Guide One: The Organizational Elements Model (OEM)1
The Organizational Elements—what an organization uses, does, produces, delivers, and the external contributions—help avoid splintering and fragmentation. For any initiative, look at both the whole as well as the parts. Ensure that each of the organizational elements Mega, Macro, and Micro as well as Processes and Inputs are considered rigorously and correctly. This ensures that they are all aligned one with the others so that what any organization uses, does, produces, and delivers outside of itself adds value to our shared world. See Figure 2.1 for a list of questions each organization must ask and answer.
• Do you commit to deliver organizational contributions that add value for society? (MEGA)
• Do you commit to deliver organizational contributions that have the quality required by your external partners? (MACRO)
• Do you commit to produce internal results that have the quality required by your internal partners? (MICRO)
• Do you commit to have efficient internal processes, programs, projects, and activities? (PROCESSES)
• Do you commit to create and ensure the quality and appropriateness of the human, capital, and physical resources available? (INPUTS)
• Do you commit to deliver (a) products, activities, methods and procedures that have positive value and worth? (b) the results and accomplishments defined by our objectives? (EVALUATION/CONTINUAL IMPROVEMENT)
Figure 2.1. The Organizational Elements Model (OEM) stated in terms of the questions each organization must ask and answer.
Mega is about adding value to society and external clients, Macro is about what an organization delivers outside of itself, and Micro is about contributions made by individuals and small groups within the organization.
Ask yourself (and those you work with) “Which one of the organizational elements do you think we can afford to not deal with precisely, rigorously, and measurably?” Most will agree that all Organizational Elements are important and must be included and addressed rigorously and measurably and should be linked.
Ensure that each element will deliver results that add up with all others—add value to all internal and external stakeholders. Simply focusing on only one or two of the elements will likely result in failure. After all, we all live in a world where we and our organizations are nothing more (or nothing less) than means to societal ends.
Each of the Organizational Elements will yield performance data, and taken together, they will provide the “vital signs” of your organization. Using them will give you an “organizational check-up” similar to the annual check-up you would get from your family physician.
The Organizational Elements must be linked and aligned. Doing so ensures that everything you use (Inputs) and do (Processes) as well as individual results (Micro) and organizational contributions (Outputs) deliver useful societal results (Mega); all in the value chain are both served well and well served. Figure 2.2 shows how the elements link and align.
Mega (Societal Contributions)
Macro (Organizational Contributions)
Micro (Individual Contributions)
Processes
Inputs
Figure 2.2. The Organizational Elements Model (OEM) and how the Organizational Elements link and align so that each adds value to all levels.
Some examples for each element of planning and each type of result for each level are included in Figure 2.3.
Mega
• Everyone is self-sufficient and self-reliant—not under the care, custody, or control of another person, agency, or substance
• Organizations (including clients and customers) are successful over time2
• Eliminated disabling illness due to environmental pollution
• Eliminated disabling fatalities
• Positive quality of life
• No welfare recipients (and thus their consumption is less than their production)
• Zero disabling crime
• Continued profit over time (5 years and beyond)
• Created jobs that add value over time
• Clients’ success over time (5 years and beyond)
• School completer is self-sufficient and self-reliant
Macro
• Assembled automobiles
• Goods and/or services sold
• System delivered
• Patient discharged
• High school graduate
Micro
• Tire
• Fender
• Production quota met
• Completed carpet production batch
• Completed training manuals
• Competent worker
• Course completed
• Operational completed
• Test or course passed
Processes
• Organizational development
• Management techniques
• Operating production line
• 360° feedback
• Training
• Six Sigma
• Curriculum
• Examining patient
• Strategic (or tactical or operational) planning
• Assessing needs
• Course development
Inputs
• Money
• People
• Equipment
• Facilities
• Existing goals
• Existing policies
• Time
• Resources
• Individual values
• Laws
• Current economic conditions
• Regulations
• History
• Organizational culture
• Current problems
• Existing materials
• Current staff and their skills, knowledge, attitudes, and abilities
• Characteristics of current and potential clients
• Predicted client desires and requirements
Figure 2.3. Examples for each of the Organizational Elements.
For each organizational element, there is an associated level of planning: strategic planning (and thinking) starts with Mega (societal value-added) while tactical planning starts with Macro (organizational contributions) and operational planning with Micro contributions from individuals and small groups (Table 2.1).3
Table 2.1. Three levels of results, the label for each type of results, and the planning focus for each4.
Defining strategic as adding value to society and tactical as defining the best ways and means to deliver societal results is pragmatic. Differentiating among types of planning and results prevents the blurring of the three different levels of planning: Mega/Societal, Macro/Organizational, and Micro/Individual and encourages planners to justify any organizational mission in terms of Mega. These elements are also useful for defining the basic questions every organization must ask and answer.
