Analysis of an Organization's Learning Climate

Aspects of Organizational Development
Analysis of an organization's learning climate produces the fertilizer that helps an organization to grow. Systemic analysis helps to identify constraints for growth of your organization and the people working for it. It is an invitation for people to take interest in their organization.

There is no blueprint for a successful structure of an organization - and no generalized approach to organizational development. To a great extend, communication structures in an organization mirror cultural patterns. How you react on the patterns is up to you. But once you start to analyze your organization and involve your staff, you have to tell them about the results, and listen to their comments. Then, it is up to the management to decide whether they continue the path and become a learning organization or not. You might adopt only a few ideas of the concept. But if you want to start a real process of change, you need the full support of your staff - otherwise it will inevitably fail.

The Toolbook offers a series of exercises which help you to analyze and visualize structures of your organization:

Scoping:
This is a systemic tool, that gives you a structure for the first analysis of your consulting assignment. A questionnaire that applies for any kind of situation in which your task is to advise an individual or an organization.

SWOT:
Strength, weaknesses, opportunities and threats has meanwhile become a standard tool for organizational analysis. It works as a Change Management tool if applied in the right setting.

Questionnaires for Satisfaction at the Workplace:
An introduction into classical motivation theory and two questionnaire for analyzing the satisfaction of your staff.

Timeline:
A tool which is used in Future Search conferences. I found it helpful also in other settings to create a common understanding of a group about where they come from.

Exploring the conscious and the unconscious of your organization:
A questionnaire that looks behind the obvious structures and tries to explore the hidden agenda of organizations.

Systemic Constellations:
Systemic constellations is the newest kid on the block. Although its foundation dates back 30 years to the work of Virginia Satir, just recently it has been applied to analysis and change of organizations. It is disputed and criticized; however, I found a lot of situations where constellation really helped my clients to understand what is going wrong and to conceive some alternative options.

Analyze Change Drivers on Different Levels of Change:
A tool that helps people to realize the change drivers they are affected by.

Ralph Stacey's Agreement & Certainty Matrix:
In management and organizational consulting, we are phased with different levels of complexity, uncertainty and agreement of stakeholders to what should be done. This analytical tool helps you to select the relevant instruments to intervene into a system.