Development in Organisation: What It Really Takes to Change

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Development in organisation: three words that usually signal a long PowerPoint and a short-lived change.

You’ve probably seen it, a big plan, a re-org, a motivational poster in the staff kitchen. A lot of energy is put in, but not much that actually shifts.

At Farleigh, we see organisational development differently. We treat it as the slow, deliberate art of helping people move forward together. It’s messy and human, but when it’s done well, it changes everything.

This isn’t a how-to. It’s a nudge to think differently. In the sections ahead, we’ll unpack what development in an organisation really looks like when you do it on purpose – with people, not process, leading the way.

Table of Contents

What Is Organisation Development, Really?

If you’ve googled it “what is organisation development”, you’ve likely seen the same loop: a few models, some consultancy jargon, and a diagram with arrows going in a circle.

But what you need to realise to truly develop is that it’s a mindset – not a framework.

OD is about making conscious, strategic decisions to improve how your organisation works. That means looking beyond business outputs and asking harder questions:

  • How do people communicate? 
  • How are decisions made? 
  • Where does tension live? 
  • What values show up when things get difficult?

You can’t “fix people”. You need to understand the system they work in, and make that system work for them.

OD pulls together insights from organisational psychology, behavioural science, and leadership thinking, but it isn’t academic. It’s deeply practical. It’s the moment you redesign a meeting format that’s been draining energy for years. It’s when you finally name the trust issues between teams. It’s when your structure stops getting in the way of your purpose.

And it only works when it’s grounded in your organisational values, your culture, and your people – not someone else’s idea of best practice. Done well, organisational development is the space between intention and impact. It’s where clarity lives, and real change begins.

Not sure where to start? Farleigh offers 2 free hours of consultancy to help you unpack your biggest challenge – no off-the-shelf solutions, just real conversation.

👉 Talk to us about where development could take your organisation.

Why Development in Organisation Matters Today

development in an organisation

If everything around your organisation has changed, and your ways of working haven’t – they’re probably holding you back.

Markets are moving faster. Business operations are more complex. People expect more – not just from leadership, but from their experience at work: purpose, flexibility, psychological safety and room to grow.

Remote and hybrid work are now the new norm.  Teams are stretched. Trust is harder to build across a screen. Culture is harder to sustain. Add in burnout, automation, and shifting expectations, and it’s no surprise many businesses are running on good intentions and outdated systems.

This is where development within an organisation matters – because you can’t navigate new pressures with old patterns. Real change management is about reflecting, understanding what is happening beneath the surface, and adjusting deliberately. Ask yourself:

  • Where are our ways of working creating friction instead of flow?
  • Which behaviours are we rewarding – and do they match what we say we value?
  • Are our structures helping people collaborate, or keeping them in silos?
  • How are decisions really being made – and who’s left out of them?
  • What’s quietly getting in the way of progress, trust, or growth?

It’s not always about more change. It’s about better change. The organisations that will thrive are the ones who treat development as a form of long-term innovation, rather than a one-time fix.

The Characteristics of Organisation Development Done Well

When development works, you feel it. Conversations get braver, meetings are shorter, and decisions clearer. People start solving problems together rather than working around one another.

Here’s what we see in organisations that are doing the work. Not just performing change, but living it:

1. 🎯 Strategy translates all the way to a Tuesday morning

Everyone knows the goals. But more importantly, they know what those goals mean for how they work this week. When clear organisational goals are understood, shared, and used to make decisions, teams know how their work connects to the bigger picture.

Ask Yourself: Could every team explain how their work supports this year’s priorities – in their own words?

2. 🧭 Power dynamics aren’t ignored – they’re understood

A healthy culture isn’t one without conflict. It’s one where leadership is acknowledged, employee feedback is safe, and challenge isn’t career-limiting. Your values become truly real when they show up in the awkward bits.

Ask yourself: Can people give difficult feedback upwards – and be heard, not punished?

 3. 🕳️ You don’t optimise what you don’t understand

Before tweaking a process, you ask: “What’s really driving this behaviour?” You don’t jump to action. You look at the root – ask the people who are really involved, gather opinions and feelings. If you’re curious about the system, you’ll likely uncover things that aren’t in any report: the workarounds people rely on, the invisible pressure points, the routines that make no sense but keep happening anyway.

Ask Yourself:  Are we solving the thing that’s visible – or the thing that’s really in the way?

