant that
(19:55) flexibility is access as well access to speak to people access to ask the questions that you think are going to help um and really surfacing any agendas that there might be um so I've I've actually sometimes when it comes to commission work found it really helpful to to have it be quite a loose agenda and and freedom but on the other hand I've also when the agenda is a bit more clear in terms of we know we need to come to this outcome and this is what we need to achieve by this point having that transparency from the outset and those
(20:31) boundaries Contracting around those boundaries is incredibly important so once again that context and the agenda is is really important for those boundaries because then that gives me the permission I guess for life of better word to be able to say okay this is what I think is needed what do you think and to be able to have that it's like the point you made the ABC always be contracting always have that really clear from the start and having that conversation really transparent is really helpful for me so what do you
(21:01) enjoy most about Odie my gosh the variety I like that even though I'll be working on different contracts I've done you know I've set out employee forums in lots of different organizations and it is different every single time I've done leaders leadership development programs in different organizations and it's different every time so you're always learning even though sometimes you can feel like you're doing the same thing you're always always learning and actually even even when I speak to
(21:32) internal Consultants that have been in the same organization for a long time that's still what they say to me because people change environments change pandemics happen AI comes along there's always going to be those challenges that are going to keep things interesting so I love the variety and I love the depth and breadth in terms of you know when people ask me what does development look like for you there's so many different avenues that I could choose to specialize in if I so chose to do so I
(22:05) could go down the really academic route I could specialize in uh group dynamics I can go and be a consultant I can specialize in Gest out um I can I mean I could be here all day talking about all the different Avenues so there's there's so much variety on so many different levels and I love working with people and I love problem solving and I think for me we spend so much time at work I was reading a research paper actually for my um postgrad certificate in coaching psychology and it was talking about what
(22:38) work does for us and it's you know for some people it's a very transactional relationship I go and I get paid that's brilliant but for a lot of people it forms such a big part of their identity and there's always a lot of role Conflict for a lot of individuals you know that question of well if I'm going to spend time working versus caring for this individual or going to Costa Rica in Canada you know then it's got to be fulfilling it's got to be satisfying and I just think at the moment there's a lot
(23:08) to have fun with it's challenging but there's a lot to be playful around and have fun with and then on the flip side what do you find most challenging about working in od yeah what do I find most challenging I think sometimes working sometimes I'll be working in or development teams but some sometimes it is just me and sometimes I will feel the responsibility of that and inevitably there will be moments where I'll make a recommendation and even though my mindset will be very much you know this is the evidence I'm
(23:43) acting upon this is the hypothesis I'm taking forward and this is the intervention we're going to experiment with you know is this definitely the right path um so there's that sense of responsibility that um can sometimes come with that I think sometimes it can be quite hard to rise up if you're working in one particular organization versus working as an external with multiple can sometimes you have to really be intentional about Rising above the detail of that organization and connecting it up to the wider picture
(24:15) you know there's a lot of things that are happening in organizations I'm working with that are big Paradigm shifts you know the the return to the office for example and how you tackle that um leadership practices becoming more sustainable managing this this shift of power and the tensions in organizations so I think sometimes you know connecting what you're working with with those wider shifts can can sometimes be um can be challenging and actually sometimes like I say the variety is really great there's a lot of
(24:46) things to work on and develop in but sometimes that can be quite overwhelming especially when you're like me and you're interested in everything like you say I do a bit of tutoring um I like to volunteer and I love what I do and and you know sometimes I can look at the field and think oh my gosh i' love I love group dynamics and you know team coaching is on the rise so I'm going to do that and then I'll read something else about you know um one of my things at the moment is this idea of Gest out
(25:15) OD practice which looks at you know thinking it you know uh psychodynamic OD practices are looking at the past and how those unconscious Dynamics show up in your teams I'm interested and GED out now and the present and the future but I can't do it all at once so yeah sometimes sometimes I wish I had one of those uh time machines where I could do it all and and thinking about that obviously like change has been a sort of a thread throughout your career like from from University life to working in 's Council to working on your different
