Organizational Development Consulting

UHRM Training and Development is pleased to offer organizational development consulting services to University managers.

Organizational development consultants work with managers and their work groups to:

• identify issues which impair effectiveness;
• recommend solutions to these issues; and
• implement these solutions when appropriate.

These efforts are made only when invited by the manager and are always customized to a department's environment, mission, and goals.

Problems that may indicate a need for organizational development services can include breakdown in communication among team members, ambiguity about roles and responsibilities, a need for better planning, conflict between group members, and leadership issues.

Over the past several years, we have successfully completed organizational development projects such as these:

• helping two managers resolve an interpersonal conflict so that a departmental project on which they both must cooperate can stay on course;
• working with senior administrators to design multi-year strategic plans (including missions, values, vision, goals, and objectives) for their units;
• redesigning a largely manual work process to take advantage of advances in technology and run more efficiently and effectively;
• assessing communication patterns among a team of professional and clerical employees to ensure group efforts to serve students and faculty can be improved;
• coaching managers on effective performance evaluation techniques; and
• observing and intervening in the regularly scheduled meetings of a senior management team to increase understanding among group members and to improve group decision-making.

If you are interested in our organizational development consulting services, call Arnie Aronoff (702-0865; a-aronoff@uchicago.edu) or Rusty Hellman (834-1293; r-hellman@uchicago.edu).