As a consultant, a lot of my time is spent diagnosing matters related to organizational success. Sometimes as I listen, I discover themes about challenges that need to be addressed. At other times, I hear people provide insightful ideas about organizational opportunities. My goal is to help organizations clarify their needs and then help them act on them.
However, this process should not only be the domain of consultants. No matter who you are, you must learn to diagnose organizational gaps and opportunities. I have discovered five useful questions which can help you do this. Michael Watkins suggests that leaders should use them when they begin working at a new organization. However, I think they are questions which can be helpful to ask even if you are not new. Here they are;
When it comes to diagnosing an organization, the first question you might wonder is: how do you diagnose an organization? Some people might think that this would be a complicated process. However, there are many benefits to finding out what problems your organization is facing. One of those benefits is that once you know and understand all of the issues and problems your organization is facing, you can begin to fix them and help your organization progress.
An organization is a collective of individuals and is defined by an environment, culture, and purpose that helps them achieve their objectives. An organization’s environment is what immediately surrounds the business and its culture pertains to the values, beliefs, and norms on which the company was established.
An organization faces challenges when changes in any of these factors occur because it is then more difficult to accomplish the company’s objectives.
To diagnose an organization, start by asking:
• How can we improve our business? and
• What changes are occurring externally that may affect the way we work internally?
(Once these two questions have been answered, it will be easier to find potential issues and plan for the company’s future.
When trying to diagnose a company or an organization, it is effective to look at its growth and development over the years. By looking at how well they’ve done historically as opposed to their competitors, you can get a sense of what choices they made and why those might have been successful or unsuccessful. You may be able to use this information as a better guide for how to handle the future.
There are many opportunities available for the organization to exploit. The best way to go about doing this would be to create a plan and then follow it. However, the organization has not done that yet.
With all of these opportunities and with no plan to take advantage of them, there really is no way for the organization to properly exploit them. Many people view this as a lack of potential to expand growth and revenue.
If the organization were to create a plan and follow it, they would be able to exploit these opportunities. Creating this plan is really just part of the process of doing business because without one, there is no way to continue with growth or revenue.
I would focus attention on talent development in the organization. The use of digitalization to create new business models could displace incumbents and cause disruption in the future.
The kind of talent that the organization needs to develop is technical knowledge and expertise. This will not only help with digitalization, but it could also help with the other opportunities as well.
In one of my recent blogs, Mr. Blanchard commented, “Many leaders are scratching their heads in the eventual decline phase of organizational life without a plan to launch a new service or product” (see Assessing Organizational Opportunities). This astute assessment summarizes the demise of many organizations! The five questions above are simply one way to overcome this problem.
But what about you? What questions have you found helpful in diagnosing the needs of your organization?
Jeff Suderman is a futurist, consultant, and professor who works in the field of organizational development. He partners with clients to improve culture, leadership, teamwork, organizational alignment, strategy and organizational future-readiness. He resides in Palm Desert, California. Twitter: @jlsuderman Email: jeff@jeffsuderman.com
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