(25:48) contracts as well change isn't for the faint of heart is it and there's often moments in the change process and it's often just before the Tipping Point reaches where it can often feel quite dark can't it because it's almost like you're pushing and you want to wait for the moment to happen what have been some of your most impactful moments or biggest sort of learning experiences when you've been sort of either driving change or part of a change team that really stand out for you I think when I
(26:12) first started in in change a lot of the research or practices I I were was exposed to were very much on the changes linear you can come up with a plan and if you tell people what the change is they can either get on the bus or off the bus and then once those that remain on the bus stay on the bus you can take them through a plan tell them what to do and they'll do it and obviously that probably only lasted as something I was uh subscribed to for a very short period of time because change is messy life is
(26:43) messy it doesn't make sense to have such a linear approach to change it's it's much more complex it's much more emergent and I think one of the things that that really sticks with me and I often feel like a bit of a fraud when I say say is there's so much about change that is about conversations and sense making and finding and holding and facilitating the space for people to make sense of what is happening once again this is where coaching can be really helpful but just embracing the fact that my role is to find those
(27:21) spaces and and to hold it and and to help that sense making process happen rather than going down a tradition business change route which is very much can you come up with a plan and tell us what we need to do and I I have when I say that to people other practitioners and people that I work with this idea of embracing that changes messy they always say to me if that makes sense but also that the weight is lifted off their shoulders that they don't feel this pressure to force change through because I haven't found much if any research
(27:54) where change happens like that unless it's a very straightforward everyone subscribes to it you know organizations don't work like that so that that's my biggest insight and that's the biggest Insight I I pay forward when people ask me because it it seems to be the one that resonates the most yeah and so many of the change models make it look really simple and linear and there's kind of these nice steps that you go through and you know they don't reflect the messiness and the reality of of change
(28:19) in organizations when people are involved do they no and this is where I sometimes feel a bit of an anomaly though because I appreciate the models I really like the Simplicity of them and I I actually do I'm about to completely contradict myself here I do see the utility of them in providing a foundation to I guess introduce Concepts because if I take for example adcar as a A Change Model so you know awareness desire knowledge ability reinforcement now on paper even though it looks like a circle it looks very simple it
(28:59) oversimplifies however there is evidence behind it practitioner evidence um I haven't read enough about the academic side to know to know about that but even though change is much messier than that there's a lot of utility in terms of being able to take people through that and being able to introduce some of the concepts that they might see appear when we go through a change project so even saying change project actually made me shudder a little bit um so I'm in no way against models I think they have utility they're just not the
(29:33) be all and Endor and they need to be married up with that practitioner experience and I guess held Loosely yeah um and not not held too tight yes exactly I was thinking the same thing as you were talking is hold them lightly and use them where they're where they're helpful don't follow follow them slavishly yeah and we had we had David Wilson on recently didn't we and he from the Oxford review and he was sort of describing models are really useful but they're kind of like maps and maps are a way of seeing things
(30:00) but they're not the only way of seeing things and you kind of sort of hold it appropriately to help let it guide you uh but you still need to use other things like intuition and that don't you well yeah because the thing is imagine a world where we got rid of models it would just be chaotic you know there's a reason there is a reason we have uh models Maps Frameworks and you see it on LinkedIn a lot don't you you see these posts where you know because I do this a lot and I I'll put Frameworks out I'm I
(30:27) am a massive fan of ber liwin for example as a map of an organization because what I like about it is yes it's very 2D on a piece of paper I'm very old school I've got a piece of paper apparently but I I like using it as a checklist to just make sure okay of all my plates in Balance here what is not quite in tandem what have I not paid enough attention to um and I use it I really like it as a tool to introduce OD to uh to organizations um but I know that sometimes when I post these Frameworks some individuals will
