Richard Beckhard
Richard Beckhard was a founder of the field of organizational development, a pioneering consultant on change management issues, and an adjunct professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1963 to 1984.
Beckhard helped define organizational development as “a planned, organization-wide effort, managed from top management, to increase organizational health and effectiveness through planned interventions in the "processes" of the organization, using the knowledge provided by behavioral sciences. In the 1950s, he collaborated with Professor Douglas McGregor of MIT, who created the "Department of Organizational Studies" at the institute. With Dewey Balch, he initiated a project designed to facilitate the process of change in organizations, calling it “Organizational Development.”
According to Beckhard's definition, OD involves planned change because it requires systematic diagnoses, development of an improvement plan and mobilization of resources to carry out the purposes.
Together with David Gleicher, he is credited with developing a symbolic formula for Change:
This formula suggests that the combination of organizational dissatisfaction with the current situation (D, dissatisfaction), the vision of the possible future (V, vision) and the steps To achieve this vision (F, first steps), they must be greater than the resistance in the organization for significant change to occur.
Together with colleagues Warren Bennis and Edgar Shein, he helped launch the renowned Addison-Wesley Organization Development Series and initiated the "Organizational Development Network" in 1967.
He wrote 8 books and numerous articles, including his classic work Organizational Development: Strategies and Models, published in 1969, Changing the Essence and Richard Beckhard: Agent of Change: My Life, My Profession.
Beckhard was an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management from 1963-1984. He died on December 28, 1999 at the age of 81 in New York City, United States.