Over the past several years Newmeasures has routinely studied its high performing customers, and we recently had the opportunity to review eight years of data from one of our large clients.
Our goal in this study was to find out what was working well in high performing organizations. Unlike our previous studies, we also wanted to explore sites that made the biggest improvement in their scores since their first round of surveying. Our hunch was that because these sites didn’t start out with the highest scores, some change had to have taken place over these eight years to get these clients where they are today.
Ten sites were selected for study based on three criteria: scores on organizational effectiveness (Q16), overall survey composite scores (Q1-Q16), and significant improvement in scores over time. All sites were at or above the 80th percentile in our normative database. We conducted semi-structured phone interviews with contacts at each of the 10 facilities.
As our interviews progressed, we noticed several common themes which echoed some basic principles we found in earlier studies. If you strip away organizational development terminology, six (6) themes were uncovered:
- • leadership is accessible and visible
- • employees are recognized, empowered, and developed
- • communication is open and frequent
- • company values and mission are “lived out” at work
- • survey administration procedures are consistent and often fun
- • results are communicated and acted upon in a timely manner
Interestingly, it didn’t matter where the organization began in terms of their survey scores; some high performing sites initially had low scores but showed quite dramatic improvement. Others who initially had moderate to high scores were able to improve even further. No matter where organizations begin, they have the potential for improvement if they focus on the key drivers for change identified in the Newmeasures SolutionPath model, and foster the six characteristics of high performing organizations.
