The essential fluidity of OD and organising

IN THIS CHAPTER, we consider the nature of organisations and OD from a different angle. Instead of giving discrete definitions that imply they are things or objects, we offer a way of thinking about them as patterns of shifting interactions in which we are immersed. Because these interactions are a part of our daily lives, they can be hard to notice in our own practice and difficult to talk about. But this is important as becoming increasingly reflexive creates the opportunity to develop our practice. We offer this to begin the process of challenging and understanding practice. In other words, it is an invitation to ask questions (a theme we will continue throughout the book). It is not a neatly packaged argument in itself.

The organisation, or to organise

The organisation, or to organise: one is a noun, the other a verb. In the OD community, we often talk about organisations as if they are an object or an item. And in some respects, they are physical things: the buildings in which they are based, the legal documents that describe them, the contracts for the people who work with them, and so on. But in doing so, we downplay the stream of relationships that we are a part of: how we influence others, as others influence us. For example, in saying "I work for the NHS in ..." or explaining that, as an OD consultant, "I'm going into the NHS to work on ...", we are using abbreviations that take complex processes and wrap them up as objects. Here, we are going to draw attention to the processes of organising. This means considering organisations as patterns of human behaviour dedicated to some form of organising principle along with an array of resources. And through these tensions and enablers, people muddle on as best they can. This does not mean that any organising principle has been agreed by everyone; rather, it forms a sense of orientation by which people take decisions and move along.

In some organisations, this is stronger and more overt than in others, depending on the power of those involved; and in this process, patterns of interaction emerge and become increasingly predictable. These routines that people adopt, often unthinkingly, become culture. When we in OD talk about resources, we mean those materials and enablers that might be used in advancement of those aims such as buildings, intellectual property, software, networks of individuals and, of course, people themselves.

So when people use nouns to describe organisations, structures and systems, attention is often not paid to the verbs of organising, becoming, interacting and engaging. This also extends to policies, strategies and other propositional themes. Often these are discussed in terms of concrete outcomes, with little attention being given to context and how events unfold over time. These propositional themes are declarations of some future intent but accept that meaning emerges from the interaction between individuals and the context that they face.

Assumptions of organisations

There are some assumptions that we as authors would like to probe and, in doing so, we hope to encourage the practice of noticing and testing assumptions. We do not offer a definitive list here but raise questions to challenge the assumptions of organising, for example:

• Are organisations a good idea? On the one hand, they form a set of cohesive relationships around which activity is coordinated. They create a sense of identity for individuals as they relate to their teams and wider network. On the other, what good ideas and people do they exclude?

• Are teams a good idea? On the one hand, a cohesive group of people is vital in working, say, in an operating theatre on a complex surgical procedure. On the other, to what extent are the characteristics of teamwork stressful for those who prefer to work by themselves? Is it a contradiction that many in OD are sole practitioners, or work in small associations, yet advise others on developing teams?

• What will organisations be in the future? In a hyper-connected world, what will organising look like and will the demarcations that denote the limitations of an organisation today exist in the same way?

As you will see, we too use the noun "organisation" but with some hesitancy, knowing that it is shorthand for the verb that describes the processes of organising. With the use of science fiction, we do not take the organisation for granted. New hyper-networked ways of organising may just be too fluid for the structures and rules of the traditional organisation.

The fluidity of OD

In this section, we will explore the essential fluidity of what we mean by OD that is mirrored by the organisation writ large, the idea of which we have briefly touched upon above. There are three connected themes:

• How the part becomes manifest in the whole, by which we mean how an OD intervention affects the wider organisation

• The pitfalls and benefits of talking of OD as a 'thing'

• Bringing these together, how we can think of OD as something that is a contested and a continuingly negotiated idea.

To explore this, we venture beyond OD and HR by introducing some philosophy, a subject that can help us to see the world and the assumptions we make in refreshing ways. Firstly, we hear from James:

The first time I put two and two together about what OD was, I was walking down a corridor at Roffey Park, an internationally renowned leadership institute. It was the early noughties and a group of colleagues were discussing how to handle a particular challenge with a client. I do not remember the details but I think it was something to do with managing the relationship between a manager and his or her team, in the context of some complex change. Someone in the group said "We'd treat this as OD. This is a classic piece of OD for us." This struck me as interesting in a number of ways. Firstly, it was the first time I had ever heard the words 'organisational development' being used in this way. It seemed to have something specifically related to the place where it was being practised; in this case it was being defined as a piece of OD work by practitioners at Roffey Park. It was the "for us" that resonated, as if calling it OD and defining it that way was somehow relevant for this group of people. For me, OD had become definitionally tribal; in the dynamics of our interactions we were defining ourselves and our identity by comparing our group with others. Often, this creates a sense of a 'superior us' opposed to an 'inferior them'.

We often say that it has a 'local, timely and specific' flavour. Secondly, I realised that OD was something I had (sort of) already been doing for about ten years before that amble down the corridor. I may have called...