Better Results through Diagnosis

The Breckenridge Institute® is a management consulting firm that focuses on helping clients get better results through diagnosis. Like a medical doctor who uses quantitative and qualitative diagnosis and medical expertise to improve a patient’s health, the Breckenridge Institute® uses quantitative and qualitative diagnosis and extensive expertise in OD to help clients get better results in the areas of financial management, operations, people, and enterprise-wide systems. The Institute will help you get:

Financial Results: Are your financial, physical, and human resources aligned to get the results you want? We’ll help you take a fresh look at how to increase revenue, decrease the cost of operations, and better align your budget allocations to achieve your goals and objectives.

Operational Results: Is your business experience helping you get the results you want or is it hurting you? We’ll help you take a fresh look at how to increase the productivity of your existing business systems and processes, and better align your day-to-day operations to achieve your goals and objectives.

People Results: Do the right people work together on the right tasks to get the results you want? We’ll help you take a fresh look at whether the organizational dynamics between departments and the “personalities” of managers and key personnel are helping you to achieve your goals and objectives or hindering you.

Enterprise Results: Is your organization’s mission, purpose, strategy, planning/budgeting process, operating philosophy, and culture focused on meeting real needs in the business environment? We’ll help you take a fresh look at whether these strategic organizational elements are explicitly defined, implemented in day-to-day operations, and helping you achieve your goals and objectives.

The Breckenridge Institute® provides an objective third-party perspective that helps leaders and managers become catalysts for positive change and organizational transformation. The Institute has expertise in the following areas:

• Developing Strategy
• Improving Execution and Operations
• Financial and Budget Analysis
• Characterizing and Changing Organizational Culture
• Organizational Assessments
• Personality Assessments
• Organizational Analysis
• Meeting and Process Facilitation
• Training, Mentoring, and Coaching

Since 1995, Breckenridge Institute’s staff of technical and business professionals has been providing the highest levels of service, competence, quality, and value to clients by combining our extensive expertise in actually improving organizational and individual performance, with our portfolio of research-based methodologies and validated assessment tools. The Breckenridge Institute® is a member of the Association of Test Publishers (APT) and the Energy Facility Contractors Group (EFCOG). The Breckenridge Institute® is a GSA approved contractor, with a MOBIS Schedule 874 and GSA Advantage Number GS10F0232L. The Breckenridge Institute’s areas of expertise are classified under NAICS Code 541611 (Management, Scientific, and Technical Consulting Services).

Is Your Organization Aligned to Get the Results You Want?

Is your organization unable to change in the face of forces and threats from the business environment? Do you make key decisions that go unimplemented or get reversed? Are you struggling against overly complex systems that frustrate and undermine your attempts to create positive change? Does your organization’s culture act like an Invisible Bureaucracy™ that keeps you from achieving your goals and objectives? These are signs that your organization is not aligned to get the results you want. The Breckenridge Institute’s Organizational Alignment Indicator™ (OAI™) will show you what this may be costing you in squandered time and energy – hidden costs that don’t appear on balance sheets or budget statements.

Just click on the button above, complete the questions in 2-3 minutes, and your free Organizational Alignment Indicator™ report will be sent directly to you. This is the first step to helping your organization get better results through diagnosis.

Does Your Organization Focus on Serving Customers as the
Reason for Its Existence?

Organizations are goal-seeking organisms that can follow the strategic direction they choose as long as they meet the needs and expectations of customers and the business environment. An organization must link its strategic direction to meeting the tangible needs of customers, and meeting those needs becomes an organization’s purpose – its reason for existing. The link between the strategic direction and meeting customer needs functions like an implicit contract between the organization and the external environment, and keeping the commitments outlined in this contract ensures an organization’s survival. So an organization’s goals and objectives should function like internal targets that guide it toward fulfilling its purpose and implicit contract with customers. The Organizational Focus Indicator™ (OFI™) identifies the degree to which your organization’s structures, systems, and culture are either externally focused on serving customers, or internally focused on day-to-day operations. The OFI™ also shows you what too much internal focus may be costing you in squandered time and energy – valuable resources that are not available to help you achieve your goals and objectives.

Just click on the button above, complete the questions in 2-3 minutes, and your free Organizational Focus Indicator™ report will be sent directly to you. This is the first step to helping your organization get better results through diagnosis.

Is Your Organization Motivated by Trust or Driven by Fear?

Trust is the foundation of all human interactions, and the cornerstone upon which high-performing organizations are built. The degree to which managers or staff members either trust the organization they work in, or fear it is a “window” into the underlying patterns of behavior, belief structure, and tacit assumptions that constitute an organization’s culture. Managers have two choices. They can either consciously build organizational trust as the foundation of an Intended Culture, or they can allow day-to-day issues, ineffective communication, and misperception to erode trust and develop an Unintended Culture based on fear. The Organizational Trust Index™ (OTI™) identifies the degree to which your organization is either motivated by trust, or driven by fear. The OTI™ also identifies what this may be costing you in squandered time and energy, padded figures, distorted measures of performance, and the tendency to sanitize, spin, and reinterpret the brutal facts about what’s really going on in an organization.

Just click on the button above, complete the questions in 2-3 minutes, and your free Organizational Trust Index™ report will be sent directly to you. This is the first step to helping your organization get better results through diagnosis.

Does Your Organization’s Culture Act Like an Invisible Bureaucracy?

Most managers struggle against the flow of overly complex systems and are frustrated by an invisible force that undermines their attempts to effect positive change. Their instincts tell them that the organization’s structures, systems, and culture are preventing them from getting the results they want, but “culture” has remained one of the least understood aspects of organizational life. The Breckenridge Institute’s portfolio of validated assessment tools reveals how organizational culture can act like an Invisible Bureaucracy™ that frustrates and undermines organizational performance. The day-to-day reality of Invisible Bureaucracy™ manifests itself in a number of recurring and troubling questions:

• Why is it so difficult for some organizations to make decisions, and why (once made) do so many decisions go unimplemented?

• Why do most organizations have a gap between the formal rules for how things get done, and the informal rules for how things really get done?

• Why does vital business information get filtered, altered, or stopped as it moves up and down through the organizational structure?

• Why do projects that seem to have the full support of top managers and key personnel die a slow death and no one knows what happened to them?

• Why are some organizations able to change in the face of forces and threats from the external environment while others seem to have “Blind Spots” about these issues and fall prey to them over and over again?

• Why do the universal principles of organization development seem to work in some organizations, but not in others?

• Why do change initiatives so often show failed or marginal results?

• Why do so many people find their work to be a substantial part of life’s problems, rather than one of the solutions to life’s problems?

Understanding how the forces of Invisible Bureaucracy™ actually work begins to transform “culture” into a reliable resource that can be intentionally used to achieve an organization’s goals and objectives. Like a pair of infra-red glasses allows you to see things at night, the Breckenridge Institute’s approach to getting better results through diagnosis will make Invisible Bureaucracy™ visible. Once you’ve learned to ‘see’ differently, you’ll never view your organization (or the people in it) the same way again. Many of these principles, practices, methodologies, and tools are described in Mark Bodnarczuk’s book, Making Invisible Bureaucracy Visible: A Guide to Assessing and Changing Organizational Culture.

Making Invisible Bureaucracy Visible is available on Amazon.com, or at your local bookstore.