Organizational intelligence and vitality: A systemic framework for organizational renewal

Healthy, productive organizations are key sources of wealth, staging grounds for personal growth, and wellsprings of knowledge. Although understanding the dynamics of what makes healthy organizations is becoming increasingly important, it is questionable whether we have useful comprehensive models; such models would allow us to examine and diagnose an organization in order to improve its adaptability in a constantly shifting environment. This exploratory project builds such a model, the Organizational Intelligence and Vitality (OIV) framework, and proposes a detailed set of assessments and tools to support the model's practical application. Within the framework, an approach and an index are offered to measure organizational intelligence and vitality. The Organizational Intelligence and Vitality Index (OIVI) is a composite of 25 generic indices grouped into four vital sign dimensions (Financial, Customer, Productivity, and Employee Fulfillment) and five supporting organizational-activity dimensions (Creating Identity, Activating Strategy, Executing, Building Capability, and Evaluating and Providing Feedback of Organizational Performance). This exploratory project combines qualitative and quantitative research methods. Qualitative methods are used to develop a potential integrated framework for assessing organizational intelligence and vitality and to formulate the organizational intelligence and vitality components and indices. A case study method of quantitative research is then used to conduct a pilot test of the OIVI measurement with a selected start-up organization. The OIVI pilot assessment demonstrated that some adjustments need to be made to the generic OIVI content to ensure the relevance and feasibility of collecting the metrics within the pilot start-up firm. The adjusted OIVI provided a comprehensive and balanced profile of the pilot organization's performance at a given point in time. The subject organization's OIVI was positive overall. Specifically, the Execution, Productivity, Customer, and Employee Fulfillment dimensions were strong while the financial dimension results were mixed. Also the start-up's scores relating to strategy and business management activities (i.e., performance measurement and feedback, organizational identity, capability development, and learning and innovation) were mixed. Items relating to performance measurement and performance-based rewards scored low in all dimensions where they occurred. In general, the results of the pilot assessment served only as a proof of concept and are of limited generality. Continued refinement of the measurement scale and repeated applications of the assessment with the same organization and across organizations and industries will be required to validate and examine the utility of the Organizational Intelligence and Vitality Index. The project, although preliminary, offers an opening for a line of scholarly and practical research to help organizations build a systemic mechanism to sense and respond to constantly shifting environment and constituent needs.