the DIF has 121 sworn and 60 nonsworn employees and leads the nation in insurance fraud prosecutions and convictions. Despite its overall success, the DIF director became convinced that the division could improve even further by creating an organizational environment in which empowerment, teamwork, and participative management represent the norm. This illustrates the essence of an organizational attitude that past success should not prevent managers from looking inward for further improvement.

Additionally, the department’s overall total quality initiative—a management approach based on participative supervision and the continuous improvement of organizational processes and practices— serves as part of the initial stimuli for the DIF.3 Managers formed a team within the DIF to determine appropriate strategies and develop an internal plan for organizational development. As part of the overall approach, with the support from division executives, the team decided to do a leadership practices assessment focused on five leadership practices managers should follow.4

1) Challenge the process: search out challenging opportunities to change, grow, innovate, and improve; experiment, take risks, and learn from the mistakes.

2) Inspire a shared vision: envision an uplifting and ennobling future; enlist others in a common vision by appealing to their values, interests, hopes, and dreams.

3) Enable others to act: foster collaboration by promoting cooperative goals and building trust; strengthen people by giving power away and providing choice, develop competence, assign critical tasks, and offer visible support.

4) Model the way: set an example by behaving in ways consistent with shared values; achieve small “wins” that promote consistent progress and build commitment.

5) Encourage the heart: recognize the contributions to the success of every project; celebrate team accomplishments regularly.

Managers shared the assessment results throughout the division and revealed the need for organizational improvement and cultural change. The DIF director and the core leadership team continued to move forward by delving deeper into related issues.

AN ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

A variety of models exist concerning methods to achieve improvement within the organization. Organizational development (OD) is a model designed for planned, systematic, and ongoing problemand action-oriented processes that focus on both technical and human improvement within the organization. This long-term approach needs management support and is based on sound management theory and practice. One seminal feature of OD is its use of action research, or actual field research, with a continuous cycle of diagnostics: data gathering, analysis, planning, implementation, and feedback.5

In the data-gathering phase, managers collect information, either quantitative or qualitative, concerning organizational functioning. Some of the methods used in this phase can include surveys, focus groups, interviews, and archival research. Managers must analyze the