Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations

Much of the content of this topic came from this book:

© Copyright Carter
McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the fourth in the series which includes:

1. What is an Organization?
2. What Makes
Each Organization Unique
3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems
4. Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations
5. Basic Overview of Organizational Culture
6. Legal Forms and Traditional Structures of Organizations
7. Driving Forces and a New Organizational Paradigm
8. Emerging Nature and New Organizational Structures and Design
9. Basic Guidelines for Organizational Design
10. Wrap
Up: Grasping the Big Picture in Organizations (video)

Sections of This Article Include

What Are Organizational Life Cycles?
Why Are They Important to Understand?
Example of a Simple Organizational Life Cycle Model
Product Life Cycles
Additional Perspectives on Life Cycles

What Are Organizational Life Cycles?

Simply put, organizations are social systems. They’re groups of people organized
around a common purpose. Their activities include similar recurring practices,
for example, strategic planning, business planning, product and service development,
marketing, financial management and evaluations. Each activity usually includes
formally or informally clarifying goals, taking steps toward those goals, deciding
if the goals are being met or not, and adjusting activities to be even more
effective and efficient in reaching the goals. The social systems can be focused
primarily on the entire organization, teams, each product or service, or within
a certain activity. Individuals themselves are systems, needing a clear purpose
and activities to continually work toward that purpose.

Social systems go through common life-cycles ranging from, for example, from
start-up to growth to maturity. For example, as people mature, they begin to
understand more about the world and themselves. Over time, they develop a certain
kind of wisdom that sees them through many of the challenges in life and work.
They learn to plan and to use a certain amount of discipline to carry through
on those plans. They learn to manage themselves. Meanwhile, they go through
infancy, child-hood and early-teenage phases that are characterized by lots
of rapid growth. People in these phases often do whatever it takes just to stay
alive, for example, eating, seeking shelter and sleeping. Early on, many people
tend to make impulsive, highly reactive decisions based on whatever is going
on around them at the moment.

Why Are They Important to Understand?

Start-up organizations, team and internal practices are like this, too. Often,
founders of the organization or program and its various members have to do whatever
is necessary just to stay in business. Leaders make highly reactive, seat-of-the-pants
decisions. They fear taking the time to slow down and do planning.

Experienced leaders have learned to recognize the particular life cycle that
a system is going through. These leaders understand the types of problems faced
during each life cycle. That understanding gives them a sense of perspective
and helps them to decide how to respond to decisions and problems in the workplace
and their lives and the workplace.

That understanding also suggests the priories that they need to soon address
in order to evolve to the next stage. Systems that do not evolve often stagnate
or decline between stages. Symptoms can be unclear priorities, unclear roles,
increasing frustrations and conflict, and people leaving the organization. If
the understanding of the life cycle is not known, then these problems are often
not resolved.

When discerning the particular stage that a system is currently in, it does
not depend on the age of the system. Rather, it depends on the nature of its
current activities. For example, if the activities are mostly unplanned, high
reactive and decisions are made primarily by certain personalities rather than
by plans and policies, then that organization is operating more like an early
stage organization.

Example of a Simple Organizational Life
Cycle Model

Life cycles of social systems are so important to understand that there has
been an increasing number of suggested frameworks and models for life cycles.
Here is one simple model to further enhance your understanding of life cycles.
In this example, the focus is on an organization-wide social system.

Some systems planners consider there to be an additional stage of decline that
is after the maturity stage. That stage recognizes that not all systems are
meant to exist forever. It also helps systems planners to avoid desperately
staying in the maturity stage, lest the system “fails”.

Product Life Cycles

The recurring activities to plan, develop, implement, evaluate and then adjust
the plans for each product and service is a essentially a systematic recurring
set of activities. It is a system and has a life cycle like many other systems.
The phases in the system might be described by the above simple diagram of phases.

Experienced product managers understand the stages of development of a typical
product or service, and know what the typical traits of each stage are. Thus,
they know what priorities to address to evolve the product or service to maturity.
They understand that problems that can occur if the next stage is not reached.
Consider the following articles.

