Regular org health checkups enable companies to stay ahead of the change curve, manage future risk and create future-ready leaders. I've described why by using the guiding analogy of holistic health practitioners, who take the entire human being into account and seek out the root causes of illness rather than simply treat isolated symptoms.
Now, we move from why to how: how to conduct these checkups for maximum success. As a guiding analogy in this phase, let's explore building and utilizing a mobile health monitor app that provides sensory checkups and real-time data.
With meaningful contributions from my colleagues in Google's People Analytics and Coaching & Consulting teams, here are my guidelines for the foundation of an effective org health checkup:
1. Build an enterprise-wide framework.
The org health framework should define the good and the not-so-good. This framework is a shared set of consistent, comprehensive principles, practices and tools — and their accompanying measures and metrics — that are adopted and accessible by all. Building out a framework is akin to deciding what your mobile health monitor will measure (heart rate? calories burned?) and what constitutes a good score.
Roughly half the companies I've worked with have already taken the important step of developing an enterprise-wide framework and use it in the operating rhythm of the business, or at critical inflection points, such as a merger or executive transition. The most powerful advantage of establishing a metrics-driven framework is the creation of a shared language between leaders across the business. This is a critical cultural shift toward a shared set of standards and ways of working — a necessary precursor to becoming a change-capable organization.
Note that for some organizations, this will require upfront investment to build in-house analytic capabilities and reporting tools. These enable the business to understand the cost, composition and makeup of their talent, leadership, culture and organizational design.
2. Charter a center of excellence.
Deciding to use a mobile health monitor typically reflects a broader commitment to improving one's health, including, for example, hiring a personal trainer to improve any initial metrics that aren't optimal. The data from the monitor helps the trainer help you. Similarly, it's important to invest in establishing and activating a small internal team of deeply skilled organizational practitioners who, through depth of experience and expertise, will:
• Enable org health review practices and coach leaders and teams in leading change.
• Demonstrate organization development competence, particularly around strategy alignment, organizational diagnosis and design, culture and change management.
• Design and implement organizational solutions that contribute to business results and the implementation of people and organization strategies.
• Foster a culture of org health and high-velocity learning.
Many companies in tech already make this investment. For example, Google's self-driving car project, Waymo, established a dedicated team of subject matter experts (i.e., organization development, strategy and operations, HR consultants) to collaborate with executives to boost new levels of productivity and strengthen overall business performance and value creation. Savvy businesses recognize that putting data in the hands of leaders without helping them use it to drive decisions and take action is counterproductive. Financial investments in people and organization are only as useful as the advisory support (the personal trainers) deployed to help leaders achieve their promised results.
3. Invest in data and lead with it.
Most of us have experienced firsthand how wearing a mobile health monitor changes the wearer's behavior almost immediately. We've all had that one friend become maniacally obsessed with "getting my steps in" — David Sedaris even wrote a comedic short story about it.
Using the monitor enables you to understand what to prioritize and de-prioritize. In a similar fashion, insights from org health checkups provide a quantifiable baseline, and the basis for successful organizational redesign and change. These insights can take on a variety of formats. At the most concierge level, a people analytics team would conduct a data extract for a particular business, do a first pass at analyzing the results, and then collaborate with HR business partners and other teams, depending on what emerges from the data.
For example, if the data reveal that talent is an issue, those responsible for talent management would be enlisted to analyze results and craft credible solutions. At the other end of the spectrum, the organization can give leaders an automated dashboard from a selection of key data sources — less robust, but still very useful. Complementary to either format are deep, structured interviews to provide qualitative richness to the analytics.
The power of using a robust set of people and organization data underscores how important evidence-based management is for leaders when it comes to their alignment on critical decisions, particularly at the start of a transformation. The ultimate benefit: leaders develop organizational diagnostic and analysis skills and become better prepared to align around shared goals, ruthlessly prioritize (or deprioritize) value-creating initiatives, anticipate and measure risks and implement future changes on their own.
4. Democratize the ownership of org health.
Just as a mobile health monitor empowers an individual and their personal network (health care provider, personal trainer, family, etc.) to make the best health decisions, giving a wide variety of leaders access to org health checkup data expedites the establishment of a strong organizational culture.
Avoid the pitfall of org health being seen as the domain of the few — HR business partners or people analytics. Become a people-and-organization network: charter complementary roles for the business sponsors (i.e., head of strategy and operations or chief of staff) and across the people operations ecosystem. This can include diversity, equity and inclusion or talent specialists, heads of people within the business and organizational practitioners within a center of excellence. In short, org health checkups should be business-owned and leader-led.
Empowering leaders with the ownership of org health checkups leads to distributed decision-making, accelerating the path from insight to action.
