The Shifting Landscape for OD Professionals
OD professionals have not always been considered a critical department in the organization. L&D tended to hold a more prominent spot, partly because organizational change used to happen much more slowly. It simply didn’t present such an acute, immediate need.
Now, with tech and AI accelerating everything, organizations are reacting by looking for more OD capability. While this is largely an intuition from what I’m seeing on the ground, the reality remains clear: OD professionals are going to need to get people talking.
Why Small Groups Are the Engine of Change
How do we actually make change happen in an organization?
Change never happens at the individual level alone. It’s always small groups of people that are most able to create real change in organizations—many small groups working together to:
- Change the way they see things
- Understand new challenges and react to them
- Adapt workflows, processes, and interactions across departments
- Develop practical strategies and work things out together
Most meaningful change comes from small groups of people sitting down and working things out.
Where CoachingOurselves Fits In
This is where peer group learning and peer group coaching come in. CoachingOurselves sits right at the intersection between individual reflection—human development, self-actualization, skills, and competencies—and collective organizational change.
In a small group setting, people aren’t just absorbing facts and figures. They are talking to one another, forming group ideas, and emerging with new thoughts. Through that collective process, they become the change agents in the organization—not as isolated individuals, but together as a cohesive group.
As new AI tech continues to transform how we work, the need for reflective, structured dialogue has never been higher. By leveraging small peer groups, L&D and OD leaders can facilitate human development and drive meaningful, lasting organizational change.