Product Life Cycle Stages
Product
Life Cycle diagrams
Product life cycle
(Wikipedia)
Best
Practice Report: Product Lifecycle Management
What
is the Product Life Cycle? Definition and Examples
Ultimate
Product Life Cycle Management Guide
Product
Life Cycle Examples
Exploit
the Product Life Cycle

Additional Perspectives on Life Cycles

Organizational
Life Cycles (Wikipedia)
The
Five Phases Organizational Life Cycle
Five
Life Stages of Nonprofit Organizations
Life
Cycles of an Organization
Organizational
Life Cycles (it helps to see different diagrams)
Barbarians to Bureaucrats
Life
Cycle Approach to Strategic Planning (in-depth and dated, but relevant)

Also consider
Systems Thinking,
Systems Tools and Chaos Theory
Entrepreneurship
— Product and Service Development

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

In addition to the information on this current page, see the following blogs
which have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see
various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the
blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Library’s
Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
Library’s
Leadership Blog
Library’s
Nonprofit Capacity Building Blog

Related Library Topics

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

Related Library Topics

Recommended Books

What is an Organization?

Much of the content of this topic came from this book:

© Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the first in the series which includes:

1. What is an Organization?
   2. What Makes Each Organization Unique
   3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems
   4. Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations
   5. Basic Overview of Organizational Culture
   6. Legal Forms and Traditional Structures of Organizations
   7. Driving Forces and a New Organizational Paradigm
   8. Emerging Nature and New Organizational Structures and Design
   9. Basic Guidelines for Organizational Design
   10. Wrap Up: Grasping the Big Picture in Organizations (video)

Sections of This Article Include

• Basic Definition
• Organization’s Purpose and Priorities
• Critical Roles of Leadership and Communications

Basic Definition

Most of us have worked in an organization of people — even a family is a type of organization. The word is so widely used that its meaning can sometimes be lost. The word means a collection of resources that are working together somehow to achieve a common purpose. When we talk about an organization, we are usually referring to a group of people.

Organizations of people come in many forms. They might be a random group of people who spontaneously came together to address a short-term need, such as collecting litter along a certain stretch of road. Or, it might be a carefully collected, aligned and integrated group of people who came together for the long-term to address a long-term need, such as stopping poverty in a certain country.

An overall organization can have a variety of small organizations within it, for example, various departments and teams of people. The way that people work together in an organization depends on a variety of factors, including the values in their culture, the nature of their leadership and types of current needs they are working to address. See What Makes Each Organization Unique.

Let us look at some other definitions of the word “organization” and some more about how an organization works toward a common purpose.

• Organization (Wikipedia)
• Organization: Meaning, Definition, Concepts and Characteristics

Organization’s Purpose and Priorities

Mission

All of the people in an organization should be working toward a common purpose. That purpose is often referred to as the mission. The mission might be implied to its members or explicitly expressed to them.
When explicitly expressed, it is often in the form of a mission statement. The statement is often reviewed during a process called strategic planning.

Vision

The organization’s vision is an image of what success would look like at some point in the future, both
for the people that the organizations serves and for the organization itself. It can be very inspirational and motivational to explicitly articulate that vision in a statement like the mission statement during strategic planning.

Values

The organization’s values are the overall priorities in the nature of how the organization wants to work
toward its mission. Values can be reflected in how the people in the organization are actually working together. These might be referred to as real or enacted values. Values can also be about how the organization wants it members to work together. These might be referred to as desired values.

Strategic Priorities

These are the overall, most important matters and activities for members to attend to, when working toward the mission. Similar to the mission, vision and values, they might be implied or explicit among members. The priorities might be associated with assignments for who is address which ones and by when. The priorities are often referred as “strategic goals” during a strategic planning process.

Thus, it could seem to be a major challenge when working to lead, manage or improve an organization. Fortunately, there are some things in common to all types of organizations — because they all are systems. We will review more about systems later in this series of articles.

