Focus on Organisational Health
The health of the organisation reflects the quality and sustainability of the culture that has been established. A healthy culture focuses on openness and trust. Leaders sustain this by clearly communicating the demands of the organisation’s culture and by consistently modelling the values and behaviours inherent in that culture.
In A Nutshell
Organisational Health is easy to recognise, but hard to define. A healthy organisation has a strong, open, ethical and trustful culture. A culture that encourages autonomous teams to display mastery, benefit from autonomy and follow a strong purpose. The expectations of this culture are communicated clearly, openly, consistently and simply.
Proposed changes to the culture can originate from anywhere in the organisation. They become a part of the organisation’s culture through their consensual adoption rather than by attempted imposition. Teams can augment the organisation’s culture, for example by adopting team norms. Such augmentations set higher ethical standards for the team than the wider culture.
Leaders at all levels in the organisation model the culture by consistently adhering to the principles of the culture. Where leaders make mistakes these are openly acknowledged and corrected.
The organisation expects all teams to work at a sustainable rate. The need for excess working will occur from time to time. Such periods are kept short and are balanced by periods when the organisation accepts less intense work and when teams are encouraged to take some “down-time”.
Practices
Communicate the Organisation’s Culture
Model the Organisation’s Culture
Sustain A Learning Environment
Sustain A Customer Led Strategy
On an infrequent basis we assess the health of the organisation. The central indicator of good organisational health is the happiness of the colleagues who work in the organisation coupled with the routine delivery of planned progress towards the goals the organisation has established. We use different tools and techniques to assess different aspects of the organisation’s health.