Initiatives for organizational effectiveness

Organizational Diagnosis

• Understanding the dynamics in an organization is the first step toward improving organizational effectiveness.
• The impetus for this type of intervention can range from a dysfunctional or poorly functioning work group to a broad assessment of factors affecting the performance of a major component of an organization.
• An effective intervention comprises data collection, analysis and interpretation as well as assistance in the development of appropriate action plans and other response strategies.
• Complex issues in complex organizations are not easily uncovered by attitude surveys. A skilled diagnostician has better success using interviews and focus groups.

Clarifying Performance Expectations

• Many organizations with well thought out and articulated vision statements are nonetheless disappointed when these expectations do not get adequately translated into new and effective performance patterns.
• Many employees and managers are skeptical and hesitant to embrace concepts such as empowerment or teamwork until they have a clearer understanding of what they are expected to do to demonstrate these competencies.
• The creation of behavioral definitions for such concepts, tailored to the organization's goals, objectives and operating philosophy, provide guidelines for shaping desired performance patterns.

Process Interventions

Mainsail Associates, Inc. is available to provide or support both long and short term Organizational Effectiveness interventions. The role, as a process consultant, is to work with business leaders who want to take advantage of Organizational Effectiveness technologies and become more proactive in driving and managing long term changes throughout their organizations.

• Team development
• Organization design
• Change acceleration
• Working through transitions
• Conflict resolution
• Teaming norms and behaviors
• Goal setting
• Improving lateral relations in complex organizations
• Process mapping
• Responsibility charting

Value-added HR work

The work of HR professionals can be divided into two broad categories:

• Transactional activities, the tactical and administrative activities that provide expected levels of service to clients.
• Partnering activities, the analysis and interpretation of trends, structures and situations to identify actions, policies or strategies bearing on HR responsibilities and having a catalytic influence on the organization.

A certain degree of transactional activity is necessary to provide service to client managers and organizations. However, it is easy to get trapped into doing nothing but transactional activities and foregoing the opportunity to make more significant contributions.

HR Professionals should strive to reduce the amount of time spent on transactions; not all of those activities represent a good use of time.

Mainsail Associates, Inc. has helped HR leadership teams develop guidelines to redirect or shape the work efforts within the HR function.