Week 1 Assignment:

In an organizational diagnosis and development project, a consultant usually begins with a scouting stage. In the scouting stage, the consultant gets to know the client and the expectations. Additionally, the consultant will often observe organizational activities, conduct some interviews, and read available organizational documents to get a feel for processes, attitudes, and potential areas for attention. The scouting stage helps the consultant develop some initial ideas about areas for improvement. Then, the consultant can design data collection (which you will do in next week’s work) to confirm those ideas or identify other concerns.

Planning and Execution:

In this week’s work, you will do an opening assessment (i.e., scouting) of your organization. Research answers to the following issues (bullet point questions below). You may use your own observations, interviews with other organizational members, internet research, and research in organizational documents as part of your review. Due to time constraints for the project, you may also include hypothetical data as needed to fill in some gaps. However, you should do your best to collect as much real data as possible. The following themes should guide the planning and execution of your scouting work.

• What is the organization? What does it do/what is its purpose?
• How well does your organization develop its members? Does it appear to operate from a comprehensive PDP? 
• What evidence or symptoms do you see that support your conclusion (about whether your organization develops its members)?
• What are some of the possible reasons why your organization does or does not develop its members well?
• Who would need to get involved to improve your organization’s development philosophy and practices? 
• What benefits might individuals in the organization experience if a more robust developmental philosophy and practices were in place?
• What benefits might the organization experience if a more robust development philosophy and practices were in place? 
• Where are the most important opportunities for organizational development (remember, the focus of the project is the professional development needs of members)? 

Deliverable:

Prepare a one to two page (500 to 1000 words, singlespaced) scouting memo that synthesizes the issues and the most important opportunities for organizational development

• Review the memo tips guide linked in the instructions above.
• You do not need to provide a title page
• Copy and paste your memo into the Discussion Area dialogue box for peer review.  
• Cite any resources using APA even though the rest of the paper is in memo format rather than APA
• Submit your response to the W1 Skills Discussion Area by the due date assigned.
• Provide at least two peer-review feedback responses to your classmates and a response to the instructor as required during the week.
• Responses should help evaluate the underlying issues in classmates’ organizations (e.g., Is there anything they seem to be missing? Other resources or ideas they should consider? Did it provide relevant opportunities for organizational development?) as well as the executive level communication of their memo (e.g., Was it clear? Did it synthesize the key issues?
• Was it persuasive? Supported?). Be professional in your responses to others.