Organization development

Organization development stems from the belief that systems drive behaviors, and that people within your organization all want to do their best work. The path to success is trust.

ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Mike’s focus is to find and increase what’s working and decrease what’s not working. Together, we will work to bring your company to a greater level of success and prosperity. We gather data about the work and situation using a variety of methods. Then, we compare collected data against the areas of success and failure within your organization, allowing us to develop consulting, coaching, and workshops to accentuate what’s working well within the organization and minimize dysfunctional organizational challenges.

When challenges happen, the organization can absorb, learn, and evolve to increase what’s working and decrease what’s not.

Beyond processes, there’s an underlying cultural and interpersonal component that usually makes or breaks the success of organization development and engagement. That component is trust. Every action and decision has an implication on your organization’s trustworthiness.

STRATEGIES

ORGANIZATION DESIGN: DESIGNING TRUST-ATTRACTING ORGANIZATIONS

Any training and development effort is a waste of time and money without the right goals, roles, and people.

WHAT IS IT?

Organization design is the skeleton of your organization. A good design supports a healthy flow of work, cash, people, and customers while a bad design constricts these.

From Mike’s research within large and small organizations, there are simple organization design principles that will be implemented. Every employee is entitled to have a competent manager with the capability to bring value to their problem solving and decision making. Every manager is entitled to have employees that can work at their maximum effectiveness within their roles. Every organization is entitled to have a working system for performance improvement and increased effectiveness of staff.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

In Mike’s research within organizations the idea of trust, felt-fairness, liberty, being unencumbered to complete your work without somebody (or manipulative procedure) constricting you, are what most people want from their employer.

Trust Attracting Organization:

Organizations that generate trust, truth, fairness, justice, friendliness, openness, mutual help and regard – with creativity and good feelings.

Trust Repelling Organization:

Organizations which support the negative aspects of human nature – autocratic coercion, greed, malice, secrecy and self-seeking – all of which are inhibitors of imagination, innovation, and creative effort.

WHAT ARE THE AREAS OF FOCUS?

1. Do we have a philosophy for how work gets done within the organization?
2. What is our current hierarchy and organization chart?
3. Does our current organization chart and philosophy match to achieve quality outcomes?
4. Does our current organization chart accurately reflect how work gets done?
5. How does our current organization design support or constrict our communication, innovation, and people completing great work?
6. Where in our current organization design are we creating unneeded or redundant work?
7. How can we make changes to our organization design to increase what is working well and decrease what is not working well?

HOW WILL YOU MAKE PROGRESS?

1. Faster, better-informed decision-making
2. Lower costs from cutting excess communication and approval layers
3. Managers who know what to do, when and why
4. Employees who can focus on the work by doing their best
5. Faster reactions to change, thanks to a workforce that know their jobs and how they can add value

ORGANIZATIONAL COMPLEXITY AND CHANGE

For the organization to thrive and last, processes must be understood and created to address an ambiguous future.

WHAT IS IT?

This organization development process assists leaders and leadership teams in developing the skills needed to understand how to work with complexity and change.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

The rate of change and complexity of work is not slowing down. You constantly have to organize information available to you, and determine how to use it best to make choices. This skill can be developed and implemented in your organization.

WHAT ARE THE AREAS OF FOCUS?

While every organization development process changes to meet your organization and leaders where they are, the following areas of focus are meant to share what will be accomplished and developed.

1. Organizational complexity and change
2. Determining the current level of information and problem complexity
3. Leading through complexity and change in action
4. Organizing work for employees’ current level of complexity and change
5. Leading through complexity and change in action
6. Using complexity and change models to develop the next level of organizational leaders

HOW WILL YOU MAKE PROGRESS?

1. Management of organizational complexity that goes beyond strategic planning
2. Effective decision-making and problem-solving when faced with complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity
3. Working at both tactical and strategic levels
4. Navigating change and the increasing complexity using evidenced-based tools
5. Developing competence for leaders to lead the organization through times of complexity, high levels of ambiguity, and change, and coaching these abilities in middle management
6. Management of information complexity and problem complexity
7. How to determine organizational and individual capacity for managing information and problem complexity
8. Implementing specific coaching and mentoring tools to help your staff increase their ability to handle complexity and change
9. Succession planning for ensuring the future of the organization
10. Using Complexity and change models to develop the next level of organizational leaders

ORGANIZATIONAL CAPACITY AND GROWTH

Your organization will grow or wither based on the organizational system and your capacity to develop and sustain what works while eliminating what doesn’t work.

WHAT IS IT?

