The road to HAPPY@WORK®

Healthy Organisations must Constantly Reinvent Themselves in a Modern Changing Environment

Change and Organisational Complexity

The rate of change is increasing: government changes; fiscal changes; EU changes; Local Authority changes; technology changes; market changes; consumer changes; competitor changes; departmental changes; etc.; etc.

Any change impinges on the organisation in a variety of often unpredictable ways. Managers must act quickly to take advantage of, or protect against, these changes.

Organisations must prepare in advance to be able to adapt to both internal and external change and this should involve all staff. Top-down driven change after the event may be too slow to meet the needs of the organisation. Usually by the time the organisation wakes up and moves into action, multiple other changes have arrived, all demanding change processes that may make the planned change obsolete even before implementation has begun. Disruptive change programmes should be avoided being counter-productive.

Change put on unprepared staff will simply lead to more stress with all the consequences.

Our analysis involves an on-line questionnaire which is undertaken by a number of your staff.

Identifying Performance Blocking Issues in a Sea of Change

Up to now, getting to grips with why organisations do not work as effectively as intended has been difficult, costly and time consuming. Most methods used are susceptible to data contamination through the almost inevitable frailty of human interventions, because the brain interprets instead of recording valid data. By the time the discovery process is complete, the information generated is almost invariably out of date. Traditional discovery processes are costly because they usually involve many hours of expensive management and / or consultants' time.

Our system identifies the causes of organisational under performance, in real time. Its databases can be queried to locate performance blocking issues, wherever they exist in the organisation, by function, level, or level within function; objectively and with rigor - targeting current problems and their causes, not history.

How can you prepare?

Management should set out to develop a 'Resilient Organisation' i.e. one that constantly
re-invents itself in an unending dynamic process.

Operational workers, 'the sensors at the periphery of any organisation', are often in contact with the organisation's customers, and will be the main source of adaptation and innovation.

The development of a 'Resilient Organisation' is critically dependent on operational people being empowered to adapt products and processes to meet customers' needs, and to make decisions to test ideas that will produce improvement.

This in turn depends on changing the 'hidden permissions' that operate in all organisations so that they enable, instead of disabling, operational people to fulfil their strategic role.

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire is short and takes no more than 10 minutes to complete. The system can handle unlimited sample sizes from any number of locations across the world. This means that the process is low on time consumption, convenient for respondents, and very fast.

The questionnaire enables us to determine the areas of workplace organisation that are providing the staff with their biggest worries.

Data Analysis

Our system uses source data that avoids the need for judgemental inputs by respondents. Instead, using web based data collection, it builds a database by asking questions about observable practices and processes and links these to diagnostic outputs through an inference engine model. Key inputs, driving issues identified in the outputs, can be traced back to complete the diagnostic process. The outputs are not just parametric descriptions of peoples' perceptions, but indexes of specific characteristics of the organisation, where there are known causal relationships with its ability to change, providing staff with satisfying jobs and generating self-motivation.

A - After the Analysis of the Questionnaire

The information in the Database is analysed by our Diagnostic Tool producing 15 outputs that are ranked, measuring the resilience of the organisation and indicating clearly which areas are of concern to staff.

Graphical Reports

Graphical reports (see below) provide a measure of the 15 outputs. Interpretation of differences and identification of developmental actions needed is acquired through a dialogue with the staff involved. Healthy change processes emerge from this dialogue without the need for management directives.

Specific Characteristics of the Organisation

Key inputs, driving issues identified in the outputs, can be traced back to complete the diagnostic process.

People in many organisations operate on the basis of 'hidden permissions' that are constantly reinforced. Successful organisations operate as adaptive networks of knowledge workers. Self-direction and control are more appropriate than conventional management control. Our analysis will identify permissions which need changing and which cause staff to hold back. Graphical reports (see below) are used as a measure of the 15 dimensions of the causes of resentment/resilience.

The Resilience Index

The system produces a measure of the resilience of an organisation as a percentage of a theoretical 100% perfectly resilient organisation.

A resilient company 'will be able to make sense of its environment, generate strategic options, and realign its resources faster than its rivals'. Such a company will enjoy a decisive advantage.

Dialogue with Staff - The Way Ahead

B - Workshops - Dialogue with Cross-Functional Staff

Interpretation of differences and identification of actions needed is acquired through a dialogue with some of the staff involved. This will identify performance-blocking issues, including permissions, that need changing fast. Healthy change processes emerge from this dialogue without the need for management directives.

Additional Changes

These will become apparent when we have completed the initial review and feedback process. The design will be totally dependent on whatever it is that comes out of the initial review and feedback. It is important that staff are seen to be driving the improvement.

C - Implementation of Changes Diagnosed from Within

The change process will have started already, through the conventional feedback workshops in B above. The design will be totally dependent on whatever it is that comes out of the initial review and feedback.

FAQ to clarify

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