Questions, Questions, Questions

Asking the right question critical! One of the key lessons I have learned as an organisation design consultant is to ask the right question. As de Bono says, “Asking a question is the simplest way of focusing thinking…asking the right question may be the most important part of thinking.”

If you’ve read my first blog  you’ll know that Tricordant is supporting Lydia Sokou, a MSc student, at University of Edinburgh Business School to “Develop a research-based organisational health assessment.” In essence this assessment is a series of questions to help determine the health of an organisation. However before creating an assessment a definition of organisational health is needed to help establish the colours with which we will “paint the picture.”

From our exploration to date there are a variety of perspectives of organisational health including:

• Beating the competition
• Health, Safety and wellbeing of employees
• Building a cohesive leadership team

Our working definition of Organisational health is,

“Intentionally co-creating a system of harmonious working, where people thrive and the right thing to do is the easy thing to do.”

This definition captures ideas such as:

• Organisations as open systems
• Purpose and meaning
• Strategy and choice
• Value delivery
• Alignment and coherence
• Feedback loops and adaption
• Releasing human potential
• Engagement and inclusion
• Deliberate intent

We also look at organisations through the lens of our organisational model which we call The Tricord. For us The Tricord describes all aspects of an organisation that need to be aligned for the whole to be healthy. It gives us a holistic view of the organisation to highlight health or dysfunction at any or all levels. The Tricord then gives us the canvas and boundaries within which we can paint.

Bringing our definition and The Tricord together several questions are emerging to inform the next iteration of our organisational health assessment such as in the below table.