(31:02) say well it's much more complicated than that and it's a case of yes I know however if we didn't have something what would we have we would just have lots of conversations that doesn't work for everyone sometimes people need that Assurance one of the biggest bits of advice actually that I received when I was at Ry Park I had the privilege of doing a dialogic OD course with Bob marak and Jervis Burch I think it is um yes very very privileged and it was all talk it was talking about emergent change and it was absolutely
(31:39) brilliant and I I really enjoyed it and me being me I I was I think at the time I was in a role where I just knew they weren't going to take to these Concepts and I could bring them in and not use the terms to to to help but they wanted a change plan so I asked the question of of my fellow practitioners in the court and I said look how my my team need a change plan and and I what what are your thoughts on this bearing in mind this is emergent change we're talking about and they said if your organization needs a
(32:10) change plan do a change plan doesn't mean you're going to stick to it because they're not looking for something to hold you to account to they're looking for an element of assurance kind of goes back to your question Garen and Danny around how do I provide certainty sometimes it's doing those practices using those models doesn't mean you're necessarily going to follow them step by step um so yeah I I you can see I feel quite passionately about this yeah I think it comes back to what we said at
(32:36) the beginning about your your take on kind of meeting people where they are so it's really important isn't it that you know we meet people where they are and we give them Solutions and and ideas they can work with that aren't kind of overly academic or out of their sphere of understanding exactly and I think sometimes I read research and I think oh this is brilliant this is how organizations should run and then I go into a coaching situation or I go into a contract and there is absolutely no way that I would be able
(33:09) to introduce those Concepts so I have to practice a bit of reflexivity bit of judgment in terms of you know how far do I take them and I think this is a bit of a debate that I notice when I engage in od networks and conferences um I can absolutely hold my own with if we stick with the dialogic OD example um and I can understand the concepts and and I can talk about them but I'm also really aware that if I pitch myself as a practitioner where that's what I'm going to do and I'm going to say this is what the world of
(33:43) the this is what the world of work looks like a four- day week AI us being used everywhere really clear strategy and you're going to hold yourselves to account it's going to be wonderful I can absolutely do that but if you're miles away one of my core principal as a practitioner is that I should always be shoulder-to-shoulder with you um and so it it's it's a dose of judgment as to how far you push them but I I will always meet them where they are and that's my starting point and that is
(34:11) exactly why every project will be different every program will be different because their starting position will be different the other thing I was going to ask you so leaders have got an increasingly difficult job when I look at the kind of role that a leader or managers expect to take how can OD help leaders kind of make sense of their their roles and be more effective in them H well I think this is going to be an enduring question and to be honest I think it probably always has been for organizational development um it's just
(34:36) a landscape has shifted into something that feels much more complex so I think for me so I'm going to started with my definition of w development if that's okay and then come back to the question and and please remind me of the question if I totally go off and but for me whole development is aligning strategy with your culture with your practices is and doing it in a way that is participatory and using an Evidence base um and Behavioral Sciences so for me one of the big things for leaders is trying to make sure that they take
(35:13) accountability for all of those areas um as best that they can and I think OD can be a really great mirror and reminder for making sure that all of those different areas get the attention that they deserve I think the other thing as well with practitioners and and once again this is this is surfacing another principle of mine is and I do think this is probably one of the competences if we were to say have a competences framework for OD I'm awaiting comments about suggesting an OD framework um but having that external
(35:44) Insight uh and being able to bring that into the work and being able to say okay as a leader this these are the leadership challenges these this is what's going to be coming up ahead for you let's see how we can prepare for that um but I think one of the biggest things that I find I'm working with the most um and thinking about how OD can help is sustainability around leadership so you've got some really big challenges coming up ahead some really big ethical challenges as well if we think about
(36:12) artificial intelligence and how we introduce that but there are so many opportunities for Change and so many well-intentioned leaders and managers wanting to say yes to everything because everything feels strategically important and I think the role of OD is being able to have conversations around where does your focus need to be what would a more sustainable way of working look like where do we need to place our strategic Focus um and once again I I was reading a really great book um it was a really long flight back from Costa Rica and it
