Tool: Analyze Your Organization

LSM591: Leading Organizational Change

Cornell University ILR School

Tool: Analyze Your Organization

How does your organization function? What kind of organization is it? What’s the tendency toward change? If you’re not sure of the answers to these questions, this tool will help you figure it out. Consider bringing it with you to a leadership discussion on change leadership and using it as a springboard for discussion about strategic HR efforts. You might consider hosting a change leadership summit, during which leaders from different parts of the organization can discuss their perspectives on change leadership.

Analyze Your Organization: Which Model Is Yours?
Static organization
Static organizations operate at a relatively slow pace and have very clear boundaries of operations. Feedback is slow; bureaucracy is cumbersome. Static organizations, such as governmental agencies, are likely to experience episodic change, which is change that occurs only from time to time. Episodic change is infrequent, discontinuous, and intentional.
Sprawling organization
Sprawling organizations include conglomerates and Fortune 500 companies. They're considered sprawling because beneath them they operate in different industries; they have different sectors. Targeted change is spurred by specific opportunity and necessity. It often occurs with a particular business unit or groups of units, and not throughout the organization.
Rapid niche organization
Rapid niche organizations rarely venture outside their product sectors or their service sectors. They're continuously looking to be responsive to the market. They tend to have incremental change, always adjusting their products and services. Change is defined and focused; it occurs continuously but with specific intention.
Perpetual motion organization
Perpetual motion organizations place very few limits on themselves operationally. They delve into different sectors that are constantly moving ahead. These organizations are concerned with continuous change; changes are ongoing, evolving, cumulative, and constantly taking place.