The big questions at the heart of organisational development within civil society

As the Open OD network tries to push forward organisational development practice within civil society, big questions are emerging that challenge some fundamental assumptions.

The Open OD project has been working with a network of over 200 people from across civil society to learn about and contribute to organisational development practice and, in turn, to progress and change within organisations.

As the project develops and more voices are heard, more big questions are emerging. Some of these questions fundamentally challenge current assumptions about civil society organisations, why they undergo change, who leads that change and whether it values and prioritises the right things, people and relationships. And these challenges have only felt more pressing and pertinent as the Covid-19 crisis continues to unfold.

While not all of these big questions can be taken on in this phase of work (currently running until the end of March), we can surface them, provide some space for the network to explore them and bring the ideas and insights that emerge back into further contributions to practice.

Some of the big questions that have emerged so far

Have the events of 2020 fundamentally challenged the context and role of civil society organisations and, therefore, of organisational development?

Should the organisation be de-emphasised with organisational development within civil society?

Is organisational development too under-valued and under-resourced to be done well, regardless of improvements to shared practice?

Are the expectations and priorities of funding and commissioning fundamentally at odds with good organisational development?

Does conventional organisational development practice tend to make imbalances of power and influence worse, both within and between organisations?

Is organisational development practice too driven by the characteristics and needs of large organisations?

Is the development of grassroots organisations and leaders too undervalued?

And some of the ways that the project is currently exploring them

• Luke Billingham explores the lack of investment in organisational development for grassroots leaders in this blog
• In late Feb, we’ll be running a discussion amongst several of the project advisors about the effect of the events of the last year on civil society organisations and our assumptions about organisational development. We’ll make the recording available and write it up.
• In early March, we’ll run another discussion on whether the organisation should be de-emphasised with organisational development and, again, will make that available
• In late March, we’ll run an open event that will share a wide range of perspectives from across civil society on a number of these questions

If you would like to participate in a discussion, contribute to a blog or raise new questions, please do get in touch with me at nick.stanhope@shiftdesign.org.

If you’d like to stay in touch with the project and get a few updates on how you can participate in the network, please fill in this form.