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

In addition to the information on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

• Library’s Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
• Library’s Leadership Blog
• Library’s Nonprofit Capacity Building Blog

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics,
available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

• Related Library Topics
• Recommended Books

Basic Overview of Organizational Culture

Much of the content of this topic came from this book:

© Copyright by Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD. Published by Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

Sections of This Article Include

• What is Organizational Culture?
• Some Types of Organizational Culture
• Understanding the Culture of Your Organization
• Influencing the Culture of Your Organization
• Additional Resources About Organizational Culture

Also consider

How to Change Organizational Culture

What is Organizational Culture?

Basically, organizational culture is the personality of the organization. Culture is comprised of the assumptions, values, norms and tangible signs (artifacts) of organization members and their behaviors. Members of an organization soon come to sense the particular culture of an organization. Culture is one of those terms that’s difficult to express distinctly, but everyone knows it when they sense it. For example, the culture of a large, for-profit corporation is quite different than that of a hospital which is quite different than that of a university. You can tell the culture of an organization by looking at the arrangement of furniture, what they brag about, what members wear, etc. — similar to what you can use to get a feeling about someone’s personality.

Corporate culture can be looked at as a system. Inputs include feedback from, e.g., society, professions, laws, stories, heroes, values on competition or service, etc. The process is based on our assumptions, values and norms, e.g., our values on money, time, facilities, space and people. Outputs or effects of our culture are, e.g., organizational behaviors, technologies, strategies, image, products, services, appearance, etc.

The concept of culture is particularly important when attempting to manage organization-wide change. Practitioners are coming to realize that, despite the best-laid plans, organizational change must include not only changing structures and processes, but also changing the corporate culture as well.

There’s been a great deal of literature generated over the past decade about the concept of organizational culture — particularly in regard to learning how to change organizational culture. Organizational change efforts are rumored to fail the vast majority of the time. Usually, this failure is credited to lack of understanding about the strong role of culture and the role it plays in organizations. That’s one of the reasons that many strategic planners now place as much emphasis on identifying strategic values as they do mission and vision.

Some Types of Organizational Culture

There are different types of culture just like there are different types of personality. Researcher Jeffrey Sonnenfeld identified the following four types of cultures.

Academy Culture

Employees are highly skilled and tend to stay in the organization, while working their way up the ranks. The organization provides a stable environment in which employees can development and exercise their skills. Examples are universities, hospitals, large corporations, etc.

Baseball Team Culture

Employees are “free agents” who have highly prized skills. They are in high demand and can rather easily get jobs elsewhere. This type of culture exists in fast-paced, high-risk organizations, such as investment banking, advertising, etc.

Club Culture

The most important requirement for employees in this culture is to fit into the group. Usually employees start at the bottom and stay with the organization. The organization promotes from within and highly values seniority. Examples are the military, some law firms, etc.

Fortress Culture

Employees don’t know if they’ll be laid off or not. These organizations often undergo massive reorganization. There are many opportunities for those with timely, specialized skills. Examples are savings and loans, large car companies, etc.

Understanding the Culture of Your Organization

Quite often, a leader has a very good sense of the culture of their organization. They just haven’t made that sense conscious to the extent that they can effectively learn from, and lead within, the culture.

Different people in the same organization can have different perceptions of the culture of the organization. This is especially true regarding the different perceptions between the top and bottom levels of the organization. For example, the Chief Executive may view the organization as being highly focused, well organized and even rather formal. On the other hand, the receptionist might view the organization as being confused, disorganized and, sometimes, even rude.

Here are some basic guidelines to help a leader assess the culture of their organization.

1. Understand some of the major types of cultures. There are a number of research efforts that have produced lists of different types of culture. You can start by reviewing the very short list in the previous subsection, Major Types of Cultures.
2. Describe the culture of your organization. Consider what you see and hear, not what you feel and think. Answer the following questions.
   a. Who seems to be accepted and who doesn’t? What is it about those who are accepted as compared to those who aren’t?
   b. What kinds of behaviors get rewarded? For example, getting along? Getting things done? Other behaviors?
   c. What does management pay the most attention to? For example, problems? Successes? Crises? Other behaviors?
   d. How are decisions made? For example, by one person? Discussion and consensus? Are decisions made at all?

Note that there may not be close alignment between what the organization says it values (for example, creativity, innovation, team-building) as compared to what you’re actually seeing (for example, conformity, individualism). This disparity is rather common in organizations. You might explain this disparity to other leaders in the organization. An ideal time to address this disparity is when developing a values statement during the strategic planning process.

