Strategy making with the whole organisation: OR and the art of the possible

Present-day expectations of wide stakeholder involvement in strategy-making processes have been addressed in distinctive ways by the Operational Research (OR) and Organisational Development (OD) communities. This paper describes an intervention supporting a strategy for change in a university where a high degree of participation was essential to address the substantive issues faced following the disappointing outcome of an employee satisfaction survey. The importance of staff satisfaction for achieving good business outcomes is explained in the paper before an account is given of the work that was undertaken using a combination of Large Group Intervention and Problem Structuring Method approaches. The achievement of the project in shifting the locus of perceived control and opening up a more participative strategic debate is next assessed. The case demonstrated the benefit of using an intervention process whose participatory nature mirrored the desired changes in the client organisation, and in which the dramatisation of senior management group commitment underlined determination to effect change. Other implications are discussed: the value of using a novel assemblage of approaches and techniques rather than inflexibly following a single methodology; the potential payoff from closer work between the disciplines of OR and OD; and the observation that there is a real opportunity for the wider use of participative approaches in strategy making, something that OR practitioners are well-placed to provide.