A PARADIGM FOR CONTINUOUS ORGANIZATION RENEWAL

The Capability Snapshot is the next-generation resource for organizations seeking an instrument that meets the twin objectives of providing an assessment of 'what is' and providing feedback that can mobilize toward 'what ought to be'.

The first generation consisted of employee morale surveys, asking for opinions and attitudes about various working conditions. These organization assessments focused on employee satisfaction, an important variable that has been linked to customer satisfaction and business profit.

The current generation of organizational surveys emphasizes diagnosis for organizational change. The better surveys use an organizational model to categorize data about the organization. A variety of models exist, each focusing on aspects of the organization that the author would like to see improved. Ann Howard, the editor of "Diagnosis for Organization Change" concludes her review of the literature with a call to "unite visions of organizational change into a coherent whole."

The Capability Snapshot presents such a comprehensive and integrated picture of the organization as a whole. The Snapshot provides numerous direct, indirect and comparison measures of satisfaction for all units, levels and sites. In addition the Snapshot facilitates the management of desired change throughout the organization.

The Capability Snapshot is the centerpiece of an emerging paradigm for implementing a program of continuous organization improvement, organization adaptation to change, and organization learning. The Snapshot serves as a galvanizing event stimulating the entire organization to pay attention to stakeholder feedback. The Snapshot goes beyond the typical survey to offer the organization a learning experience in organizational self-transformation.

FIRST COMPONENT - A VISION

The Capability Snapshot is designed to enable an organization to progress toward the ideal of striving for continuous organization renewal.

Continuous organization renewal integrates three desired processes.

The Capability Snapshot uses a unique HALO MAP for its conceptual framework. This map serves as a guide for organization action towards the HALO ideals.

Maps are not the same as models. Current organization models apply an 'analytic approach' for creating knowledge. Maps apply a pragmatic 'actors approach' for creating knowledge. Each orientation advocates its own research methodology. The Snapshot aims for results that are relevant and actionable more than for information that is rigorous and precise.

The HALO Map is for the members of an organization who seek to realize their intentions of progress towards the HALO ideals. This map provides the lines of action for a renewal journey that has milestones but no final destination.

The HALO map parallels the common-sense notion that progress depends upon the interaction between effort and ability. In organizations, the motivational component is referred to as a 'strategic challenge', a call to action in a particular strategic area. The HALO map posits five strategic challenges as long-term objectives towards continuous renewal.

The competence component for organization renewal is referred to as an 'essential capability'. An essential capability is a combination of 'organization practices' that achieves a strategic goal. The HALO map prescribes three essential capabilities for progress in each of the five strategic challenge areas. These fifteen essential capabilities are generic in that they apply to any type of organization regardless of size or mission.

The HALO map becomes the shared language for renewal striving throughout all units, levels and functions of an organization. It provides a common direction of ends to be pursued. This map converts ideals [HALO] into long-term objectives [strategic challenges] into short-term goals [essential capabilities] into their means for achievement [organization practices].

When the Capability Snapshot operationalizes the HALO map, the explicit message to respondents is, "Tell us to what extent we have succeeded in becoming a higher performing, agile, learning organization. We need to enlist your help in eliminating our weaknesses and building on our strengths". The Snapshot questionnaire clarifies and simplifies this message.

HALOs are nourished by feedback from representatives of all categories of stakeholders. Stakeholders are those persons, both within and outside the organization that have a stake in the continued well being and effectiveness of the organization. Stakeholder feedback to the organization creates an awareness that can mobilize resources for improvement and development.

Some organizations, with a human resource emphasis, focus on feedback solely from internal stakeholders - employees and management. Some organizations, with a marketing emphasis focus on feedback solely from external stakeholders - customers, suppliers and others within their network of contacts. The Capability Snapshot is an information feedback system that integrates the feedback from both internal and external stakeholders.

The same questions are asked so that the measures can be compared. For example, management may rate its organization high on customer satisfaction while the customer scores are significantly lower or vice-versa. Such discrepancy between one group's perspective and another's become the occasions for organization sensemaking. The organization needs to become aware of the extent that the culture of the organization is integrated, differentiated, or even fragmented amongst diverse groups of stakeholders.

An optimal feedback system would provide the organization with knowledge that serves as a basis for deciding on strategic and operational priorities. The organization needs to know to what extent its stated or intended strategy is the actual strategy perceived by stakeholders in different relation with the organization. In addition the organization needs to hear the voices of all its stakeholders regarding the strength and weaknesses of its current performance practices.

The Capability Snapshot is a method of organization evaluation that indicates how the organization currently rates on each of the 15 essential capabilities prescribed by the HALO map. In order for the organization to get a measure of its strengths and weaknesses, each essential capability has to be measured. The Snapshot questionnaire uses four types of indicators to assess each capability. The respondent is asked to rate:

1. A general impression of the strength of this capability in the organization

2. The extent that management supports this capability

3. The extent that the organization follows a particular practice typical of this capability.

4. How the organization fares in applying a leading edge practice re this capability.

Thus a Snapshot questionnaire for the internal stakeholders contains 4 items for each of 15 essential capabilities making a total of 60 items. The average time required for completion of this questionnaire is around 15 minutes. In order to keep the time of a telephone interview with external stakeholders down to 10 minutes, only questions 'a' and 'c' are used in these interviews.

