Introduction
Organizational development (OD) concerns itself with soft issues. Issues such as culture, succession planning, and performance. However, there are ''hard'' diagnostic tools that we can apply in this area. In this article we look at some of the types of tool available.

Diagnostic Tools
The most important set of tools for an OD practitioner are diagnostic instruments, i.e. some set of questions that provide insight into a large group, team or individual.

The large group tools are along the lines of the familiar employee satisfaction survey or cultural assessment.

The team diagnostic most often mentioned by vendors was multi-rater feedback. Of course, any tool you use for a large group, or for an individual, can also be used for teams. Tools such as the Myers-Briggs personality profile or David Kolb''s Learning Styles Inventory as often used with teams to remind people of the differences between people.

The individual tools include personality assessments (usually around something like ''leadership traits") and multi-rater feedback.

Large Group Tools
A traditional employee satisfaction survey asks questions like, "How satisfied are you with benefits?" which are often answered against a 5 point Likert scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree. The intent of these surveys is to spot areas of dissatisfaction and address them. However, this approach is falling into disfavor.

SHL says, "We only survey for factors shown to link to high performance." Gallup too, has made this the centerpiece of their research led interventions. The point is not to get data on factors that "seem like they might be useful" but instead these interventions use a diagnostic to study factors proven to have a causal relationship with important outcomes. For example, it might be interesting to know how satisfied employees are with their benefits, but if this factor is not related to organizational success, it is hard to justify spending a lot of management attention on it.

Gallup has achieved considerable fame with their Q12 process - the 12 questions that, according to their research, matter most in employee engagement and company success. (See First Break All the Rules for more on Gallup''s ideas). Readers of HR.com will be familiar with David Maister''s work Practice What You Preach! which presents his research identifying a key group of questions causally linked to high performance in professional service firms.

The new emphasis on research-led diagnostics considerably narrows the field of potential vendors. Anyone can come up with a set of questions that sounds good, but few companies have the wherewithal to deliver validated diagnostics. There are a host of vendors offering some kind of tools however many are on shaky empirical foundations. As SHL says, "It is expensive to create and maintain a valid instrument".

Large group tools are used both to help determine "What should we do?" and "Is what we are doing working?"

Team Based Tools
The Myers-Briggs is perhaps the most widely known instrument giving (for a thoughtful review of this tool read What Psychologists Want HR Managers to Know about the Myers-Briggs by Paul Mastrangelo). Myers-Briggs experts continually stress it''s not a predictive tool (hence shouldn''t be used for hiring) however it is a great way to help people think about their own personality and that of their teammates.

David Kolb''s Learning Styles Inventory (LSI) can be used to in a similar way, helping people understand their own preferred learning style and the differing styles of their team members.

All the major HR consultants such as Watson Wyatt, the Hay Group, and Hewitt offer some form of multi-rater feedback as a diagnostic to help teams understand themselves better and improve functioning.

Tools like the Myers-Briggs and LSI are uncontroversial and their value lies more in the quality of discussion they generate (and hence in the quality of the facilitator) than in the tool itself. Multi-rater feedback can be used the same way-simply as an opener for a good discussion. However, much the better if the data gathered in multi-rater feedback is based on a validated model of ''what matters''.

Individual Tools
There are a wide variety of tools for assessing individuals. SHL has literally hundreds of different instruments. For example, they have diagnostics for motivation, interests, intellectual potential, self-image and so on.

At the other end of the spectrum, Caliper, relies on a single, well validated instrument, the Caliper Profile, which is a psychometric test aimed at understanding "what this person is all about."

Achieve Global (which old-timers will recognize as the modern incarnation of the famous Zenger-Miller training) focuses on behavioral indicators rather than psychological profiles. This is tune with a broader competency movement that has its roots in the behaviorist school of psychology. Many managers will be more comfortable with tools based on observable behaviors than on tools based on psychological constructs.

In an OD setting, individual assessment is usually used as a prelude to some form of training. Companies like Achieve Global have closely integrated their training programs and diagnostic tools. Organizations looking to use OD diagnostics should think hard about what they intend to do with the results before embarking on a study.

Ethical Issues
The use of tools to assess individuals has an ethical element far more pressing than group assessment diagnostics. In an interview, if someone decides you are an idiot - that is merely an opinion. However, when a "scientific test" labels someone as "an idiot" then it becomes hard to counter. I know a young consultant who was tested "just for fun" in a training course. The result saying she was not management material stuck for years and was an impediment to her career.

The truth is that there is no "just for fun" in individual diagnostics. Dr. Herb Greenberg, who heads up Caliper, insists that highly trained people are needed to interpret the results of the Caliper psychometric. It is not as simple as applying a score or a label to someone.

There are no problems with the use of these tools that cannot be overcome with managerial common sense. The issue for the HR professional is to recognize that tests are dangerous and treat with the same kind of respect a construction worker affords dynamite.

A Final Note of Caution
In his interview with HR.com, Edgar Schein emphasized that there is no such thing as a "diagnostics stage". "There is always a big up-front stage of ''diagnosis'' and ''data gathering,'' says Schein. "This is totally misguided in that it ignores the fact that when we "gather data" we are already intervening. We are already changing organizations, often in very dysfunctional ways, all the time saying to ourselves, I am just gathering data. What nonsense."

OD practitioners and consultants should read Schein''s book Process Consultation Revisited: Building the Helping Relationship.

Conclusion
There are a number of good diagnostic tools on the market, as well as any number of poor ones. I encourage OD professionals to look for opportunities to try different tools from various vendors to gain a sense of the possible. At the same time these tools are not neutral. They can cause harm, as well as good so due care must be exercised in choosing a vendor and in making use of the tool.