Influencing the Culture of Your Organization

There are four primary ways to influence the culture of an organization.

1. Emphasize what’s important. This includes widely communicating goals of the organization, posting the mission statement on the wall, talking about accomplishments and repeating what you want to see in the workplace.
2. Reward employees whose behaviors reflect what’s important.
3. Discourage behaviors that don’t reflect what’s important. There is no need to punish or cause prolonged discomfort. Rather, you want to dissuade the employee from continuing unwanted behaviors by giving them constructive feedback, verbal warnings, written warnings, or firing them.
4. Model the behaviors that you want to see in the workplace. This is perhaps the most powerful way to influence behaviors in the workplace. For example, if you want to see more teamwork among your employees, then involve yourself in teams more often.

Cultural change is a significant form of organizational change. Therefore, be sure to review the materials in Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents.

Here are several articles with guidelines about changing the culture of an organization.

• Cultural Change That Sticks
  
• How to Change Your Culture
  
• What Creates Cultural Changes?
• How Do You Change an Organizational Culture?

For many more resources about systematically changing the culture of your organization, see the topic
Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents

This Article is in a Series About Understanding Organizational Structures and Design

This article is the fifth in the series which includes:

1. What is an Organization?
2. What Makes Each Organization Unique
3. How They’re the Same: They’re Systems

4. Basic Overview of Life Cycles in Organizations
5. Basic Overview of Organizational Culture
6. Legal Forms and Traditional Structures of Organizations
7. Driving Forces and a New Organizational Paradigm
8. Emerging Nature and New Organizational Structures and Design
9. Basic Guidelines for Organizational Design
10. Wrap Up: Grasping the Big Picture in Organizations (video)

Additional Resources About Organizational Culture

• Interpersonal Interaction Model
• Deviant Organization Culture
• 4 Reasons Culture is So Important to Your Nonprofit
• Culture Trumps Strategy, Every Time – Nilofer Merchant – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review
• The Most Powerful Trainer in Your Organization-Culture

Also consider

• Employee Wellness — Diversity
• Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents
• Return to Overview of Organizations

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Culture

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Organizational Culture. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

• Library’s Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
• Library’s Leadership Blog
• Library’s Nonprofit Capacity Building Blog
• Library’s Supervision Blog

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizations

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

• Library’s Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
• Library’s Leadership Blog
• Library’s Nonprofit Capacity Building Blog
• Library’s Supervision Blog

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

• Related Library Topics
• Recommended Books

Key Concepts in the Design of an Organization

Much of the content of this topic came from this book:

© Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

A house should be designed to meet
the needs of the people living in it. Builders of houses must
consider, e.g., the number of people in the house, how much the
owners can afford to pay, etc. The ultimate design of an organization
should be whatever structure best helps the organization to achieve
its goals. The following are the standard concepts in the design of an
organization.

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Key Concepts in Design of Organization

Span of control

– the range of employees who to report to
a managerial position

Authority

– the formally-granted influence of a position
to make decisions, pursue goals and get resources to pursue the
goals; authority in a managerial role may exist only to the extent
that subordinates agree to grant this authority or follow the
orders from that position

Responsibility

– the duty to carry out an assignment or
conduct a certain activity

Delegation

– process
of assigning a task to a subordinate along with the commensurate
responsibility and authority to carry out the task

Chain of command

– the lines of authority in an organization,
who reports to whom

Accountability

– responsibility for the outcome of the process

Line authority

– the
type of authority where managers have formal authority over their
subordinates’ activities (the subordinates are depicted under
the manager on a solid line in the organization chart); departments
directly involved in producing services or products are sometimes
called line departments

Staff departments

– the
type of authority where managers influence line managers through
staff’s specialized advice; departments that support or advise
line departments are called staff departments and include, e.g.,
human resources, legal, finance, etc.

