Parameters Of Organizational Health- Part 2

The Organizational Health Index or OHI lists nine parameters of a healthy organization for sustained performance. A project by McKinsey & Company, the relevant research shows these aspects are extremely important for a company to be successful.

This is the second post in a three-part series which looks into the nine health parameters and the potential ways in which they could be instilled in your organization. If you haven’t read the first part, it’s highly encouraged you do so before getting further into this post.

Here, we discuss the parameters of an organization’s health- numbers four through six.

External orientation

The fourth parameter in the organization’s health is external orientation. Under this comes the following:

Customer focus:

In the contemporary world, successful brands and businesses take insights from the customers to such an extent that the customers sometimes are labeled co-creators. This has seen many a business flourish while the others fall back in the race.

What’s called for in this context is the ability to see a customer input as an opportunity, or rather the ability to see your organization or container with a fresh pair of eyes- one that could create a new product or service which you have never done before, if the consumer so demands. This ability is called uniqueness.

A healthy organization always has an eye on externalities

Competitor insights:

While keeping a check on competitor actions is as old as the idea of business itself, you could only make the insights work for you if you have a vision in place.

By seeing which tactics of a competition you could adopt to reach your own vision, you wouldn’t have to waste time trying out the strategies which are not aligned with the vision. Temenos Vision Lab is a unique session developed by Temenos+ Agilty which helps you realize your True Personal Vision.  

Business partnership:

Having a strong vision helps identifying the right business partnerships as well.

While there may be practically innumerous options for you to choose from, choosing the ones that align with your vision would make the task easier. Incidentally, you could also narrow down the options by choosing those partners that are in sync with your aesthetic- a set of principles and values you adopt for business processes and transformations.

Government & community relations:

This is another age-old concept in running a business: to have good relations with the community and government your business is linked to. A self-explanatory concept, this calls for meaningful use of soft skills.

Leadership

The fifth parameter of an organisation's health is a rather obvious one- leadership. Without further ado, let’s look at its elements.

Authoritative

Team members show confidence in an authoritative leadership. As for the leader, s/he derives the authority from the True Personal Vision that s/he follows- the bedrock on which she builds the future along with the team.

Consultative

Being authoritative shouldn’t be confused with imposing your views and opinions on your team members- such a misconception could only arise from taking lessons from the wrong kind of leadership. Leadership should be consultative, in that you should take inputs from your team members to improve processes, and implement them when they are found to be practical.

A deeper understanding of the team members that TVL enables during the team’s discovery of their Compelling Shared Vision helps you get a clearer picture of each individual’s ideals, skills and aspirations. This gives you a better idea of on which aspects you could gain insights from a particular team member, paving the way to a more consultative leadership style.

Supportive

Being supportive to your team member’s endeavors is important. For the leader’s role is not just to give directions and wait for the outcome. The leader as a consistent supportive presence is something that the team members always look for.

Counter-intuitively, such a level of support could be extended if you develop the quality of self-compassion. For only if you are compassionate to yourself could you naturally extend the same level of compassion towards others.

Challenging

By a challenging leadership mode, it’s not meant here that you should challenge anyone’s autonomy. Rather, as a leader, you should set challenging goals for your team members which would inspire them.

The ideas of True Personal Vision and Compelling Shared Vision which have been mentioned in both this blog post and the first post in this series help you achieve just that.

Innovation & Learning

Innovation is something of a buzzword in this age of business disruptions driven by technology. So it’s fitting that innovation, along with its close ally-learning is the sixth key health parameter for an organization. Now, to the elements that come under this:

Top-down innovation

Innovation which trickles down from the highest run in the hierarchy all the way down. Starting with the leader whose vision drives innovation which is cross-implemented across silos in the organization.The True Personal Vision of the leader could spur innovation in the top-down manner.

Constant learning is a key health parameter for organizations

Bottom-up innovation

By empowering different groups in the organization to come up with ideas, you prepare the ground for bottom-up innovation. In this mode, its the individual team members who spur innovation in a firm, which gets adopted across departments. The idea of personal vision as applied to individual team members could fuel such innovations.

Knowledge sharing

The term itself makes clear what’s meant by it. But some team members- no matter how knowledgeable they may be in a particular domain may be reluctant to share that knowledge with others. A key reason would be a lack of confidence caused by mental inhibitions- like the question, “Am I as good as I think I am?” These blockages are often the result of past negative situations they went through.

Such obstacles could be plucked out from the change agent’s mind with the Clean Slate session- a unique session in TVL which encourages self-reflection, enabling you to lose unwanted mental baggage and move on with only those mental aspects helps in your further progress.

Capturing external ideas

To effectively capture external ideas, a leader needs to be a Metis: one who could absorb vast volumes of data from the external world, assimilate them and apply the information to a productive end. For more often than not, ideas are found between the bits of information we glean from the external world, or by combining those bits in a unique manner.

Banner image: dylan nolte on Unsplash

For change agents and leaders, not to benefit from meaningful events and gatherings is a missed opportunity! We invite you to indulge in some of the most transformational events from Temenos; designed with hard-earned understanding, organized just for you.

Temenos Vision Lab- Online ( June 29, 2018)

We invite you to this special gathering, which brings together a group of wonderful people who fill workplaces with joy and energy. By connecting with each other, you embark on a journey that leads to better clarity about the changes you seek, gain collaboration opportunities and leave with a concrete action plan.

Temenos Vision Lab- Amsterdam, Netherlands( Nov 2, 2018)

Another venue to take an exquisite inner journey, to find your true Vision.

Temenos Effect Gathering 2018- Bengaluru, India(Dec 8 to Dec 9, 2018)

An event dedicated to the idea of personal mastery, for nurturing your beautiful self, for change agents and leaders to become their true selves.

For more details, visit our website - https://www.visiontemenos.com/events