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Organization development (OD) is an important area of capacity development practice to improve food and nutrition security, reduce poverty and promote sustainable development. OD is a powerful instrument that helps to analyse and engage in complex situations or contexts and discover effective ways to promote processes of organizational change.

Learning Module 4 is the fourth in the FAO capacity development series. It aims to create a basic understanding of OD and system thinking approaches, as even a basic understanding can cultivate a new way of working. It reflects the learning experience, constructive inputs and wealth of exchanges from the OD seminar series which was held in FAO between March and November 2012.

This module is suggested for development practitioners as well as for FAO technical officers, field officers, programme officers and consultants who are involved in capacity development for organizations, with a particular focus on public service agencies, producer organizations and public-private bodies such as extension and research agencies. It will cover the following areas:

• understanding organization analysis and development;
• supporting the design of change processes;
• engaging in effective multistakeholders’ processes; and
• measuring organizational change.

For each area, this learning module proposes selected OD tools and presents practical cases derived from the experiences of FAO and other organizations.

Tools are available in Chapter 5. See below for the list of tools and their page numbers. 

• Toolset 1: Organizational Performance Assessment (OPA) 102
• Tool 1: OPA checklist – light version 106
• Tool 1a: OPA in-depth checklist – Performance criteria 108
• Tool 1b: OPA in-depth checklist - Organizational Motivation 110
• Tool 1c: OPA In-depth checklist – Organizational capacity 112
• Tool 1d: OPA in-depth checklist – External environment 122
• Exercise 1: Assessing readiness 127
• Exercise 2: Thinking about performance 128
• Exercise 3: Brainstorming on key factors 129
• Exercise 4: Organization biography 130
• Tool 2: Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis 132
• Tool 3: Political, economic, social and technological (PEST) analysis 134
• Tool 4: Stakeholders’ mapping 136
• Tool 5: Needs-Fears mapping 138
• Tool 6: Rights, Responsibilities, Revenues and Relationships (4Rs) 141
• Tool 7: The Organizational Culture Assessment Instrument (OCAI) 143
• Tool 8: Brainstorming 148
• Tool 9: Using appreciative inquiry for organization development 150
• Exercise 5: Appreciative inquiry for a staff meeting 151
• Tool 10: Visioning exercise 152
• Exercise 6: Beginning to bridge the gaps 155
• Tool 11: Scenario building 156
• Tool 12: Business process reengineering (BPR) 158
• Tool 12a: Flow chart technique 159
• Tool 13: Force field analysis 160
• Tool 14: Open space 161
• Tool 15: World café 162
• Tool 16: Using Socratic questions 164
• Tool 17: Collaboration/planning/problem solving meetings 166
• Exercise 7: Completing a self-assessment matrix for performance issues 168
• Exercise 8: Developing indicators 169
• Tool 18: Balanced scorecard methodology 170
• Tool 19: Benchmarking 172
• Tool 20: Combining quantitative and qualitative evaluation techniques 174