4. 🌱 People grow faster with autonomy

Employee development thrives when the environment allows for autonomy, reflection, and stretch. Development should be included in team check-ins, project reviews, and everyday feedback. Your people can’t work on themselves consistently if they have to wait for an annual review.

Ask Yourself: Does our day-to-day rhythm create space for growth – or does it quietly delay it?

 5. 🧠 Learning loops are short and honest

You’re not collecting employee feedback to tick a box anymore. You’re acting on it – visibly. Your experiments are small, fast, and public. And when something doesn’t work, the failure isn’t hidden, it’s shared.

When your organisation acts this way, learning stops being an initiative – it becomes the way things work.

Ask yourself: When was the last time we showed – not just told – our people what we learned and what we changed?

These are just a few of the characteristics of organisation development that start to unlock real momentum – but they’re far from the whole picture. Because when you focus on people, the opportunities to grow, adapt, and evolve become endless.

The Development Journey: Phases and Interventions

There’s a myth that development in organisation follows a neat linear process. Step one, step two, step three – outcome.

In reality, it’s messier. You need to take into consideration that people learn at different speeds, priorities shift, and structures resist. The right intervention at the wrong time can do more harm than good.

If you want development that lasts, you need to understand when to act – and how to act with purpose.

Here’s what that actually involves:

🔍 Pause and Surface: What’s really going on?

We’ve already established that OD relies on you asking the hard questions. Before you design any intervention, you ask:

  • What are we trying to shift – behaviour, culture, structure, mindset?
  • Where’s the friction really coming from?
  • Are we ready to change – or just restless to do something?

This is the part that’s often rushed. People often think they already know the answers, but this is usually far from the case. Clarity here saves months down the line.

Practical step: Try one open listening session with zero agenda – just space to surface friction. What’s said (and what’s not) will tell you everything.

🧠 Sense and Define: What needs to shift, and why?

Once the friction is on the table, you make sense of it. You look for patterns – not problems in isolation. This allows you to name the dynamics that are quietly shaping how your organisation behaves.

You might uncover:

  • Leadership behaviours that contradict your values
  • Structures that reward the wrong things
  • Practices that protect outdated norms
  • Skills gaps nobody wanted to admit were there

You’re mapping the terrain. So when you do move, you’re aiming at the right target.

🎯 The Action Stage: Intervene with Purpose

Now it’s time to move with precision. OD interventions are all about making sure every move has meaning; you build the smallest possible action that unlocks the biggest shift.

That might mean:

  • Running a leadership development sprint to build trust and consistency in decision-making
  • Designing a team building intervention to break silos and reset how your people collaborate
  • Reworking roles and responsibilities to match your priorities

This is the test of your understanding so far. If you’ve listened well, what you do now will resonate.

Practical step:  Choose one intervention. Make it specific, co-created, and easy to explain. If it needs a slide deck, it’s probably too complex.

🔁 Embed and Adapt: Shift the System

A single workshop doesn’t embed development – what comes after does. If the changes introduced in the action stage aren’t absorbed into the day-to-day, they disappear just as fast.

Embedding means replacing old practices with new ones that reinforce the shift. That could be:

  • A change in how team retrospectives are run
  • A new rhythm for peer feedback
  • Making reflection part of your leadership cadence 

This is where continuous improvement becomes a habit. And adaptation is key. Interventions never land perfectly. That’s fine. What matters is how you listen, iterate, and re-align based on real input – especially from those most impacted.

Practical step: After any intervention, ask: What’s working? What’s not? What’s quietly sticking without needing reminders?

📈 Track the Impact

If development is working, you’ll feel it before you see it in the numbers. But that doesn’t mean you ignore data – you just broaden the definition of what counts as evidence.

You’re looking at organisational performance differently now:

  • Are conversations more honest?
  • Are goals clearer and shared across teams?
  • Are people using initiative rather than waiting to be told?

These are signals of capability, alignment, and real employee development. Pair them with hard data: retention, engagement, delivery speed – and you’ll get a full picture.

Practical step: Run two scorecards: one for business outcomes, one for behaviour shifts. The insight lives in the gap between them.

So, what is organisation development?

Development in an organisation is not a process. It’s a decision: to work on how your organisation functions, to invest in capability, and to put people at the centre of your business. 

It’s the difference between reacting and responding. Between managing output – and building a business that can think, adapt, and grow together.

