>I am currently working with a client who is interested in establishing a
>metric that would measure the sustainability of the organization.
>
>I am wondering if anyone on this listserve might have some experience in
>this area and could provide me with ideas on how to measure the long-term
>sustainability of an organization.
>
>Please respond directly to me and I will post a summary of responses to
>the list.
>
>Laureen Quick
I have read your mail with interest as the question is an intriguing one.
In the first instance it is important what sustainability is in particular
to your client, thus it might be useful to explore/ unbundle his/her
notion of sustainability and perhaps juxtapose this against other internal
stakeholders so that one might arrive at a clear understanding of their
(the organisations) perspective.
This exercise would help point you toward various models which would help
e.g.
Environmental Sustainability
Competitive Sustainability: Porters Five Forces.
Abels Business Definition Model (Customer Groups, Customer Functions,
Alternative Technologies).
Thompsons Stakeholder Analysis (Power/Dependency Model)
These models would allow an analysis to be carried out to determine the
organisations congruence or match with its environment in essesnce a
sustainanility check of its strategy( both explicit and implicit).
Needless to say there are more these are just examples.
Strategic Sustainability:
McKinsey's 7-S Model (Strategy, Structure, Systems, Skills, Style, Staff,
Superordinate Goal)
Having identified the state of the organisations sustainability with its
environment this modle would help analyse in greater detail the
sustainability of its enacted straegy as it impinges within the
organisation itself.
Organisational Sustainability:
What may be useful here is to use the " Balanced Score Card" Technique to
look at how the strategic objectives are " operationalised" both hard and
soft measures could be considered this may be a useful framework to tie
the whole sustainability issue together.
Finally, my suggestions in this document take on a somewhat prescriptive
style, this e-mail is not adresseing the more vexing question of
organisational sustainability and organisational learning this is a more
"descriptive" rather than "prescriptive" problem space, I would be happy
to engage this problem also, but I feel in the first instance it always
useful to ground oneself in the dynamics and drivers of the organisation
before one addresses the more cognitive organisational issues.
I hope this has been of some use.
Regards,
David Mullins
Ireland
--mullind@iol.ie (David_Mullins)
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>