Creating healthy change organizations
dirk’s session on healthy orgs
frame: dirk has spent 20 years doing tech and social justice work. when you’re looking at an org and looking to use tech effectively, it has a tendency to magnify problems already existing in org. helped run staff retreat and implement things coming out of it. Out of this retreat were dirk’s opinions on what a heatlhy org looks like. Dirk was asked to articulate this in a doc, did that, and shared it with the staff. But now dirk wants to make this a public document, but wants to make sure it is right before making it public. Therefore, this session is a good place to field test this doc. How do I frame this in the right way? This is really about helping dirk.
Groups of 3 each – what does a healthy organization mean to you?
What is an indicator of organizational health? How do you know how an organization is healthy?
Jane’s group – what does a heatlhy organization mean to you?
- Nimble, flexible
- Lean, efficient
- Honest with each other, able to have honest conversations
- Clear line of impact impact/reporting; Having work aligned with comms – intend to do something do it, report on it
- Transparency within and without the org
- Clear vision, focus
- Stability – especially economic, outlook
- Expertise, excellence – building out from a place of strength.. make sure there is a place of strength within the org, and that we are working from that
- Ethical orientation – both within the organization and to external stakeholders
- Organization understands context that it’s working in… this is how we’re impacting people we’re working with
- Engagement
- Self-awareness
External indicators – what would indicate to you a healthy org?
- Consistent and regular communication to the public
- eg. coca cola ads across the world
- could also indicate self awareness, authenticity
- eg. emails that are sent every two weeks about stuff they are doing
- strong community of users/customers
- low staff turnover
- support stakeholders
- board/leadership is representative of the people they are serving
- utilizing their area of expertise/excellence to achieve their mission
- concrete deliverables/follow-through
- clarity of message as reflects their mission and focus
- clear or otherwise self-evident guiding (ethical) principles