Over the last few decades research on the key elements of top performing organizations has dramatically increased. When I wrote Firing on all Cylinders, organization effectiveness frameworks focused on service and quality improvement and were just being developed in Canada, the U.S., Japan, Europe and other countries. The book’s “cylinders” framework draws from that research and the work our consulting companies (The Achieve Group and Zenger Miller) were doing at that time.
When I wrote Pathways to Performance, organizational excellence research had grown and broadened further. As we helped Clients with their culture development efforts, we merged those experiences with continuing OE research to evolve our Transformation Pathways assessment and implementation framework.
Dawn Ringrose’s career has followed a similar path through three decades of evolving organizational excellence models and approaches. Today she is Canada’s representative on the Organizational Excellence Technical Committee (OETC) and Global Benchmarking Network (GBN). Recently the OETC launched the first global assessment of the current state of organizational excellence and the work has been supported by the GBN, International Academy for Quality and ISO Technical Committee 176.
This project is “intended to provide data on the extent to which organizations are characterized by the principles and the best management practices of high performing organizations that are found in excellence models.” The principles are “a reflection of the culture of excellence that exists in the organization and include:
- Leadership Involvement
- Alignment
- Focus on the Customer
- People Involvement
- Prevention Based Process Management
- Partnership Development
- Continuous Improvement
- Data Based Decision Making
- Societal Commitment”
The project centers on an assessment tool based on Dawn’s research and development of the Organizational Excellence Framework. You can help your own organization/culture development work and contribute to the research by completing the Teaser or Full Assessment. The five minute “teaser assessment” provides an opportunity to assess the culture of excellence in your organization and delivers a feedback report to your inbox. The Full Assessment provides a more robust diagnostic of your organization on the culture of excellence and deployment of best management practices. When the final report is completed and the aggregate results are shared, it will provide an opportunity for you to benchmark your organization with others by size, industry sector and country (region).
Teaching a pig to sing wastes your time and annoys the pig. While training and development programs aren’t at that level of futility, many try to “development dip” participants in a one-off effort and then put them back into the same organization culture. I’ve been a “monomaniac on a mission” about integrating leadership and training efforts within a larger culture/organization development effort. So much money and time has been wasted with isolated efforts that don’t provide broader context, support, and follow through.
This framework and research continues the evolutionary path of bringing together approaches like Lean/Six Sigma, Quality, OD/OE (Organization Development/Effectiveness), L & D (Learning and Development) Talent Management, and Culture Change/Development. Take these assessments to gauge the state of your culture and development efforts.
And you’ll contribute to continuous improvement of global research on making organizations stronger for people and people stronger for organizations.
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