Colleagues,
It has been a while since we discussed the six dimensions of organizations. Four of the six dimensions are captured in the Strategic Leadership Consulting logo:
The six dimensions is a conceptual framework – a simplification of a complex phenomenon. The power of this framework is that it helps us frame all issues as being the result of one core problem. The problem is alignment. In a perfectly aligned organization, which does not exist, people, resources, and structures work in harmony to allow efficiency and progress towards the organizational purpose. This ideal is unachievable due to the complex nature of people and organizations, but looking at things through a frame of alignment does a couple of things:
In theory, there are only four permutations of any given issue:
Revisiting the issue of unproductive meetings from the last few weeks, you can see how the sunrays reflected these four permutations:
The end of June is a natural point of reflection for public and private organizations alike. We’ll use the six dimensions model to aid that reflection this week. Do good and be well, Frederick
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Colleagues, Today we’ll finish pattern matching the sunrays from our unproductive meeting. As we look for other patterns, two more jump out:
At this point we have three areas of promise:
If we had done stairsteps on all the sunrays, we would probably have some more options. Again. complex issues may have more than one problem. In our example above, there is a link between all three areas of promise, and they help us to understand the root problem. It seems likely that the purpose of our meetings is not clear. This lack of clarity leads to a number of symptoms:
If we are correct, then the solution is clear:
The problem-solving process is complex. As we’ve invested almost three weeks dissecting it, the process may also feel length. However, tomorrow I will show you how this process saves time and why it is so critical. For now, I’ll leave you with this: If you aren’t willing to dig into symptoms to uncover the problems, you will consistently waste time, energy, and resources! Worse, your leadership will be less effective than it could be. Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues, Today we’ll do some pattern matching form last week’s sunburst activity on why our meetings are unproductive. I’m using an image of the three sunrays we broke down last week and I’ve annotated it in orange. On this pass through the sunrays I focused on the theme of clarity.
People have their own agendas
Too much information
There’s not enough time
Even though the sunray about people having their own agenda to fundamentally different from too much information and there’s not enough time, the common theme of clarity pops out. Tomorrow we’ll go through again and look at some other relationships. On Wednesday, we’ll being to focus on the areas of promise. Until tomorrow, what themes, connections, and loops do you see? Do good and be well, Frederick Colleagues,
For the past two weeks we’ve been looking at how strategic leaders move from symptom to problem. The front end of that process focuses on expanding the possible underlying factors causing the symptom by:
The fourth step in the process is pattern matching. In pattern matching, we look at all of the stair-steps as a single whole. As we study everything we have written down, we look for:
Connections exist when sunrays have ideas from the stairsteps that connect them together. The two things being connected aren’t identical but are related. Themes exist when the same idea occurs in different sunrays. Loops are present when reasoning becomes circular. Areas of promise are the ideas we get from the patterns we see. An area of promise is a likely root problem. We may only have one area of promise, but with complex issues, there may be more than one root problem, leading to several areas of promise. Tomorrow we’ll look at some examples. Do good and be well, Frederick |
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