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About US

Pacific Northwest Organization Development Network (PNODN) is a community of professionals dedicated to developing personal, organizational, and community capacity to realize relevant and compelling results. PNODN strives to be an organization that reflects the diverse community we serve.

Our mission is to connect, engage, and develop a thriving community of Organization Development (OD) Practitioners and business leaders (Government, Non-Profit, and For Profit) to ensure our region is at its maximum capacity in terms of development of people and organization effectiveness. We want to help businesses reach record results and develop their people along the way. 

The work of organization development and change can be difficult. PNODN offers a network of support along your path. We provide connection, collaboration, training, new ways of thinking, and the ability to share and learn best practices among like-minded professionals.

Come join our community and help make the Pacific Northwest an even greater place to live, grow, work, and develop.

   

What is Organization Development?

This is a critical question for our field yet answered in many different ways.

What follows is current President of PNODN Board Chris Crosby's answer to the question.

To start, I will share a definition from Dr. Warner Burke of Columbia University. He stated that, "To be OD it must (1) respond to an actual and perceived need for change on the part of the client, (2) involve the client in the planning and implementation of the change, and (3) lead to change in the organization's culture.” Further, Dr. Burke went on to write that,”…organization development is a process of fundamental change in an organization’s culture. By fundamental change, as opposed to fixing a problem or improving a procedure, I mean that some significant aspect of a culture will never be the same.”

Warner Burke’s definition holds high expectations and excludes most OD practiced today. So I will try and lower the expectations while still providing sufficient challenge to various practices.

To be Organization Development you must develop the organization and the people. Therefore, Organization Development is an activity or intervention that develops the organization to reach greater business functioning (obtain measurable goal[s]) and develops people at the same time. If you do an activity that only develops people then it is not OD and vice versa.

See Chris Crosby's full paper on what is OD here.

"PNODN" is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.

PO Box 46107, Seattle, WA 98146

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