Some Conditions for Failure

1. A continued discrpancy between top management statements of values and styles and their actual work behaviour.
2. A big program of activities without any solid base of change goals. Some organisation leaders install activities such as management laboratories, a piece of a Management Grid program, or a `packages’ of goal-setting activities and assume this to be an OD program. They do not have a personal commitment to the systematic setting of goals and plans for achieving them to providing responsible leadership in organisation improvement.
3. Short time framework: Most top managers are action-oriented; they are result-oriented and impatient. One condition that can doom OD efforts is an unrealistic expection of short term results. Even if dramatic short-run changes do occur, they are not a valid measure of real organization improvement. Three to five years is realistic time frame in which an OD effort may be expected to show meaningful result.
4. No connection between behavioural-science-oriented change efforts and management- services/operations-research-oriented change efforts. There are a number of systematic efforts to change the operations of organisation that are not coordinated at the staff level. These produce inefficiencies and competiton between staff and do not take advantage of the synergy that is possible in a joint effort to systematically plan and conduct a change in the organisation.
5. Overdependence on outside help: With theincresing complexity of organisations and of the demands of the environment, it is easy to let consultants or specialists `solve the problem.’ In oragnisation-deveopment efforts this is not a long-term useful strategy. The management of the organisation must have a continuing personal commitment of the problems and to their solutions.
6. Overdependence on inside specialists.
7. A large gat between the change effort at the top of the organisation and efforts in the middle of the organisation. Frequently, the top-management group will engagein major effort to improve its funcioning, operations and work. This takes time and energy. During the time of this effort, there may well be an increase in communications problems and social distance between the top are not communicated and transferred to the next layer of organisation, it is difficult to achieve and integrated orgaisation - development effort.
8. Trying to fit a major organisation change inoto an old structure: Some OD efforts towards particitaory health care need a radical restructuring of the doctor-based hospital strucure.
9. Confusing ` good relationships’ as an end with good relationships as a condition : Some behavioural-science organisations change programs imply that when effictive, open, trusting relationships exist among the people the organisation, you have organisation health. They imply that an end goal of such a program is to establish this type of climate and relationships. They do not indicate that the effective healthy organisation in addition to good relationship, has clear goals and definite plans for achieving them and that the suborganizations are also working against goals. Good relationship are an important condition in an effective organisation but they are not an end state.
10. The search for `cookbook’ slutions: There are still many managers who will try anything that will provide a quick solution to improving the organisation’s effectiveness. Real organisation health is not subject to cookbook solutions.
11. Applying an intervention or strategy inappropriately : There are a number of cases that have been sighted wherein a particular intervention or change stategy which was effective in one organisation or under one set of conditions, which without any diagnosis as to is a form of cookbook solution and it tends to produce failure rather than success.
12. Too rapid changeover in top posts, and new people not inerested in OD :Change in key posts takes place befor OD takes roots.
13. In many hospitals, management gave more importance to financial solvency than to OD interventions.
14. Striving for high technology when community oriented health care needed simpler technology.
15. Inability to see health care change as a political act rather than as a mere managerial or technical function.
16. Fear among some doctors and others to move away from the herd.
17. Lack of courage and willingness of top management to call a spade a spade, in relaton to strategy, task, relationships, and concrete achievements.
18. Lack of process-consultation skills among key members of the organisation.

Some Conditions for success

1. There is a pressure on the top management which induces some arousal to action.
2. There is some form of intervention at the top, either a new member of the organisation, or a new staff head in organisation development. This induces some reorientation in looking at international problems.
3. There is diagnosis of the problem areas and this induces an analysis of specific problems.
4. There is an invention of some new solutions to problems and this produces some commitment to new courses of action.
5. There is some experimentation with new solutions and this produces a search for results with the experiments.
6. There is reinforcement in the system from positive results and this produces acceptance of the new practices.
7. There is pressure from the environment, internal or external for change.
8. Some strategic person or people are `hurting’.
9. Some strategic people are willing to do a real diagnosis of the problem.
10. There is leadership and inspired vision among key people.
11. There is collaboratory problem indentification between people in the organisation.
12. There is some willingness to the risks in trying new forms or relationships.
13. There is a realistic long-term time perspective.
14. There is a willingness to face the data of the situation and to work with it on changing the situation.
15. The system rewards people for the efforts of changing and improvement, in addition to rewarding them for short-term results.
16. There are tangible

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