NCI's Systems Perspective

All organizations experience road blocks, which are problems that are seen and noticed. These roadblocks keep organizations from achieving their true potential in a wide variety of areas, including bottom line financial issues, staff retention, customer service, employee morale, and more.

Unfortunately, leaders, in attempting to focus on the visible problems, have a tendency to miss the underlying systems issues, and to therefore apply "solutions" that are reactive and ineffective.

 

Using the action research model, NCI helps organizations discover solutions for the systems issues that underly   

most organizational difficulties.

There are always four dynamics    occuring in organizations:   

STRUCTURE
(goals, roles, responsibilities)
ØManagement
    responsibilities
ØLeadership style
ØRole & task clarity
ØDecision making 
    authority
ØPolicies & procedures
ØReporting lines
ØAccountability

 

 


GROUP
PROCESS
(dynamics & development)
ØDecision making
    practices
ØTeam work
ØGroup
    communications
ØMeetings
ØWork flow
Øinformation
    distribution
ØUse of email




INTER-
PERSONAL
(between   people)
ØConflict resolution
ØBehavior styles
ØRespect and trust
ØReceiving
    feedback
ØGiving feedback
ØGossip
ØCommunication
ØListening skills




INTRA-
PERSONAL
(within a person)
ØAdaptive skills
ØFamily of origin
    issues
ØCommuniction 
    styles
ØAttitudes
ØTrust


  At Nash Consulting we focus first on structure, helping leaders discover their organization's strengths and growth opportunities. Next we move to group process, then to interpersonal, and finally to intrapersonal.

 

By working down the model in this order

two wonderful things happen:

 

1.  Postive change becomes easier.  As experienced managers  

     know, it's much easier to enact healthy change in structure,

     roles, and policies than it is to change people!

 

2.  The organization experiences a proactive “trickle down

      effect;” that is, improvements in the upper levels naturally

     lead to improvements in the other levels.  Many of the issues

     that seemed to be rooted firmly in the lower levels    

     (interpersonal and intrapersonal) get cleared up or at least

     experience improvement before we even begin to work at

     those levels. 

 

This is a systemic way of working with organizations, born out of the marriage between family therapy theories and organizational development strategies.

 

Click here to see our action research model