2010-08-11T23:12:00.000-07:00

How does your organization perform? What are your thoughts? How is it affecting you?

Organizations and how they organize themselves do affect you.

At the “process level” which refers to work practices; the soft and hard systems you use; communication and reporting arrangements; employment conditions, and management styles.

These have an impact on not just the way the organization delivers its services and products. But on you: Your frustration and stress levels; on your sense of satisfaction; and on whether you want to continue to commit to the organization or not.

Big issues really, and it comes down to this. Is your organization event thinking or system thinking?

Chances are you’re in an event thinking organization. They are either incompetent lurching from crisis to crisis, which puts a lot of stress and pressure on you; don’t challenge you (because workloads are unbalanced); or you disengage. Or the organization is competent but busy “ambulance chasing” events, and finding fault, and blaming you, or someone, as it focuses on addressing personal performance and accountability. Sound familiar?

There is another way, a better way. It’s called systems thinking, and it focuses on the processes you work with recognising that to improve performance you’re a key contributor, and that some 85% of all problems have nothing to do with you, but in the way work practices are set up. Are you surprised?

But doesn’t it make sense to develop your capability and that of the processes around you? Focusing on improving your value and that of the processes you work with to improve the satisfaction level of your customer, and that of the organization’s customers.

Table 1 Shows the Maturity Levels of organizations linked to competence (event thinking) and capability (systems thinking). Where are you now - where would like to be?

To find out more click onto my Google Knol Capability and Organizational Health.

There’s 30 years of research in one article.

Capability: Is your organization performing?