Self-evaluation is the breakfast of high-performing champions. Open dialogue is the lunch for agile management teams. An action map is the dinner for learning organizations. This nutritious diet enables an organization to succeed at fulfilling its mission and strategy.

Self-Evaluation

Self-development refers to the process whereby a person makes a conscious effort to steadily improve. This development is based upon personal assumptions about one’s weaknesses and strengths leading to a plan of action for building on positive elements and for limiting or eliminating deficits.

These assumptions about strengths and weaknesses may stem from self-evaluation and/or from feedback by others. Unfortunately many action-oriented executives lack the time, inclination, or skill of introspection for reflecting upon themselves. In addition many executives discourage criticism from others in the mistaken belief that they must always portray complete competence. The executive in pursuit of self-development requires both internal and external inputs.

Self-improvement commences with self-evaluation. Self-evaluation consists of the synergy or combined action between seeking feedback and reflecting upon the validity of this information. This reflection should lead to plans for further improvement. Whatever the source of the comments, the executive has to acknowledge at least privately, what needs to be improved.

Open Dialogue

The above formulation can readily be transferred from individual development to organizational improvement and development. The senior management team is the agent that acts on behalf of the organization as a whole.

This team fosters organizational improvements by seeking and obtaining information that would reveal the current strengths and weaknesses of the organization. Data from multiple sources about a wide range of topics would be most useful for assessing the current situation.

All organizations possess data that would be helpful in diagnosing their situation. Some organizations are adept at converting this data into information messages that have relevance to an evaluation of strengths and weaknesses. Agile organizations consciously work at converting this information into knowledge for action. In order to be flexibly responsive to change, the agile organization requires a senior management team that is highly skilled in open dialogue as the means for deriving knowledge from information. Wiser decisions result from this process.

Open dialogue among members of the senior management team enables the organization to unfreeze from its present habits. Open dialogue among members of the senior management team enables the organization to envision what should be and could be. Open dialogue among members of the senior management team enables the organization to mobilize for action.

Open dialogue is defeated by vested interests within the organization. The prevailing value system, organization structure, compensation packages, and decision-making routines should reinforce the belief that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Everyone should take responsibility for the overall success of the organization, not just for a particular area of activity. A budget meeting with everyone arguing for a bigger slice of the pie is not conducive to open dialogue about what is best for the organization.

Open dialogue is defeated by the abuse of personal power. Leaders who manage solely by commands, sometimes thinly disguised as persuasion, discourage the kind of group reflection necessary for effective and committed action. Dogmatic members of the team, who tend to see things in black versus white options, impose their simplistic vision thus discouraging other members from expressing their views or doubts about a projected plan of action.

Open dialogue seeks input from all members of the team. Each member brings a particular perspective to the discussion. Each perspective is valid for that individual. The group must have a norm of respect for each perspective so that a member will entrust his/her hesitancies, concerns, or contrary thinking to the group for consideration.

Open dialogue seeks closure via a shared consensus that serves as a binding decision. Every member may not agree with that decision but will carry it out nonetheless. Members accept the legitimacy of the process of arriving at that decision.

Open dialogue enables an organization to keep pace with change. An agile organization functions with an expectation of constant change. Open dialogue supports review meetings whenever deemed necessary by some members of senior management. The group does not have to wait for a fixed timetable to decide when to reexamine a particular concern such as the organization strategy.

Action Map

Not all decisions require the same amount of time for discussion and deliberation. The process of open dialogue should be most manifest in the meetings aimed at clarifying and rethinking strategic direction. An organization’s strategy can be viewed as its plan for long-term survival and growth. The strategy determines the major investments in capital, technology and human resources.

Many organizations succeed at formulating an effective strategy but have great difficulty in the implementation of this strategy. Many organizations have the mistaken belief that their intended strategy is the strategy they are actually carrying out. Many organizations remain committed to a strategy that has been rendered obsolete by market conditions. Open dialogue within the senior management team is a necessary but not sufficient element in avoiding and/or overcoming these difficulties.

The organization requires an action map that can link strategy to the work performed in all areas of the organization. The action map provides a shared language for aligning different levels within the organization hierarchy. The action map provides a common framework for coordinating the efforts of different departments or functions.

An action map provides the firms answers to the following 4 questions:

• How do we envision the organization’s future?
  The answer deals with mission, strategy, and attributes of an effective organization.

• What must an organization be able to do in order to drive itself toward its desired future?
  The answer deals with essential capabilities, core competencies, and key success factors.

• What are the best practices that will operationalize these desired imperatives?
  The answer deals with evaluation, measurement and benchmarking of performance processes and outcomes.

• What are the individual competencies of workers in pivotal jobs that will lead to better organization practices?
  The answer deals with efforts in human resource and leadership development.

The action map provides the linkages between individual competencies, which lead to effective practices, which lead to superior organization capabilities, which lead to brilliant execution of strategy. If all the members of the senior management team speak the same language of the action map, their open dialogue becomes more fruitful.

Learning Organizations

Learning organizations extend the concepts of ‘self-evaluation’, ‘open dialogue’ and ‘action map’ throughout the organization.

Every department can evaluate its strengths and weaknesses by using the organization’s action map as a frame of reference. The meetings of the members of the department may require a facilitator to establish the norms of open dialogue at these meetings. The consensus arising at these meetings sets the priorities for future action.

This cycle of self-evaluation- open dialogue- and action is characteristic of an organization that has learned how-to-learn. The evaluation feedback should lead to both first-order changes within the system and the more radical second-order changes that challenge the underlying assumptions of the system. The organization spirals forward every time it repeats this cycle.

Continuous organization renewal is the ultimate prize of this effort.