Professional Resource Center

Organizational Focus Indicator™ (OFI™)

Organizations are goal-seeking organisms that can follow the strategic direction they choose as long as they meet the needs and expectations of the larger context of the external 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. More specifically, an organization’s goals and objectives should function like internal targets that guide the organization toward fulfilling its purpose and implicit contract with the external environment.

The Organizational Focus Indicator™ (OFI™) measures key indicators of the degree to which your organization’s structures, systems, and culture are designed to carry out its implicit contract with the external environment. The OFI™ helps managers identify the extent to which their organization is either externally focused on producing results, outputs, and meeting customer needs, or internally focused on the structures, systems, people, and internal operations needed to meet those needs. The OFI™ also quantifies what your organization’s level of external or internal focus may be costing you in squandered time and energy – hidden costs that don’t appear in traditional financial accounting systems. The OFI™ is an on-line assessment that can be completed by managers and staff members in 3-4 minutes and administered in organizations of up to 5,000 people.

Business Applications – The OFI™ can be used with an entire organization or in work-groups and functional units in the following situations.

• Organizational Transformation – The OFI™ helps leaders and managers more effectively manage both the change and transition elements of organizational transformation.
• Changes in Management – The OFI™ gives new managers the operational and cultural information needed to get “up to speed” quickly.
• Mergers and Acquisitions – When two companies are merged, or when one company purchases another, the OFI™ helps quantify the level of external or internal focus in both entities, thus facilitating the integration process.
• Declining or Plateaued Organizational Performance – Managers can use the OFI™ to identify the root causes and underlying patterns of ineffective organizational behaviors that stifle growth and prevent organizations from achieving their goals and objectives.
• Organizational Alignment – The OFI™ helps identify areas of conflict between work-groups headed by “Border Guards” who: a) have conflicting or competing interests and ways of working, b) create sub-cultures that are misaligned with (or in opposition to) each other and the organization’s overall direction, and c) seal-off their work-group from effective interaction with the overall organization.
• Business Process Improvement – The OFI™ helps characterize the organizational context within which business processes operate so process owners can develop more effective solutions to problems like rework, poor quality, work-arounds, timeliness, and ineffective communication that focus process improvement projects on getting results, outputs, and meeting customer needs.
• Strategic Planning – The OFI™ provides input to an organization’s strategic planning process by indicating the organization’s strengths and areas for improvement in terms of producing results, outputs, and meeting customer needs, or being overly focused on internal operations.
• 360 Degree Reviews – The OFI™ is used by managers and supervisors as a more effective alternative to 360 degree reviews because it provides feedback within the context of the organization’s structures and systems.

For more information on using this powerful tool in your organization (or with clients), contact the Breckenridge Institute® today at info@breckenridgeinstitute.com or 1-800-303-2554 to schedule a free consultation about how you can best use the Organizational Focus Indicator™ to improve your organization’s performance and to more effectively manage the change and transition elements of organizational transformation.

Personality in Context^®