Customer Reviews

How to OD... And Live to Tell About It

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First to dispel any strange thoughts before they get loose...the OD in the title of this book stands for Organizational Development...but you hopefully knew that already! It was the clever title that attracted me to this book but I have to say right up front that the content was not half as clever as the title.

Much of the content is collected from various other sources and practitioners with any experience will find it familiar. It is interspersed with anecdotes from Mr. Becker's experiences labeled as cases. The book recommends a 7-action model for OD consulting:

1) Determine your degree of readiness
2) Initiate the discovery process
3) Determine whether alignment is by compliance or commitment
4) Diagnose the three domains and your client's degree of readiness
5) Write the Rx and validate commitment
6) Facilitate solution implementation
7) Intervention follow-up and personal reflection

The model seems valid and familiar, yet I could have wished for more detail or recommendations with regard to tools, methodologies, and exercises for each of the steps. The use of a single case through each of the steps rather than bouncing between multiple unconnected cases would have made the book more readable and may have reduced confusion.

The content seems correct but adds little to the repertoire of an experienced OD practitioner and is incomplete as a beginner's reference. To be sure, the book included a relatively valuable appendix with several welcome tools including sample client questions, an operational report card, and a values checklist.

At 155 pages, the book is not a long read but in truth I cannot recommend it if you are looking for a high value OD reference.

Read this book...I strongly recommend you do... William
Becker's book is not a theoretical work. It is about the experience
of OD, about the essential conditions that must be adhered to in
order to do it professionally...This is a practical book, with practical
suggestions, helpful lists, and about 40 pages of sample forms,
questionnaires and processes that Becker has found useful
and is happy to pass on to other OD practitioners

Professional, competent, high-integrity, high-skilled practitioners
are relatively rare. Fortunately William Becker is one of them and
his book provides a clear and important blueprint of what OD, done properly, really is. If you are involved in OD it is worth reading."