“Most large, apparently successful corporations are profoundly unhealthy” So stated Peter Senge, well known author of the Fifth Discipline.
Are corporations the only ones in this boat or does this apply to other organizations?
All organizations, to be healthy, rely on a balance between managing conformity (within the organization to help people work together to achieve goals), and flexibility to adapt to changes to the external environment.
The question is: Conformity to what purpose?
Is the organization you work in mainly a:
- Bureaucracy conforming to internal priorities and adapts poorly by not learning from errors?
- Capable organization conforming to external priorities and learning to quickly readjust?
Can you profile your organization from Table 1 by selecting between alternatives?
A Capable organization is an organization that is continually “learning how to learn” so as to organize resources and deliver outcomes to the satisfaction of customers.
This involves developing capable processes to deliver and add value to customers (private sector) and to the community (public sector), and is doing so by also developing the capability of employees.
To find out more click onto my article Capability and Organizational Health.
There’s 30 years of research in one article.
