Monitoring Organizational Health

Thoughts on two aspects of organizational health. The first is triggered by an article that a colleague pointed out to me, from the Automotive News magazine, where Ford is working to repair damaged supplier relationships. It relates to external organizational health with the lesson that monitoring and maintaining healthy external relationships is key. The level of effort to maintain a healthy relationship is far less than the level of effort to correct or recover a damaged relationship. In addition, the relationships most likely have a direct bottom line impact in the willingness of the supplier to work with an organization, in quality and in cost controls and cost savings sharing.

The same equation goes toward the internal organizational health. When the organization health with employees is allow to deteriorate, through apathy or downright bad management, the level of effort to recover is huge and takes signification time to complete. The efficiency, idea-generation and willingness of the employees to help the company succeed goes down dramatically.

The key lesson is, of course, monitor the organizational health of your company, both internal and external. It still boggles my mind at how many companies do not take into account these factors when managing their business and then spend an inordinate amount of time and resources correcting situations which should have never been allowed to occur.