De Beers wanted to strengthen its internal capacity for organisation effectiveness rather than create greater dependence on external consultants.
The work centred on people whose roles were expanding into the organisation effectiveness arena. They needed practical ways of understanding why a team, function or business was performing as it was — and how to intervene in issues such as purpose, leadership, structure, systems, teams, people and performance.
MJA helped translate a substantial body of organisation-development thinking into an Organisation Effectiveness Toolkit that internal practitioners could actually use. Importantly, it was conceived as a guide rather than a formula. There was no prescribed sequence and no assumption that one model would provide the answer to every organisational problem.
Instead, the approach encouraged practitioners to inquire before intervening: to look at the organisation as a system, use data to understand what was happening, involve the people who owned the issue, experiment with action and continue learning as the work unfolded.
The underlying principles were as important as the tools. The practice was collaborative, values-based and client-centred. It recognised that a change in one part of an organisation inevitably affects others, and that sustainable change is more likely when people inside the system understand and own what they are trying to change.
The measure of success was therefore not how indispensable the practitioner became, but whether the organisation was better able to see, understand and change itself.