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

Related Library Topics

Recommended Books

Organizational Sustainability

Organizational sustainability is often misunderstood to mean primarily financial sustainability. That misconception occurs because, when an organization becomes unsustainable, the symptoms of that problem show up in the finances. However, organizational sustainability — or the surviving or even thriving of an organization — depends on much more than effectively managing the organization’s finances. Just like the sustainability of individuals and families, there are many complex and dynamic dimensions that must be sustainable in organizations, as well. However, in an organization, there are some primary dimensions that, if they are managed well, will ensure the sustainability of the organization.

• If You’re Looking for the topic of Sustainable Business Development (e.g., “Green” Sustainable Development), then see Sustainable Business Development
• Guidelines for accomplishing nonprofit sustainability are included in the books Field Guide to Consulting and Organizational Development with Nonprofits, Strengthening Nonprofit Performance: A Funder’s Guide to Capacity Building and Coping With Cutbacks: The Nonprofit Guide to Success When Times Are Tight .

Sections of This Topic Include

• Primary Dimensions of Organizational Sustainability
• Sustainability of For-Profit and Government Organizations
  • Strategic
  • Products, Services and Programs
  • Personnel
  • Financial
  • To Develop Organizational Sustainability Plans
• Sustainability of Nonprofit Organizations
  • Strategic
  • Products, Services and Programs
  • Personnel
  • Financial
  • To Develop Nonprofit Organizational Sustainability Plans
• Suggestions to Address Current Sustainability Problems

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Sustainability

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which have posts related to Organizational Sustainability. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

• Library’s Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
• Library’s Leadership Blog
• Library’s Supervision Blog

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Primary Dimensions of Organizational Sustainability

1. Strategic Sustainability — Ensure Realistic Vision and Goals

If an organization is trying to do far too much, it will likely not have enough resources, including not enough money to do what it wants to do. One of the most important considerations to have a realistic vision and goals for the organization. If these are not realistic, then many of the other activities in the organization will not be realistic, as well. The solution is not to keep trying to get more money.

2. Product and Program Sustainability — Ensure High-Quality Products, Services and Programs

If your organization does not have high-quality products, services and programs, then customers’ and clients’ participation will eventually decline as will funding. That’s why it’s so important to do a few things very well, rather than a lot of things not so well. The solution is not to keep trying to get more money to offset deficits. The solution is to pick which products, services and programs you can do very well, do them — and keep proving your strong results.

3. Personnel Sustainability — Ensure Personnel Can Effectively and Reliably Perform

If your personnel do not fully understand their jobs or are not resourced to do their jobs, then your products, services and programs will be not be as effective as they could be. As a result, you’ll make less money than you expected or the money you do make will not generate as much profit. Be sure personnel are fully trained and supervised well. Also be sure that, if a member of the organization cannot do his/her job, that someone else can do that job in a timely fashion.

4. Financial Sustainability — Conduct Financial Reserve and Contingency Planning

If the above 3 dimensions are not effectively addressed, then symptoms show up in the finances when there’s not enough money. However, there are two financial practices you should be doing regardless of whether you have enough money or not, and they include:

1. Achieving a financial reserve — obviously this is done over time and before a financial crises occurs.
2. Doing contingency planning — plan for what will happen if you get 10% less money than planned for the upcoming year and for what will happen if you get 30% less.

The following sections and links will help you address the above dimensions for your for-profit, nonprofit or government agency.

Avoiding Sustainability Issues in For-Profit and Government Organizations

Strategic

The following links will help ensure that your strategic planning results in realistic visions and goals.

Strategic Planning

In the topic at the above link, be sure to see the following articles:

• How NOT to Do Strategic Planning
• Always First Do “Plan for a Plan”
• Sanity Solution
• Basics in Developing a Vision Statement
• Do a Grand Vision and Strategic Vision Statement
• Basics of Action Plans (as Part of Strategic Planning)
• How to Change the Plan
• Embedding Sustainability in Organizational Culture
• The Power Values that Drive Sustained Profitability

Also consider
Strategic Planning

Products, Services and Programs

One of the best ways to ensure that these are carefully planned — or reviewed — is to do business planning. (There is often confusion about the different between strategic planning and business planning. Strategic planning is planning for the entire organization. Business planning is focused on a particular product or service.)