(36:49) was talking about senior leadership teams and the end of the heroic Chief exec the rise of leadership teams and being able to build that leadership capacity much further so it so we move away from that command and control way of thinking and you know it's in those sorts of spaces when I think about the rise of Team coaching as well it's in all of those different areas that I think OD can really help um and provide some space for thinking and sense making again and and really thinking about where does our strategic Focus need to
(37:24) be CU when you're in the room where they're trying to prze where in the strategy room or a leadership team meeting and they're trying to agree priorities and we kind of call it the grown Zone because it's the bit where they've got to stay with it and it gets really difficult and particular if you're one of the things about heroic leadership is that someone else decides the priorities for you and they carry the responsibility and they carry the anxiety but when you're in a leadership
(37:46) team meeting and you know if you're a functional setup then you've got to make sacrifices you've got to live with the anxiety of choosing one option over the other you've got to give an account for it and that's often why organizations have so many priorities because they just they can't stay with it what what can be done for leaders to kind of work through that yeah well this is where I think before you even get into the conversation about strategic priorities it's worth taking a step back and and
(38:14) almost assessing where you are as a team if you're in an organization because once again context is important it depends there are some organizations where actually having that one Chief exec is most helpful because I don't know either your business is so dispersed that actually it's so dispersed you don't need to come together as a leadership team but that for those businesses where your services are very interdependent and you do need a leadership team I think before you're even getting into the conversation about
(38:43) strategic priorities it's about looking at where are we as a leadership team for exactly the point that you've mentioned Garen you've got personal agendas you've got individuals who have got to the table through having those individual accountabilities it's really hard they're all we're all humans it's really hard to have built a service only to then be sat in a room and have to maybe make sacrifices for the greater good it's a really difficult conversation so where I found it to be really helpful
(39:16) and this this takes time and I think this is one of the problems no one has time but I think it pays dividends to just take a step back and go how do we want to do this where are we as a team do we know each other's preferences do we have psychological safety to be able to say actually I don't want to give this up or actually I think this is the right thing to do do you have the space to challenge you know and if I think about some of the time that is spent having strategic conversations actually that time could have been spent having
(39:48) those sorts of conversations and I think part of the problem can be is that they can look a bit fluffy and if you're in a Time pressured environment they don't they look like a luxury but there's so much utility to just Contracting around how are we going to have this conversation you know proactively thinking about what's going to deril us and planning for that I think that's that there's so much utility to have in that conversation and it can be a workshop it can be a oneoff it can be a
(40:15) program of Team coaching if it needs to be but just assessing where you are now I think will it pays dividends in my experience fabulous so when you think about success how do you measure success when you're working in od yeah that's that is a really tricky one because I think where you're sometimes working across a system across an organization even if you're working at multiple levels either onetoone Team level organization wide it can sometimes be really hard to then make a connection a cause and effect I did this and this
(40:49) happened um so I'm not going to sit here and talk about oh I did this intervention and staff retention you know was really good afterwards um I think everyone can Google the staff metrics you can use um I think for me it's much more intuitive than that it's the feedback I'm getting it's that sense of positivity and are we going in the right direction of travel sometimes that can be enough for me um and it's very individual to the organization so to give you some really tangible examples
(41:23) there's things that that I've been able to support uh implement that have been tried multiple times before but this is the time where it's actually happened because we've done it in the right sequence or we focused on putting the right conditions in place first and that to me is a success because we've actually been able to do it this time so that suggest to me that something's gone right but sometimes it's it's feedback I've worked with leaders who are up all night worried about you know how do I do
(41:53) this how do I do that one of my metrics is they're starting to sleep again and that's you know that's not necessarily down to me but that is down to them either having the space to work problems through having that coaching space um just having that sense of a direction and a road map and and a sense of actually there is a way forward and and don't get me wrong sometimes the metrics are very very even more tangible than that you know I have this deadline and I need this structure in place by then
