A Case in Point: Recalling an Organizational Diagnosis Experience

Employers, of course, want to see their businesses as growing and profitable. Awhile back, I helped an employer who wanted to do some troubleshooting in order to figure out what was going on in the company. So my team and I helped the company conduct an organizational diagnosis. 

This company employed about 20 people, and the employer wanted each employee to meet with my team, one-on-one. During these meetings, we interviewed each employee for the purpose of collecting data. 

An aside note: Conducting individual interviews, as described above, is one way to gather information, but you also have other choices. For instance, you can collect data from focus groups. Or you can gather comments during a large group conference setting, during which you can flush out a lot of information. 

Now, going back to our interviews, we first wanted to learn what was working and what was not working; what was going on and what wasn’t going on throughout the organization. When you set out to do an organizational diagnosis, you want to connect the dots, so to speak, because all the areas of the business are interconnected. We asked questions about the company’s operations; for instance, we asked the employees: 

1. What is the business situation?
2. What kind of results are you seeing?
3. What is your profit-loss situation? 

Then, we wanted to learn more about the direction of the organization. We asked questions such as: 

1. What is your mission?
2. What are your values?
3. What are your strategies and objectives?
4. Are these directional positions clear? Do you understand them? Are you excited about them? 

Finally, we wanted to understand work processes, and we asked these types of questions: 

1. How does the work get done?
2. Can you describe the work flow?
3. How are teams organized?
4. Can you describe the policies?
5. How are employees organized?
6. How are roles defined?
7. How are decisions made?
8. Who has responsibility and control? 

Using this one-on-one interviewing format, then, we were essentially getting various perspectives. By asking each employee his or her take on the business processes, and other matters, we were looking for patterns. In essence, we were not only looking for positives and negatives, but we also wanted to know what implications the employees’ perspectives held for other parts of the company. 

For example, when employee roles are unclear or employees do not understand the company’s direction, we need to determine how this confusion might impact business results. 

Other areas that you will want to examine in an organizational diagnosis are: 

• Staffing

1. How is hiring handled?
2. How do you approach recruitment?
3. What does your placement look like?
4. What does your turnover look like?
5. What concerns do employees have? Do they see things as broken or in good shape?

• Culture

1. What is the environment or climate like?
2. What are the implicit beliefs?
3. What rules or standards are in place that people don’t even have to discuss and that make the culture unique?
4. Are employees motivated?
5. Do employees feel supported?
6. How is conflict handled?
7. Are employees satisfied?

• Development

1. How do employees grow in knowledge, skills and abilities?
2. How do things get done?
3. How are relationships with others?
4. Are there learning opportunities?

• Rewards/Recognition

1. Does it matter if you do good work?
2. What are the consequences?
3. How are employees evaluated?
4. Are employees evaluated fairly?
5. Does the system work? Is it useful?
6. Are employees held accountable? 

This experience helps illustrate that an organizational diagnosis uses a comprehensive approach. A number of categories make up the ingredients for an organizational assessment. These categories are all interconnected and any changes you make to one category can have implications for other categories. It is also important to involve all the employees in the diagnosis—and the smart organizations do. 

As a final point, I want to emphasize that with an organizational diagnosis, you are looking for patterns. You’re not looking to make individual or isolated changes, on the contrary, you are looking at the organizational system as a whole in order to get to the root of any problems. It is a mistake to act on the symptoms or put out little crisis fires here and there. If you do, invariably those problems pop up again. Instead, when employers take the time and make that short-term investment, in turn, they can reap long-term payoffs. 

Here is an example of my team and I helping a company by conducting an organizational diagnosis.