• Various Approaches to Building Products and Services (the Business Planning approach is best)
• Business Planning (For-Profit)
• Program Planning (For-Profit)

Also consider

• Product Development
• Program Management

Personnel

• Staffing (Hiring, Orienting, etc.)
• Training and Development
• Employee Performance Management

Also consider
Human Resources
Staffing

Financial

Financial Management (For-Profit)

Also consider
Financial Management (for-profits)
Financial Management (nonprofits)

If You Resort to Trying to Get More Funds, Then See

Fundraising (For-Profit)

To Develop and Implement Organizational Sustainability Plans

• Organizational Assessment of For-Profits (to identify what areas to improve)
• Guidelines, Methods and Resources for Organizational Change Agents
• Getting Professional Help

Avoiding Sustainability Issues in Nonprofit Organizations

Strategic

The following links will help ensure that your strategic planning results in realistic visions and goals.

Strategic Planning

In the topic at the above link, be sure to see the following articles:

• How NOT to Do Strategic Planning
• Always First Do “Plan for a Plan”
• Sanity Solution
• Basics in Developing a Vision Statement
• Do a Grand Vision and Strategic Vision Statement
• Basics of Action Plans (as Part of Strategic Planning)
• How to Change the Plan

Products, Services and Programs

One of the best ways to ensure that these are carefully planned — or reviewed — is to do business planning. (There is often confusion about the different between strategic planning and business planning. Strategic planning is planning for the entire organization. Business planning is focused on a particular product or service.)

• Business Planning (Nonprofit)
• Program Planning and Management (Nonprofit)

Personnel

• Staffing (Hiring, Orienting, etc.)
• Training and Development
• Employee Performance Management

Financial

Financial Management (Nonprofit)

If You Resort to Trying to Get More Funds, Then See

Fundraising (Nonprofit)

To Develop and Implement Nonprofit Organizational Sustainability Plans

• Organizational Assessment for Nonprofits (to identify what areas to improve)
• Nonprofit Capacity Building (to undertake activities to improve areas)
• Getting Professional Help

Suggestions to Address Current Sustainability Problems

If you currently have problems in sustainability, the following links to resources will be helpful. Your most immediate concern now is very likely that of insufficient financial resources. Keep in mind that financial problems are usually a symptom of other causes, which usually can be addressed by following the guidelines in the resources linked from the above sections of this topic. However, for now, it’s very likely most important to address a shortage of financial resources. There are a variety of strategies in the resources from the following links. After addressing the financial issues, you should review the guidelines referenced from the links in the above sections to help your organization to avoid financial crises in the future.

Suggestions for For-Profits

• Business Cost-Cutting Ideas
• Cost-cutting ideas for Small Businesses
• Commentary: Cost-saving measures for businesses short of layoffs
• Temporary Cost Cutting Measures Violate the Wage and Hour Laws
• Recession Cost-Cutting No-Nos
• Could Fewer Products Lead to More Profits?
• In Bad Economic Times, Should You Fire Clients?
• People Problems Masquerading as Business Problems
• How to Reduce Small Business Costs
• Why Businesses Succeed and Fail

Suggestions for Nonprofits

Many of the problems faced by nonprofits are also faced by for-profits. So it’s useful to review some of the resources in the above suggestions for for-profits.

• Nonprofit Survival Tips
• Cost Cutting (these are suggestions for for-profits, but most apply to nonprofits, too)
• Succeeding Through Tough Times

Additional Library Resources in the Category of Organizational Sustainability and Change

• Related Library Topics
• Recommended Books

Some Types of Organizational Diagnostic Models

Much of the content of this topic came from this book:

© Copyright Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

Sections of this Topic Include:

• Critical Role of Organizational Diagnostic Models
• Some Types of Diagnostic Models for Organizations

Critical Role of Diagnostic Models in Evaluations

An evaluation could collect a vast range of information. However, unless there is some framework around which to know what information to collect and how to make judgments about that information, the analysis will likely become a very overwhelming and confusing endeavor. This is where a diagnostic model is very useful. A good diagnostic model will:

1. Suggest some standard of performance about how a high-quality organization should be operating, including about the quality of its overall intended outcomes, practices within the organization and how those practices are integrated with each other. The standards might be, for example, best practices or standards of excellence.
2. Suggest what types of information need to be collected in order to compare the current performance of the organization with the suggested standard of performance.
3. Facilitate the comparison of the current performance of the organization to the preferred standard of performance in order to generate recommendations to improve the performance of the organization.

