Center for Management Consulting

Why Diagnosis Matters

In a world of increasing stakeholder expectations and decreasing resources, aggressive cost cutting programs have run their course. Where do you turn next? Studies have shown that 85% or more of the root causes of performance problems are in the organizational structures, systems, and culture within which people work – put good people in bad systems and you get poor performance. But trying to improve organizational performance by reorganizing, changing leadership or instituting new training and development programs creates change, but when done without a rigorous diagnosis of an organization’s structures, systems, and culture, managers often solve one problem and unintentionally create others.

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 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. The Breckenridge Institute’s portfolio of validated assessment tools helps reveal how organizational culture can act like an Invisible Bureaucracy™ that frustrates and undermines organizational performance.

Like a medical doctor who uses precision instruments and expertise to improve a patient’s health, an Organizational Physician™ uses validated assessment tools and extensive expertise in OD to improve an organization’s performance. Sustainable results don’t come from the back of an envelope or band-aide solutions. Rather, managers need fact-based decision-making using scientific analytics and diagnosis, not just business experience and intuition. While the most powerful learning comes from direct experience, most managers don’t directly experience the long-term consequences of their key decisions because they have a system-wide effect that spans multiple departments and may impact an organization’s day-to-day operations (positively or negatively) for years to come. The inability of most people to directly experience the long-term systemic consequences of their most important decisions is the primary reason why most people don’t learn from experience, especially when the consequences of a decision are separated from the cause by more than one-to-two years.

The Breckenridge Institute’s portfolio of validated on-line assessments gives managers the tools, methodologies, and quantitative information they need to make informed decisions and get the results they want. In addition, the Institute’s staff combines their expertise in actually improving organizational and individual performance, with our portfolio of research-based methodologies and validated assessment tools in the role of an Organizational Physician™. The Breckenridge Institute’s focus on getting better results through diagnosis will benefit clients in the following business situations.

• Changes in Leadership – Our methodology and tools give new senior or middle managers the operational and cultural information they need to get “up to speed” more quickly.

• Mergers and Acquisitions – When two companies are merged, or when one company acquires another, our methodology and tools can help identify misalignments between the ways-of-working and cultural characteristics of both entities, thus facilitating the integration process.

• Strategic Planning – Our methodology and tools provide quantitative input into an organization’s strategic planning process by indicating the organization’s Strengths, and Weaknesses (SWOT analysis).

• Declining or Plateaued Organizational Performance – Senior or middle managers can use our methodology and tools to identify the root causes and underlying patterns of ineffective organizational behaviors that stifle growth and prevent organizations from achieving their goals.

• Improve Marketing and Sales – Our methodology and tools reveal the degree to which your organization listens to, and focuses on, its customers and whether or not your structures and systems are results-focused and operating to meet customers’ needs and requirements.

• Business Process Improvement – Our methodology and tools help identify the cultural context within which business processes operate so process owners can develop more effective solutions to problems like rework, poor or inconsistent quality and service, work-arounds, timeliness, downtime, ineffective communication, interpersonal conflict, and lack of employee motivation.

• Organizational Growth – Proactive companies can use our methodology and tools to create the new organizational structures, systems, and competencies needed to manage growth.

• Reorganizations – Our methodology and tools can be used prior to a reorganization to identify pivotal issues that need to be addressed and to predict where potential barriers to change will be.

• Team Building – Used with teams of managers or work-groups, our methodology and tools help create common purpose and goals for organizations and work-groups that might otherwise operate as functional “silos,” thus undermining the goals and objectives of the overall organization.

For more information on how the Breckenridge Institute® can help your organization e-mail us at info@breckenridgeinstitute.com. 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).

Personality in Context^®