(42:24) being able to achieve that and being able to do so with people say actually the change was managed really well there I felt I had a say and I have a belief in this leadership team so my metrics and My Success measures will be very much dependent on the context and I guess for me I judge it in the Contracting stage what would success look like for you let's partner around what that looks like so that you know we can we can manage expectations and build on this together and and what are some of the biggest lessons you've learned
(42:54) along the way one of the biggest lessons so I'm going to interpret that question actually as what would I say to myself if I was starting again maybe we should change that question really good question yeah well only because one of the first things that came to mind was about language and semantics and I think when I first came into this field I really latched on to the am I really doing OD does this what am I doing now does this count as OD because when I first got into the field it and I you know was learning about it and
(43:29) I was meeting practitioners you know there are spaces in the field where I would say they can there can be some snobbery around what counts as OD and I think when I was early on in my career I really took that um and internalized that and that translated into me thinking you know am I really doing ID does this count and I think for me as I broadened my network met different practitioners explored different Avenues of or development academic practitioner based but like I say in the different fields I sort of lost my connection to
(44:06) am I doing it right because you know like most things there's there's not a clear definition anyway if you go on cipd you'll find a different definition compared to if you go to Ry Park and yes there's common Concepts you know all of them look at strategy all of them look at participative change but the field is so bro Broad and it evolves you and and also who's going to tell you whether you are doing OD or not there's no higher being that says yeah you're doing it now Sarah so I decided to just let go of it
(44:36) and that was one of my biggest lessons and and one of the things that felt more helpful to me instead of being so binary in my thinking was to learn as much as I could about the field and come up with my own principles I'm always thinking about how my knowledge as a practitioner how I behave as a practitioner how I'm doing as a prct practitioner all of those different areas um I try to do supervision to really reflect on my practice how much of this is me when I'm giving feedback to leaders how much is this informed by
(45:11) my feeling of what they should do versus what I'm really seeing and I think that that is probably one of the biggest lessons not holding the field so tightly but navigating my principles and what it means for me and as soon once again the pressure just lifts and it it I just think it makes it a better experience for your clients as well to be honest because the other thing as well with your finding your principles is you find your brand and your area I know there'll be practitioners in the field some of
(45:38) which are some of whom are really good friends of mine we have completely different views if you had both of us in an organization you'd get a completely different experience it's neither here nor there so I think yeah loosening that grip uh was really helpful to me you obviously do lots of Learning and Development yourself what are you how are you investing in your own Learning and Development at the moment what's on your your list yes well I'm really fascinated by this concept of an Evidence base and just really aware of
(46:07) how much we read in research where actually there isn't an evidence-base because there's no Central definition to to link it back to so I'm very interested in learning more about how how do we form that evidence base how do we bring it together um and like I said I've got a real interest in groups and teams and I feel a lot of my qualifications Center on onetoone interventions coaching for example and coaching psychology and I I really think organizations are made up with teams and I I often find when I look at articles
(46:40) or change plans or things like that they can often look at individual level interventions and org wide and actually there's teams everywhere so I think that's going to be my next area of curiosity um but one of the things I found really helpful in terms of just coming up because the field is so broad how do you identify obviously following your interest and your gut but um there is an app that I use and I think it's on the equality and diversity equality I cannot think what the website is called
(47:16) that's really annoying for the sake of this podcast um but there is an app where it talks about the different skills that you you have as a practitioner the different areas of knowledge and it just allows you to test where you are in each area and it just inspires thinking um and I found that really helpful tool for navigating is this Chan Judes yes thank you for understanding my gibberish she she runs a really good she she's obviously passed away unfortunately so before she her Legacy was that she left a brilliant YouTube
(47:51) Channel full of like experts wasn't it from from the legends of OD she brought them together and one of the last things she did as well was to put together this amazing app wasn't it yeah and it is a brilliant app and actually just watching those webinars that that series because I think it came out over the pandemic and we obviously had a lot of time to watch things that's another way that I just I look at different things and I think would I be interested in that is there a utility for me in this um and