You will select your diagnostic model later on, while you are designing your evaluation plan in the next topic. There are numerous types to choose from.
Some Types of Diagnostic Models for Organizations.

Some Types of Diagnostic Models for Organizations

Well designed models to improve the performance can also be very useful diagnostic models, depending on the reason for using the model and how it is used.

The following descriptions are general and brief. Follow the link to get more information about each of the approaches. There certainly are other approaches than those listed below for a planned, comprehensive approach to increasing organizational performance. It may very well be that the vast majority of approaches used in organizations are highly customized to the nature of the organizations, and therefore not publicized or formalized in management literature.

Balanced Scorecard: Focuses on four indicators, including customer perspective, internal-business processes, learning and growth and financials, to monitor progress toward organization’s strategic goals

Benchmarking: Using standard measurements in a service or industry for comparison to other organizations in order to gain perspective on organizational performance. For example, there are emerging standard benchmarks for universities, hospitals, etc. In and of itself, this is not an overall comprehensive process assured to improve performance, rather the results from benchmark comparisons can be used in more overall processes. Benchmarking is often perceived as a quality initiative.

Business Process Reengineering: Aims to increase performance by radically re-designing the organization’s structures and processes, including by starting over from the ground up.

Quality Management: Focuses on ensuring the highest quality of activities to produce the highest quality of products and services to customers and clients. That includes diagnosing errors in the activities as well as recommendations and actions to avoid those errors.

Cultural Change: Cultural change is a form of organizational transformation, that is, radical and fundamental form of change. Cultural change involves changing the basic values, norms, beliefs, etc., among members of the organization.

Knowledge Management: Focuses on collection and management of critical knowledge in an organization to increase its capacity for achieving results. Knowledge management often includes extensive use of computer technology. In and of itself, this is not an overall comprehensive process assured to improve performance. Its effectiveness toward reaching overall results for the organization depends on how well the enhanced, critical knowledge is applied in the organization.

Learning Organization: Focuses on enhancing organizations systems (including people) to increase an organization’s capacity for performance. Includes extensive use of principles of systems theory. In and of itself, this is not an overall comprehensive process assured to improve performance. Its effectiveness toward reaching overall results for the organization depends on how well the enhanced ability to learn is applied in the organization.

Management by Objectives (MBO): Aims to align goals and subordinate objectives throughout the organization. Ideally, employees get strong input to identifying their objectives, time lines for completion, etc. Includes ongoing tracking and feedback in process to reach objectives. MBO’s are often perceived as a form of planning.

Outcome-Based Evaluation (particularly for nonprofits): Outcomes-based evaluation is increasingly used, particularly by nonprofit organizations, to assess the impact of their services and products on their target communities. The process includes identifying preferred outcomes to accomplish with a certain target market, associate indicators as measures for each of those outcomes and then carry out the measures to assess the extent of outcomes reached.

Program Evaluation: Program evaluation is used for a wide variety of applications, e.g., to increase efficiencies of program processes and thereby cut costs, to assess if program goals were reached or not, to quality programs for accreditation, etc.

Strategic Planning: Organization-wide process to identify strategic direction, including vision, mission, values and overall goals. Direction is pursued by implementing associated action plans, including multi-level goals, objectives, time lines and responsibilities. Strategic planning is, of course, a form of planning.

Systems-Based Model to Diagnose For-Profit Organizations: The model follows a logic model format, and specifies which management functions should be addressed and in which order. It is aligned with this online organizational assessment tool.

Systems-Based Model to Diagnose Nonprofit Organizations: The model follows a logic model format, and specifies which management functions should be addressed and in which order. It is aligned with this online organizational assessment tool.

Total Quality Management (TQM): Set of management practices throughout the organization to ensure the organization consistently meets or exceeds customer requirements. Strong focus on process measurement and controls as means of continuous improvement. TQM is a quality initiative.