Now, let’s look at what that looks like in action – the Farleigh way.

Case Study: Bath Future Talent – Developing the Next Gen

The Bath Future Talent programme was built for early-career leaders navigating the complexity of real organisational life. Co-designed by Farleigh and Bath Bridge, it was a space to grow confidence, capability, and connection, without the corporate fluff.

Across four in-person modules, coaching, mentoring, and a live community project, participants built the kind of leadership that is rooted in self-awareness, grounded in context, and shaped by others.

As with all our leadership development, this was more than just ticking a box. It was a deliberate act of development within an organisation. The aim wasn’t to create high-potential talent in isolation but to build something that invested in their people and would shape the future of their organisation’s goals, company culture, and performance.

What changed?

  • Enhanced Leadership Capability: Participants reported increased self-awareness and a deeper understanding of effective leadership within complex environments.
  • Strengthened Organisational Networks: The programme fostered connections across various sectors, creating a sustainable alumni network that supports ongoing professional development and cross-organisational collaboration.
  • Community Impact: Through social community projects, participants applied their learning to real-world challenges, benefiting both their personal development and the wider community.

This is what talent management looks like when it’s human. And when it works, it lifts everyone.

👉 Read the full case study here

✅ Checklist: Spotting Where Development Work Needs to Happen

Now that we’ve unpacked the journey, the interventions, and the real characteristics of organisation development that create lasting change –  it’s time to bring that lens to your own business.

If you’re ready to look inward, this checklist is a good place to start.

This will highlight the places where what you say and what you do aren’t quite lining up. That’s where the work lives, and the opportunity sits.

Use this as a clear, honest sense-check of how your organisation is currently set up to grow – or stall.

🔍 Strategic clarity

⬜ Teams can clearly explain how their day-to-day work links to current organisational goals
⬜ We’re not spending time on work that feels disconnected from business priorities
⬜ When priorities change, people understand why – and adjust accordingly

🧠 Decision-making & ownership

⬜ People know who decides what (and why)
⬜ Decisions don’t get stuck bouncing between layers of sign-off
⬜ Responsibility sits close to the work – not always with leadership
⬜ Our stakeholders are aligned and consistent in how they show up

💬 Feedback & challenge

⬜ Teams are able to give honest employee feedback  and see that it leads to action
⬜ It’s safe to challenge upwards or across – especially in high-stakes conversations
⬜ People don’t avoid conflict; they know how to work through it
⬜ Feedback isn’t saved for reviews, it’s part of how we work

🧱 Processes & systems

⬜ We regularly review internal practices and drop what’s no longer helping
⬜ People can spot and fix inefficient business operations without needing permission
⬜ Workarounds aren’t the norm – systems generally support, not frustrate
⬜ We prioritise clarity over complexity in how we work

🌱 Growth & development

⬜ We invest in developing skills that match where we’re heading – not just where we’ve been
⬜ Career progression feels visible, fair, and based on capability
⬜ Employee development happens in real time – not just in annual conversations
⬜ Leaders take ownership of growing others as well as managing performance

🔁 Improvement & momentum

⬜ We reflect regularly on how we work – not just what we deliver
⬜ Small changes are welcomed and aren’t delayed by over-analysis
⬜ We iterate based on learning and don’t just push through plans
⬜ There’s a visible rhythm of continuous improvement rather than bursts of change

What now?

Remember every unticked box is an opportunity, not a failure.

You don’t need to do it all at once. But you do need to start.

👉 Want a second pair of eyes on what this reveals? Let’s start a conversation.

Let’s Make Development in Organisations Mean Something

If you’ve read this far, you already know it: surface-level change isn’t going to cut it.

Real development in organisation means looking at what’s underneath, and doing something about it. That’s where we come in.

At Farleigh, we work with organisations ready to move. We don’t hand you a playbook. We build it with you – based on who you are, what you believe, and where you want to go.

You can start with any of our core focus areas:

👉 Culture Consultancy – for when how things feel is blocking how they work
👉 Leadership Development – for building confidence, clarity, and capability at the top
👉 Team Development – for shifting how people collaborate, challenge, and move forward together

💬 Need help on where to begin? We offer 2 free hours of consultancy to work through your biggest challenge.

📚 Want proof this works? Explore our case studies to see how we’ve helped organisations like yours build change that lasts.

👉 Start the conversation and let’s see where development could take you.