The Healthy Organization Model is presented in the book ”The Joyful Organization – Health, Disease and Joy in the Life of Organizations” by Imre Lövey and Manohar S. Nadkarni (published by HVG Publisher, 2003). The extended version of the book has also been published in the U.S. under the title "How Healthy is Your Organization?"  by Praeger Publishers in 2007.

What is the Healthy Organization Diagnosis?

In successful organizations people find joy in their work, something which inspires them to perform to their fullest potentials. In order for an organzsation to become joyful, it first has to be healthy – much like the human organism.

The survey can help you assess how healthy your organization is. A “Healthy Organization” can solve emerging problems before they become acute. It is not a victim to, but rather an active controller of circumstances. You can also find out how joyful your colleagues think the organization is.

The questionnaire used for analyzing the organizational situation

The questionnaire is based on the concept of healthy organization. When can we say an organization is a healthy one? We check whether or not the following criteria are met:

• To what degree can an organization utilize its resources in an economical way / with minimum entropy?
• To what degree does the organization seek to serve its customers/clients in the proper way?
• To what degree does it care about the needs of its employees?
• How can it balance the above three factors, using the appropriate structure and culture, in the course of decision making?
• Is there perceivable improvement in making use of opportunities, does the organization meet or anticipate challenges?
• Does the organization live in harmony with its environment, and to what degree can it effectively influence it?

If one or more criteria are not met, the organization will become unhealthy. Diseases have unique and recognizable symptoms which are signalized by typical behavioral patterns as well as various performance indices. These symptoms are summarized within the description of typical diseases such as “Pampering”, “Risk avoidance”, “Decision Paralysis”, “Sub-optimizing” etc.

Using the questionnaire we probe the current state of the organization along twenty-one health-and disease pairs which are computer-processed to provide a consistent diagnosis about the health condition. 

In what ways can the “Healthy Organization” diagnosis help?

• It can tell you just how healthy your organization is.
• It provides a common view of the current organizational situation.
• It provides an opportunity for honestly facing each other and may initiate a dialogue among organizational units and levels.
• It marks off areas which especially need improvement, and provides a starting point for interventions.
• It gives change momentum and energizes the organization.

...by providing feedback which … 

• makes it possible to measure the major characteristics of the organization,
• yields a comprehensive and detailed view, and yet
• provides data in an easy-to-interpret, highly visible way, and
• makes it possible to compare the opinion of individual management levels and organizational units.

In what ways and directions can we move on?

• Aim-setting workshops, starting off from top management and involving various organizational levels.
• Action planning processes within individual units as well as in cross-functional teams.
• Actions aiming at changing the corporate culture.
• A “joyful organization” training to educate about the concept and to highlight the appeal of the underlying philosophy.
• Trainings and development programs which enable the acquisition of skills that serve the organization in an efficient way.
• Executive coaching to enhance the personal efficiency of managers (“Coaching for a healthy/joyful organization”).

Organization development actions aligned with the management can be extremely closely directed and therefore especially effective.

See a sample of Healthy Organizaton Diagnosis here!

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