NOTE: There are various other approaches that, if used comprehensively with strong focus on achieving organizational results, can be used to increase organizational performance, e.g., Statistical Process Control and Quality Circles.

Suggested Additional Readings

• About The Role of Strategic Evaluation in Nonprofits
• Basic Guide to Program Evaluation
• Designing Assessment and Evaluation Tools
• Employee Performance Management
  
• Group Performance Management
  
• How to Evaluate Organizations

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Performance

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs that have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog. The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

• Library’s Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
• Library’s Human Resources Blog
• Library’s Leadership Blog
• Library’s Project Management Blog
• Library’s Supervision Blog

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

• Related Library Topics
• Recommended Books

Traits of Useful Recommendations

Much of the content of this topic came from this book:

© Copyright Carter McNamara,
MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.

The following guidelines will be useful when, for example, sharing results
of an evaluation of an organization or specific function with an organization.

Focus on the most important recommendations. You don’t need to address
every issue that you found. Pick the most important or critical 5-7 issues.
Don’t overwhelm your others with too many recommendations to try understand
and approve. If those 5-7 critical issues are successfully addressed early on,
then they’ll likely take care of the other issues, as well.

For each issue, have one overall recommendation and then perhaps associate
any lower-level recommendations. You might even leave the lower-level recommendations
for the discussion later on about how to implement the recommendations.

Be sure that your recommendations will suit the culture and mission of the
organization. For example, don’t recommend that all employees be taught
coaching, based exclusively on questioning, if their culture is totally averse
to questions. Don’t strongly recommend that the organization expand its
markets around the country, if the organization has branded itself as a locally-owned
business.

Be sure the organization has the resources to do the recommendations. They
should already have – or be able to quickly get – sufficient resources
to follow the recommendations, for example, sufficient funding, expertise and
facilities.

Focus recommendations on what the organization should do, not so much
on how to do it. A good way to stick to that difference is to talk
about goals, rather than recommendations. Goals are described as results, not
as methods to achieve those results.

Focus recommendations on both the business and the people side of the organization.
For example, you would not recommend only that “people must get along
better with each other” or that “people must feel more satisfaction
in their jobs.” Instead, you would also recommend more clarity of the
team’s purpose, goals and roles.

Prioritize your recommendations, for example, urgent versus desired or short-term
versus long-term.

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Performance

In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs
that have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various
posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of
the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.
The blog also links to numerous free related resources.

Library’s
Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
Library’s
Human Resources Blog
Library’s
Leadership Blog
Library’s
Project Management Blog
Library’s
Supervision Blog

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may
want to review some related topics, available from the link below.
Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been
selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

Related Library Topics

Recommended Books

Business Process Reengineering

Assembled by Carter
McNamara, MBA, PhD

This approach aims to increase organizational performance by
radically re-designing the organization’s structures and processes,
including by starting over from the ground up.

Sections of This Topic Include

Various Perspectives
Various Programs and Movements to Increase Organizational
Performance

Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Business Process Reengineering

In addition to the articles on this current page, see the following blogs which
have posts related to Business Process Reengineering. Scan down the blog’s page
to see various posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar
of the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.

Library’s Consulting
and Organizational Development Blog
Library’s Human Resources
Blog
Library’s Leadership Blog
Library’s Project
Management Blog
Library’s Supervision
Blog

Also consider
Related Library Topics

Various Perspectives

Business Process Re-Engineering”
BPR OnLine Learning Center for reengineering and change management
teams
Project Management Approach for Business Process
Improvement
The tools – Business Process Reengineering

Various Performance Programs and Movements (depending on how
they’re used)

The following can be organizational improvement programs, depending
on how they’re used. (See Broad
Overview of Various Programs and Movements (see Note #1 below.)
Balanced
Scorecard
BusinessProcess
Re-Engineering
Cultural
Change
Quality Management
Knowledge
Management
Management
by Objectives
Organizational
Learning
Program
Evaluation
Strategic
Planning
Total
Quality Management

For the Category of Organizational Development:

To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may want to review some related topics, available from the link below. Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.

Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.

Related Library Topics

Recommended Books