Organizational capacity is like a bucket that holds water. Your necessary productivity and skilled knowledge is the bucket. The people, products, processes, and procedures are the water.

Is the water filling the bucket? Is it overflowing? Is it too low?

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

When organizations grow and change in complexity, the problems that they felt do not go away – they increase. Understanding your current capacity and what problems are ‘normal vs. abnormal’ will enable you to build a process to fix what needs fixing, increase what is working, and decrease what is not working, leading to a robust, antifragile organization.

WHAT ARE THE AREAS OF FOCUS?

Through this process, we will identify within your organization and departments where you have a deficit or excess of capacity for growth. From the identification, we work to understand what current challenges and opportunities are needed for your organization to make progress. We then work together to develop a plan and progress steps to use the excess or deficit of capacity to make changes and sustainable operations to achieve growth and longevity of the organization.

We focus on:

1. The organization as a whole
2. The departments within the organization
3. The roles within the departments
4. The people who fill those roles

HOW WILL YOU MAKE PROGRESS?

1. Knowledge of where you have excess and deficit capacity within your organization and departments
2. A capacity building plan that will provide operations and structure to grow your organization

TALENT POOL DEVELOPMENT

A process to develop individuals with the necessary skills, knowledge, and competencies both cognitively and behaviorally for enhanced performance within the organization.

WHAT IS IT?

A process to develop people within the organization with the necessary skills, knowledge, and competencies (both cognitively and behaviorally) for enhanced performance. A mentoring program that will work to help to develop skills and knowledge focused on ensuring the organization’s long-term success. A purposeful path for job accountability and authority. An internal culture of continuous improvement, which occurs through succession planning and continued development of people and processes. All of these are substantial ways to advance the talent within your organization.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

The talent pool development process aligns individuals’ aspirations and skills with the company’s current and future needs so that the interests of both can be supported. It is designed to increase productivity, create trust and to foster conditions where each employee is provided the greatest opportunity for creative expression through work performed for the company.

WHAT ARE THE AREAS OF FOCUS?

While every organization development process changes to meet your organization and leaders where they are, the following areas of focus are meant to share what will be accomplished and developed.

1. Understanding the current condition
2. Identifying what talent is within your organization
3. Putting differences to work in talent development

Coaching and feedback will be offered with organization development areas for enhanced internal systems and processes to the organization and high potential staff. Mike will serve as a resource coach and team development specialist for the group while they are achieving the determined areas of improvement.

HOW WILL YOU MAKE PROGRESS?

1. Competency metrics for internal benchmarking of current talent
2. Creation/Enhancement of interview processes to identify candidates for promotion and hiring
3. A focused mentorship program
4. Learning and development for mentors
5. Coaching for the mentors and their immediate supervisors
6. Integration of the new systems and complementing existing systems for performance appraisals
7. Increased efficiency through people doing their best work
8. Decreased dependence on managers to consistently solve problems
9. Continuous improvement of team culture
10. Appointing internal subject matter experts and integrating performance support systems

STRATEGIC PLANNING AND IMPLEMENTATION

You need to understand the needs, opportunities, strengths and conditions of your current, plus external competitive environment to determine what you will need in the future.

WHAT IS IT?

Strategic planning and implementation with Mike Cardus goes beyond the generic SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) that is completed by a select group of people within your organization. Mike’s research shows that SWOT with your internal staff, with their current knowledge, is no better than brainstorming. You end up with lots of speculation, hollow choices, the loudest voice wins, and a list of ‘action items’ that would have happened without the Strategic Plan.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Strategic planning and implementation is the foundation of how your organization operates from today into the future. It is the process that identifies what is working to increase and what is not working to decrease then turns obstacles into opportunities shifting the odds of the current environment into future success, leading to enhanced returns on your investment in people, processes, and products.

Mike supports you to understand the needs, opportunities, strengths and conditions of your current environment and determine what you will need in the future.

WHAT ARE THE AREAS OF FOCUS?

Strategic Planning works with an intended 3 part focus: deliberate strategy – strategy that is realized; unrealized strategy – strategy not realized; emergent strategy – strategy that is not planned or intended and happens to emerge as the plan progresses.

1. External analysis of similar companies.
2. Internal analysis of operations, management, and organizational structure.
3. Developing reports and information
4. Development of a strategic implementation team
5. A process to implement the strategic plan
6. A visual (info-graphic like) planning progress map to show updates and progress
7. Developing an implementation process

HOW WILL YOU MAKE PROGRESS?

Together we will create a strategy, using data and feedback mechanisms to identify what’s working and not working, plus a process to implement your plan. This implementation is accomplished by ‘Making a Smarter Strategic Plan.’