Putting the OEM to work. To locate what you are doing and to make sure that you realize that each of the elements are equally important as well as linked with all the others, simply ask your-self, “At what Organizational Element is this?” Remember, just because something is big or really important doesn’t make it Mega.
Try the exercise in Figure 2.4 for a pizza manufacturer so that you can target an initiative or condition to the OEM and locate it in the entire OEM context. Read each condition, then place a check under the Organizational Element you feel pertains to the condition.
Check your answers:
Figure 2.4. A basis for a dialog about commitment to adding value to all internal and external stakeholders.
Defining, justifying, designing, and delivering useful organizational results are possible. They only require you to choose and use those concepts and tools that will help you select appropriate actions that will deliver measurable success.
What you use, do, produce, and deliver must all align to add value—measurable value—to your organization’s internal and external partners. And that is what is almost always missing in other approaches: adding measurable value to yourself and all stakeholders. Most other approaches start and stop with the immediate bottom line and do not ensure that everyone wins. Winning requires leaving something “on the table” for everyone. Short-term greed leads to long-term failure. Not attending to external and societal consequences was central to most failures in business and government we noted earlier.5 Be sure to link and align Mega, Macro, and Micro with the Processes and Inputs.
Think Mega, think holistically. It will pay striking dividends.
Choices and making decisions. The practical choice is that there must be a partnership that seeks success for all stakeholders both within and outside of the organization—by design and by intention. The focus on societal value added—Mega level—is also ethical6…if we are not adding value to society, we are subtracting value.7
Decisions (and not making a decision is a decision) can be made easier and more effective if we consider the consequences of simply doing what we are now doing or deciding to change in order to get different rewards or payoffs. If you want to have a different life (including your personal one as well as your organization), simply do what it takes to get different results and consequences.
Figure 2.5 provides a guide to making decisions that will be both successful and satisfying.
Basic Decision-Making Steps
(based on Greenwald)8
• Identify the payoffs you are getting now that you don’t want.
• Identify the behaviors you are now displaying that deliver the negative payoff.
• Identify the payoffs you do want.
• Identify the behaviors and actions that will deliver the desired payoffs.
• Decide to change your behavior.
• Change.
• Be ready to decide to change in the future if you want different payoffs.
Figure 2.5. The steps of decision making.
When we talk about decisions and changes, think of these basic steps and include Mega in your list of payoffs, payoffs being the rewards and consequences of our decisions. If you want to change what is happening to you, in an organization, or in life9 to something positive, these steps will be of great value. Of course, staying objective and complete is essential.
Your success will be better assured if you make decisions based on using all the Organizational Elements. Not doing so is very risky.
Action Steps
1. Use the Organizational Elements Model (OEM)—Mega, Macro, Micro, Processes, and Inputs—to serve you:
• Identify the three levels of results and two levels of activities and resources.
• Allow you to identify any considered action, procedure, initiative, or change and where it is in the total value chain of the OEM. Let it keep you from selecting solutions before knowing the problems.
• Use the OEM to serve as a guide to achieve agreement among your internal and external partners of what should be used, done, produced, delivered, and the value it will add for all stakeholders.
2. Differentiate among Strategic (Mega), Tactical (Macro), and Operational (Micro) planning, and ensure that all levels of planning and results are linked and aligned to ensure success.
3. Use words clearly and with precise meaning. That will help you work with others and not confuse terms and what you have to design and deliver.
4. Complete a dialog with others and get the required commitment to Mega thinking and planning. Figure 2.4 will help.
5. Not making a decision is a decision. A useful decision guide, based on Greenwald, is presented in Figure 2.5.
6. Be clear with yourself and others and continue to think and act Mega.
Endnotes
1. This is not the same as Original Equipment Manufacturer that is used in some industries, although we rely on them to focus on Mega as primary.
2. The words “over time” are critical. Success over time indicates that what it delivers to external clients is safe and useful and that is also reflected in continuing profits and no successful liability lawsuits against them.
3. Note that these definitions of strategic and tactical are different from other conventional usages.
4. Kaufman, R. (2006). Change, choices, and consequences: A guide to Mega Thinking and Planning. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.
5. A major contribution is the two-level business case created by Dr. Mariano Bernardez. His approach, the inclusion of Mega as well as Macro, allows us to see the true costs and consequences of including societal value added:
Bernardez, M. (2009). Minding the business of business: Tools and models to design and measure wealth creation. Performance Improvement Quarterly, 22(2), pp. 17–72.
6. Moore, S. (2010). Ethics by design: Strategic thinking and planning for exemplary performance, responsible results, and societal accountability. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.
7. Brethower, D. (2006). Performance analysis: Knowing what to do and how. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.
8. Greenwald, H. (1973). Decision Therapy. NY: Peter Wyden, Inc.
9. Guidance on applying Mega to one’s own life is in Kaufman, R. (2006). 30 Seconds that can change your life: A decision-making guide for those who refuse to be mediocre. Amherst, MA: HRD Press, Inc.