Each generic essential capability is practiced differently in each organization. Therefore the questionnaire items have to be customized to fit the practices and concerns of the organization sponsoring the Snapshot. Representatives of the organization at the level of decision-makers meet with certified Associates of Capability Snapshot Inc [CSI] to ensure that the proposed version of a Snapshot questionnaire is ideally suited to them.

Each respondent is asked: "In your opinion, to what extent do you see [XYZ] as an organization that.......... ?". The scoring criteria used by respondents vary from 0 signifying "poor" to 10 signifying "outstanding".

Based upon personal experiences with the organization, each respondent gives his/her own subjective perception of organization strength in each of the 15 Essential Capabilities. Each response is a valid opinion for that person, even when objective performance measures may indicate that the opinion may be erroneous. The scoring defines organization reality as perceived by a respondent at a particular point in time. These perceptions do count, as they influence the nature of the respondent's ongoing relationship with the organization.

Data processing consists in aggregating the data in order to proceed from individual perceptions to the identification of distinct perspectives by sub-groups, groups, and stakeholder categories. The distribution of individual scores of members of a group and sub-group are described by group measures of central tendency (e.g. averages). A frequency distribution of responses by each group to each item in the questionnaire indicates the group's modal responses and the extent of variability within that group.

To overcome a possible tendency by some groups to be overly critical or too generous in their praise, the average scores are converted into rankings. These rankings portray relative standing, highs or lows in comparison to the other scores by that group. Thus even though all 15 Capability scores by the Supervisor group [Management category] seem to be unduly low, the rankings indicate which of the Capabilities scored somewhat better and which scored the worst from this group's perspective.

The power of the Snapshot lies in its articulation of diverse viewpoints. The Snapshot gives each stakeholder group and/or subgroup a language with which to explore the potential of the organization.

Striving to become the best requires building consensus amongst all stakeholders regarding the state of current Capabilities and the lines of action to be taken for improvement and development.

Management makes sense of the data by focusing on the differences in scores and rankings amongst groups and sub-groups within a stakeholder category, as well as on differences amongst different stakeholder categories. The larger the gap, the more one unit seems to deviate from the norms of the other units, the greater the requirement for sensemaking.

The context for discovering the meaning of the data is derived from the comparison of unit perspectives. When independent sources of information obtained during the same time period tend to agree, there is validity by consensus. For example if the total samples of all stakeholder entities rank Quality Improvement as the number one Capability, it can be reasonably assumed that this Capability is strong within the organization.

However when group perspectives differ from one another, it is not possible to automatically determine which perspective is more valid. Disagreements amongst group perspectives serve to enhance rather than diminish the value of a Snapshot. There are multiple ways of viewing the capabilities of the organization. In seeking to understand the reasons for a particular group's perspective, the organization can become more responsive to that group.

Just as management collaborates in the process of organization inquiring by customizing the sampling, so too does management collaborate in the process of organization sensemaking. The managers are not passive spectators being handed an interpretation and recommendations for action. These practitioners in the midst of on-line situations are the inquirers and sensemakers, bringing to bear what they already know as the context for the new knowledge being presented. The Capability Snapshot thus avoids the two most pervasive problems regarding the utilization of survey research and organization diagnostics, namely, strong resistance to and even rejection of the findings or its opposite of extreme dependency upon the researchers as experts.

Organization sensemaking is a social activity. Individuals are provided with the report modules of the Capability Snapshot of their organization ahead of a face-to-face meeting.

Even in their solitary review of the data they may be anticipating how others will react to these results. The meetings consist of dialogues in search of shared meanings and common understandings. The collective actions of an organization rest upon alignments that take place during such group communications.

As managers review the data they notice results that surprise them or that disconfirm what they expected to find. Such discrepancies initiate attempts at explanation. Different managers will pick out different cues. These cues may highlight problematic situations and/or organization possibilities. Managers are pragmatic and favor plausible and reasonable interpretations. The following examples typify the understandings reached by management as they collectively make sense of the Snapshot data.

Strength: All stakeholder groups rank "Customer Focus" as the top Capability.

Weakness: The two Strategic Challenges pertaining to competing in the future are ranked lowest. [Generating Organization Vitality; Realizing Innovation Opportunities]

Threat: Although the average rating of the organization by all 50 customers was good [7.3] the bottom quartile of customers were giving ratings ranging from 3.4 to 5.1. Their responses to the open-ended questions indicated that the competition was ahead in certain respects.

Opportunity: The low scores on the Capability "Teamwork Commitment" created the opportunity for the organization to launch an intensive program of 'Team Development'.