Building: High Performance Organizations
In over 20 years of real-world experience, OLC has helped organizations develop specific "Organizational Capabilities" that enable the achievement of high performance, foster innovation and engagement, and help knowledge workers use their full potential.
OLC's "Bigger Pie" Initiative
Let's stop arguing about who gets the biggest piece of the pie, let's work together to make a bigger pie. Lack of knowledge... that is the problem -W. Edwards Deming
"How do you make a bigger pie?" The purpose of "The Bigger Pie Initiative" is to share OLC's answers to this this question with individuals and groups who seek ways to build a better world for all.
Healthcare Initiative
Managers of healthcare organizations are challenged by many factors, including workforce shortages, multiple customers with contradictory needs, rising costs, and the need to increase safety of both patients and the workforce. Overcoming these challenges in healthcare’s multidisciplinary and complex organizations requires expert knowledge.
The purpose of the healthcare initiative is to provide participating organizations with information that will help them improve the performance of their business and administrative operations. The initiative also includes a workshop to help leaders in participating organizations understand a systematic approach for developing a work environment that fully utilizes the potential of their knowledge workers.
OLC has valuable knowledge gained in helping organizations in a variety of industries improve performance. We consider that making this knowledge available to healthcare organizations will help them improve their performance and thus we will have contributed in a small way to the well-being of our society.
Soft Skills Assessment
Over 15 years ago, the Organizational Learning Center developed a “soft skills” assessment. We refer to these soft skills as human effectiveness capabilities. This assessment has been used for many years on improvement initiatives in a variety of industries. It has been statistically verified. The factors included in the assessment were established as a result of a research project supported by leaders of twenty (20) companies involved in performance improvement. Over 300 employees from two different companies participated in developing and statistically validating the survey. The capability categories that are included in the assessment are:
Change Readiness - The ability and openness of an organization and its members to change the existing practices and processes to be fully responsive to both the needs of internal and external customers and to changes in the business environment.
Leadership - The ability to influence and guide people by means of communication and example to establish a shared purpose and to achieve it.
Customer Focus - The ability to recognize, understand and focus on the needs of the organization’s external customers, and on the chain of internal customers and suppliers who participate in providing customers with products and services.
Systems Thinking - The ability of the organization’s members and groups to understand 1) the way their work activities interconnect with the activities of others to form processes that provide value to customers, and 2) the impact of their actions on the rest of the organization.
Teamwork - The ability of a group of people to be committed to a shared purpose and to work together in a spirit of cooperation and mutual support to achieve that purpose.