(48:18) development for me doesn't have to be a qualification it can just be reading up on things talking to people and I think that's where my interest peaked in um in group Dynamics and and thinking about Team level interventions um but they are they're a great series uh and there's a really great one actually because another one of my favorite models that I love to use is appreciative inquiry I've always um I know it works best when you're looking to problem solve and and you're looking
(48:45) to to strengths rather than problems uh and there's a really great webinar on on there about that one as well what advice would you give to someone who's considering starting a career in organization development so maybe they're in HR maybe they're in a slightly adjacent field maybe they're just looking in at OD or maybe they're just at the very beginning what what kind of advice would you give someone to sort of ease that learning curve along the way talk to people because I think where what really helped me when I first
(49:14) started was doing that Ry Park course very early on in my career because what it was able to do was one of the first things um one of the first activities I think you do is you look at the different definitions you soon realize there isn't one and so you let go of it and I think having that experience very early on is really helpful I think if you if I'm going to talk from as if it was me if I had started too academic I think I would have felt overwhelmed and I would have felt a bit lost and I'm not sure I would
(49:43) have even known what OD was I was really lucky to have practitioners around me that I could ask and make sense of the field so that would be my biggest bit of advice talk to people gain your own understanding really understand what it looks like um like I say my my experience of OD one minute I'm doing or design the next I'm doing Employee Engagement and coming up with communication strategies then I'm doing leadership development programs I had a whole contract where I didn't do any of that and I did continuous Improvement
(50:14) for 18 months and I still count that as or development would I have found that in the literature maybe if I'd have read an article about the history of or development and it coming in in the 80s but I don't think I would literature that said it was part of the field now so I think talk to people and really formulate your own thinking and not be too attached to whether you're doing it or not you can tell I'm still talking to my younger self can't you it's a good conversation we're
(50:42) enjoying listening but yeah brilliant well it's been so great talking to you for someone who's got significant jet lag you've answered all of our 42 questions perfectly uh with no passes as well um it's been really good and exactly what we said at the beginning it's been a really refreshing take on organization development and also really good for making it accessible because we fundamentally believe that if more people adopted an organization development approach through their practice and through their work
(51:10) regardless of whether you are in O deep pration or not it would make the biggest difference to organizations as well so so thank you for sharing all of those tips and all those insights as well I Danny I've got three takeaways I've got about 10 but I'm going to know down to three um so I've got the importance of continually Contracting is one of the things that sort of stands out from conversation it's just a it's doing it at the beginning but it's continually doing it throughout the importance of it
(51:33) depends and not being too attached and having certainty and trying to sort of sell a solution to people is actually it's working with them and something that's going to keep me awake all night tonight is trying to imagine a world without models it's just blown my mind I can't I can't even think about it so I'm going to think about this about 3:00 a.m.
(51:54) so thank you what have you got D I think three for me the three things are probably the importance of meeting people where they are and St when you said about standing shoulder toos shoulder with with people I think that's so important I think um you said right at the beginning about asking courageous questions and not being afraid to kind of prod and nudge a little bit and just ask are you sure um that's so important and then I think the last thing you said about talking to people and using your network and um the I think the field of
(52:20) od's got some really generous people who are willing to share their knowledge and their experience so really drawing on that thank you so much Sarah I really appreciate if you have time for those of you watching uh Sarah joins an incredible library that we're building um talking to practitioners doing really meaningful significant change in their organization so hopefully this has earned your like and if you want to keep up to date with all the latest interviews that we've got coming up please subscribe to the channel um and
(52:46) please tell other OD practitioners or HR professionals about the channel as well because uh the more we can sort of share the amazing Insight that Sarah and people like her have earned from the front line the better so so thank you so much Sarah you're welcome to go back to bed nowk you very much thank you for your time it's been brilliant thank you thanks Sarah [Music]