What’s Wrong with Us?

Analyzing organizational effectiveness

One of the biggest challenges facing business leaders today is the work of setting and implementing an agenda for sustainable change and improved performance. Too often, efforts to change and improve are undermined by a lack of systems and guidelines to keep the project on track and focused on goals. A report by Booz Allen Hamilton “Improving Organizational Effectiveness,” focuses on the steps a company must take on the road to change and improvement.

“If an organization really wants to drive change, we must start with a clear understanding of what is causing the problems,” says Lanning Bennett, director of Australia’s Centre for Organisational Innovation, which partnered with Booz Allen to create the OEP tool. “Organizational initiatives often fail because the underlying causes of problems have not been correctly identified. They are only addressing the symptoms. OEP focuses heavily on causal analysis.”

How to get to the root of effectiveness? Start with these three core

categories:

* Strategic intent. How well do employees understand the vision, strategy and plans of the organization? How well have they internalized this strategic direction?

* Business processes. Look at the systems in place to execute the strategic vision -— procedures, knowledge transfers, metrics, and reporting. Do they enable the execution of the strategy? Or are they a hurdle to clear?

* Culture. Evaluate the culture of the organization, looking at elements such as values, leadership, teamwork, empowerment, and communication. How well do these elements function as facilitators of enduring business success? Do these cultural values foster improvement or stand in its way? Keep in mind that cultural symptoms may not be caused by problems of cultural issues. Look as well at strategic direction and systems issues to see if they are the cause of culture problems at the company. ________________________________________________________________

Excerpted from e-newsletter provided by Sales and Marketing Management Magazine

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