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Education & Certification Certification in the Use of the Vitality & Diversity Assessment Tool The Vitality & Diversity Assessment Tool provides an overall picture of where the organization is healthy and where there are signs of disease. Organizational disease is defined here as momentum away from vitality and towards either fragmentation or rigidity. Organizations that are hidebound by old organizational paradigms with excessive or obsolete rules (once useful, but unexamined for relevance in today's environment) tend to stagnate into group think. They become victim to boundaries, turf, hierarchies, and walls that stifle creativity. On the other hand, organizations can also fragment because of an environment that lacks boundaries. Indications of impending fragmentation can be absentee leadership, or leadership not directed by clear mission or purpose. Life in this kind of organization is hectic, even chaotic, like being on a rudderless ship, following whatever winds or currents happen to come along. Eventually this ship will disintegrate upon the rocks of competition and the marketplace.In the use of this tool, we are looking for clues as to where potential interventions will provide the highest leverage for improvement of organizational performance. There are four major "Vitality Elements" that the Tool focuses on and evaluates: * Organizational Purpose and Values -- A healthy and vital organization has a strong sense of purpose and direction, expression of opinion is encouraged, and information about the business is widespread and accessible. In a healthy organization, employees at all levels are aware of the key constituencies upon which the success of the organization depends, and acknowledge the necessary relationships that contribute to that success. Coherence and consistency within the value system and its application at all levels allow the solutions to issues to be approached from a systems framework, measured against a widely-held value-laden foundation, and include an examination of alternatives that results in broader and more appropriate output. This requires a broad network of consistent and proactive information sharing both within and across subgroups in the organization, as well as with their external stakeholders. Components of this vitality element that the Tool assesses are: a sense of organizational mission or purpose, articulation and congruence of values, the level of anxiety on an individual and group basis, the degree of linkages between groups, and the amount of information exchange. * The Quality of Leadership and Trust -- Leadership is guidance and influence, as opposed to control and direction. Leadership is the foundation upon which the Vitality of the organization rests. An organization is a dissipative system: one that breaks down, or dissipates, without the continuous input of energy. However, organizations are frequently run as if they are equilibrium systems, requiring no effort to retain structure and a great deal of energy to change it. Dissipative systems require great effort to retain structure and no effort to change it. Leadership is a primary source of the energy that feeds and nourishes an innovative, self-sustaining organization, and level of trust is an indicator of that energy. The Tool examines the perceptions about leadership in the organization in terms of where influence resides, the level of trust that seems to prevail, and how values, purpose and vision translate into individual and group behavior. Another important element is how well competing stakeholder demands are balanced as relationships are deepened. * Diversity and Innovation -- Creativity and innovation cannot exist in an environment where new ideas or potential solutions are not allowed to flourish. A creative environment recognizes individual differences as a source of potentially illuminating perspectives and frames of reference. This is a source of strength and competitive vitality when contained within a healthy organizational value system. Without a pervading understanding of the organization's core value system and sense of purpose, and a consistent application of those values in the decision processes at all levels of the organization, extensive diversity tends to break down into unresolved disagreement and factionalism. The signs of health that the Tool examines in this vitality element include people easily expressing individual identities, ideas and needs, a willingness to question assumptions, having issues and problems out in the open, and the presence of widely practiced and effective techniques for constructively working through differences and disagreements, as well as managing a diverse knowledge base. * Empowerment and the Containment of Anxiety -- Empowerment results from an individual sense of possession of the knowledge and authority to act in the interests of the organization, involvement in relationships that promote action and performance, and the containment of undue anxieties driven by unpredictable events or reactions of others. A certain amount of stress and anxiety is necessary to perform at peak levels, both for individuals and organizations. Beyond a certain level, however, anxiety ceases to be beneficial and becomes detrimental to performance. A level of anxiety that becomes an obstacle to performance we call distress. A key element in fostering innovation from an organizational standpoint, then, becomes creating an environment that encourages high level performance but contains the anxieties that become obstacles to performance. To measure anxiety containment, the Tool looks at trust levels, at personal efficacy, at performance feedback, and at the prevalence of business literacy (adequate knowledge of the company's relationship with the industry and with the marketplace). It measures the degree of empowerment by looking at the opportunity, ability, motivation and authority to constructively influence work and decision processes. The quality of relationships, communications processes, and quality of information accessible - as measured within the previously described elements of the Tool - also comprise a major component of this element. 
Participants in this workshop obtain a through grounding in the components of each vitality element, followed by direction and guidance in interview, probing, and group process techniques. This guidance is critical: those participating in the assessment process are often curious, frequently resistant, and sometimes hostile. Thorough grounding in probing the social constellation of the organization is necessary to achieve the ability to generate the depth and accuracy of information from the interview and probing process that provides a reliable picture of the state of the organization's health and vitality. |
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