The Organisation Scan
The OrgScan is a discovery methodology that uses structured conversations between facilitator and respondent. It was developed to deal with four pressing business needs for projects requiring a first time intervention in an organisation.
- The first is to develop a valid understanding of the organisation involving only a short time scale and low commitment of resources. The speed of the discovery process is important, since rapidly changing circumstances would invalidate any analysis that is slow. Short timescales and low resources also lead to low costs.
- The second is to develop an understanding of the organisation that reaches into the hidden and obscure, as well as those features that are ‘visible, and on-the-surface’. This includes all the ‘soft systems’ and cultural dimensions, as well as the harder, process- and structural-orientated characteristics of the organisation.
- Associated with this is the risk of data contamination occurring. The OrgScan uses indirect, non-judgemental questions that reduce this risk to vanishing point. The insights generated are grounded in reality, not in mis-interpreted questions and data.
- Finally, there is clear evidence that mono-dimensional initiatives seldom deliver significant gains in performance. The need is to capture all of the issues that are currently impacting performance, and then design an intervention that addresses all the priority issues. The OrgScan is configured to provide breadth as well as depth.
As an additional feature, any discovery process will have an ‘intervention effect’ - that which gets measured gets changed. With the OrgScan, this effect can be built up or reduced depending on the objectives for the project. If desired, the effect can be targeted so that the change is in the direction that is needed.
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