Implementing organisational health check to create strategic people-transformation plan
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IT'S TRUE that people are the critical differentiator for the success of a business. It's also true that people issues have always been put aside in business planning discussions, only to be found later that to be the key obstacle - the company cannot dev
My point here is that we cannot view people and organisation planning in isolation. Business planning needs to be linked with people/organisation development planning to ensure the right capabilities of the workforce in supporting the execution of the business plan.
To do this well, we need to have a clear understanding of ourselves – not only where the business is heading, but also what really matters to drive the desired business performance, what the unique strengths and limitations are, and how to move forward development efforts.
Still, it is not enough to answer the question, “What needs to be changed or improved?” but also “How best to make those changes and improvements?”
The process to help obtain this picture is called “organisation diagnosis”, which should be viewed every time we change our business plan to ensure that the organisational and people elements are readily mapped out with the right implementation to support future business.
Holistic approach
Organisations are a lot like humans. They need a regular health check-up to determine how fit they are and whether there are indicators of something needing to be fixed to help them stay healthy.
It is critical to look at the way we operate, the systems and processes we use, and the people we have – whether they are fit enough to help support the business to move towards the desired goals and direction.
This organisational diagnosis will look at all the moving elements in an organisation in a holistic approach to avoid the issue of fixing one problem and ending up causing another, because everything is interrelated.
The process involves determining the organisational and people elements required to pursue the new business direction.
In essence, the holistic practice allows us to look at the current structure, systems, processes and people at the same time to define what needs to be changed to create newly required capabilities.
Furthermore, good diagnosis information with a holistic view should point out the missing elements required to make things work.
For example, launching a recruitment campaign wouldn’t make any sense if we knew we couldn’t retain the recruits or help them work effectively under the current working systems and culture.
In other words, in-depth understanding would help the human-resources department plan better and make necessary change happen.
Don’t try to fix everything
Don’t try to fix everything or make everything equally perfect.
It is true that each organisation definitely has different priorities and should define and evaluate how much is “good enough” and where it should aim for “excellence” so that the efforts and investments can bring about faster returns.
It’s vital to keep in mind that to prioritise, always match actions with the ultimate business outcomes rather than just following the best-practice approach for people-initiative implementation.
Readiness for change
Last but not least, we should not only focus on how good our plan is, but also on how we define the right approach to implement such a plan that is also suited to the readiness of our people to accept change.
This should include the mindset of people towards the change – positive versus negative – as well as the level of flexibility, openness, history of changes and the capability gap required to make the desired change happen.
If all these factors are in place, HR can put together an implementation plan that really leads to change.
As today’s businesses rely heavily on how fast they can adapt and make changes, getting valuable insights can definitely help them create a better plan that works.
Through organisational diagnosis, organisations can benefit not only from making a shortcut to the areas that really matter, but also from developing a better strategic alignment between the business plan and the organisation/people development plan so that they can be ready to grow at the same pace as their business.
Nipatra Tangpojthavepol, a senior consultant at APMGroup, can be reached at [email protected].
