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The Goals of
OFP Road-Mapping and Corporate Management |
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The OFP
Process |
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Orientation and Planning
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Members
of the top management team
commit themselves to an enquiry that will dig into the efficiency of
their organization and
leadership principles
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The top management sets the ground
rules for nondefensive communication, defines the game plan and
objectives
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The top management team develops a "Statement of Strategic and
Organizational Direction" that articulates the links between the
company's competitive context, performance
goals,
business strategy, and needed
organizational and
cultural changes.
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The top management team composes a task force of a cross section of
middle managers from different functions and appoints it to collect
the organizational information
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Data Collection
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Members of the employee task force are
trained to conduct open-ended interviews with employees and
customers and collect information about specific management
practices and arrangements that help or hinder the implementation of
specific strategies.
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Consultants conduct interviews with members of the top management
team about their effectiveness.
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OFP Meeting
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Completing and analyzing the
feedback
gained from interviews
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Sited in an outer circle, the top
management team listens to the task force, seated in an inner
circle, discuss its findings. This process is "carefully
orchestrated to allow the task force to present a complete and
accurate picture of even the most politically sensitive barriers
to strategy implementation. Guided by ground rules for
nondefensive communication, the top team dialogues with the
employee task force at the end of each presentation".
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After the dialogue concludes, the task force departs, and
consultants feed back a summary of the major themes from their
interviews with the members of the top management team. The
issues related to the role or style of any team member,
including the CEO, that is helping or impeding the top team
effectiveness, are discussed.
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Using a systemic model, the top
management team assesses the consequences of organizational
deficiencies identified by the task force and then evaluates their
causes.
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Using the OFP, the top management team develops a broad model and
vision of how the
company should be redesigned to implement the new strategy more
effectively, and an implementation plan.
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The top management team gathers with the task force to review the
findings and what they plan to do. Meeting separately, the task
force evaluates the proposed changes and the implementation plan,
and gives its reaction to the top management.
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Developing a template for ongoing organizational learning and
improvement:
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defining a continuing role for the
task force in evaluating the organizational progress and
identifying areas of weaknesses and opportunities
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"implementing a
project management
system for the ongoing commissioning, conduct, and review of
organizational improvement efforts"
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annual or bi-annual readministration of OFP for the business as a
whole
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Why OFP?
Even the
best corporate leaders
can be blind to core personal and organizational weaknesses that are hidden
within the business structure and create obstacles and barriers that prevent
their business units from achieving optimal performance. Harvard Business
School professor Michael Beer and consultant Russel A. Eisenstat developed
and innovative process, the Organizational Fitness Profile (OFP), that can
help corporate renewal, X-ray your organization, identify its weaknesses,
and take corrective action.
Balanced
Organization: 5 Basic Elements
Innovation-friendly
Organization
Why Organizational Change Fails: 8 Common Errors
The Road Map
for Conducting the OFP Process
1. Orientation and Planning
During a one-day meeting led by a
consultant or facilitator, the top
management team develops a
"Statement of Strategic and Organizational Direction" that is used both to
communicate and explain the logic behind the strategy and as a stimulus
to collect organizational information on
barriers to implementation.
After the statement is issued, the
top management team composes and commissions an employee task force to
interview
customers and
employees.
2. Data Collection
While interviewing top customers
and employees, the task force members ask the basic question: "What do you
perceive as the strengths and/or barriers to implement our strategy and
accomplish our goals?" Consultants conduct interviews with members of the
top management team about their role and management style that help or
impede top team effectiveness.
3. Meeting
The task force completes and
analyzes the feedback gained from the interviews during a tree-day OFP
meeting. It begins by reporting what it has found in its interviews, using a
set of pre-arranged topics as its anchor. These topics relate to a
classic systemic model of how
to analyze an organization, and answer the questions:
Leadership-Management
Synergy
Leadership
Attributes
12
Leadership Roles
The task force's report enables
the top team of managers to analyze:
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how well they are leading the
organization
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how they can change their behavior
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how to restructure the
organization so as enable it to transform itself.
Then, the top management develops
a
corporate renewal strategy and an
implementation plan. Focus is placed on projects that directly improve
business performance as well as on the organization's design and the top
management functioning. The latter include roles, responsibilities,
meetings,
and
decision making. Projects are typically conducted by consultant-assisted
cross-functional teams,
and are supervised by the top management team.
The changes and the implementation
plan proposed by the top management team are evaluated by the task force
that gives its reaction to management. This assessment:
In those cases where OFP proves to
be highly effective, it serves as a template for
continuous
organizational learning
and
improvement.
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Synergistic Organization
►
Inspiring Corporate
Culture
►
Continuous Improvement Firm (CIF)
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