Why OFP?

Even the → best corporate leaders can be blind to core personal and organizational weaknesses that are hidden within the business structure and create obstacles and barriers that prevent their business units from achieving optimal performance.

Harvard Business School professor Michael Beer and consultant Russel A. Eisenstat developed and innovative process, the Organizational Fitness Profile (OFP), that can help corporate renewal, X-ray your organization, identify its weaknesses, and take corrective action.

→ Balanced Organization: 5 Basic Elements   

The Goals of OFP Road-Mapping and Corporate Management

OFP road-mapping – to chose and do the right things

Corporate management – to do these things well

The Road Map for Conducting the OFP Process

1. Orientation and Planning

During a one-day meeting led by a consultant or facilitator, the top management team develops a "Statement of Strategic and Organizational Direction" that is used both to communicate and explain the logic behind the strategy and as a stimulus to collect organizational information on barriers to implementation.

After the statement is issued, the top management team composes and commissions an employee task force to interview customers and employees.

→ Innovation-friendly Organization

2. Data Collection

While interviewing top customers and employees, the task force members ask the basic question: "What do you perceive as the strengths and/or barriers to implement our strategy and accomplish our goals?" Consultants conduct interviews with members of the top management team about their role and management style that help or impede → top team effectiveness.

3. Meeting

The task force completes and analyzes the feedback gained from the interviews during a tree-day OFP meeting. It begins by reporting what it has found in its interviews, using a set of pre-arranged topics as its anchor. These topics relate to a classic systemic model of how to analyze an organization, and answer the questions:

• whether employees and customers perceive the top → team  as ineffective

• whether the → leadership style on the part of top management is either too directive or too hands-off

• whether and how top management fails to engage the organization effectively

• whether and how teamwork and coordination across various functions in the company can be improved  >>>

• whether the → corporate strategy is clear

• whether there are many conflicting priorities concerning what's going on in various parts of the organization

• whether the vertical → top-down communication is poor

• whether the organization lacks → leadership /management skills

The task force's report enables the top team of managers to analyze:

• how well they are leading the organization

• how they can change their behavior

• how to restructure the organization so as enable it to transform itself.

Then, the top management develops a corporate renewal strategy and an implementation plan. Focus is placed on projects that directly improve business performance as well as on the organization's design and the top management functioning. The latter include roles, responsibilities, meetings, and decision making. Projects are typically conducted by consultant-assisted cross-functional teams, and are supervised by the top management team.

The changes and the implementation plan proposed by the top management team are evaluated by the task force that gives its reaction to management. This assessment:

• serves as a reality check on the adequacy of top management's plans

• establishes a partnership between senior management and employees in → managing change .

 

In those cases where OFP proves to be highly effective, it serves as a template for continuous organizational learning and → Improvement  .