ODII
ORGANIZING FOR DEVELOPMENT
An International Institute (LLC)

Origin
ODII, Organizing for Development, an International Institute LLC  was originally set up as is a not for profit institute. in 1988, but since 2004 operates as a Limited Liability Corporation. 

Purpose

ODII  works with individual leaders, organizations, communities and countries to help them  achieve the full potential of their purpose.

Principles
ODII 's work is rooted in a philosophy that holds that purpose is the source of power and that every purpose creates a power field.  ODII helps individuals, organizations and communities to discover their central purpose and helps them develop the full potential of the power latent in that field.  

The emphasis on purpose and power enables ODII to tackle very complex problems which involve multiple actors, multiple levels of organizations all with different purpose and perceptions of what needs to be done. 

The approach emphasizes  different purposes and different powers or capacities as positive contributions to the development of robust creative responses to achievement in complex situations. 

Application
ODII tries to build available knowledge and wisdom into the organizing process itself.  People learn through practice of the process in their own way and at their own pace.  Clients gradually adapt the approach to their own style and circumstances and embed it seamlessly into their basic operational pattern. ODII's  approach typically results in:

• Dramatic and rapid increases in performance at low cost with high degrees of commitment
• Enhanced individual, team and community spirit
• Creation of more robust policies that take into account the whole internal and external environment
• Creation of strategic alliances between stakeholders, new configurations of roles and responsibilities, and more effective coordination mechanisms
• Clarity on actions and the creation of more support and commitment to those actions
• Greater commitment from all stakeholders for the achievement of the purpose

Services

Consulting:
ODII helps clients discover and use the full potential available to them, both from internal and external resources of information, relationships and technology. It helps, for example, to ensure that the organization identifies its highest level of purpose as the source of its power. It ensures that all relevant stakeholders are identified and involved in the organizing process. It uses a process that helps individuals honor and transcend their personality differences, encourages organizations to honor and transcend the organizational norms and cultural differences, and to work with the whole community of people involved.

Training:
ODII trains its clients through action learning. The result is a low cost highly integrative, easily replicated approach to organization development. ODII offers free standing, inter-active workshops that give individuals an opportunity to learn the process and experience new levels of empowerment.

Workshops:
ODII organizes conferences and workshops that address issues of development using holistic organizing processes to achieve goals.

Research:
ODII uses action research to increase its understanding of the relationships between the individual, the group and the whole. ODII collaborates with Universities and Research Institutes to create improved models of governance, strategic planning and leadership development.

Assignments

The following are samples of the types of assignments ODII has completed.

• Designed and facilitate the workshop which created The Learning Network group working to help Norway become a learning society (www.nettverk.org  (press the flag for the English version)).
• Creation, design and facilitation of a global action learning process to identify and implement a "New Development Paradigm." The program has involved more than fifteen countries, the World Bank and the United Nations.
• Design and facilitate an organizational process for communities in Maine and Connecticut hard hit by the decline in defense related industries.
• Design of a process for "multiplicative" rather than "sustainable" development in Thailand. The project began through village development and then "multiplied" throughout thousands of villages, making the jump to urban development and the private Secom. The process has now spread throughout the whole of Thailand. It is being adopted by the government as a means to engage all Thai's in their own development.
• Design and facilitate a conflict resolution process in Cambodia.
• Creation of a national information policy framework for Colombia.
• Resolution of a financial crisis in the management of the electricity sector in Colombia, leading to the redesign of the organization and planning process used by the energy sector.
• Create an institutional framework for product market development in Hungary.
• Evaluate the governance system in Sierra Leone and the design of a national process for institutional reconstruction.
• Operational improvement, strategic planning and organizational development for multi-national organizations.
• Design and facilitation of a Search Conference to demonstrate the applicability of a natural systems approach to management consulting in the US.
  

  

Director

    William E. Smith Ph.D., 

Senior Fellow 
     J Murray McCombs, 

ORGANIZING FOR DEVELOPMENT 
An International Institute( LLC)

4920 Butterworth Pl. NW.
American University Park
Washington DC 20016
Tel: 202-364-7209
Fax (413) 521-2616
Email:
odii@odii.com

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