Cultural Assessment Tools

Organizations are complex entities. Effective leadership calls for developing a strategy to lead to competitive advantage, structuring the organization to achieve that strategy, ensuring that internal processes are geared to customer needs, and keeping all of the people within the organization focused.

The larger the organization, the more difficult the job of keeping all of its people focused on the implementation of the strategic plans.

The challenge is: How can we easily measure whether people are aligned with our strategies?

In response to an overwhelming call for an instrument to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of an organization, the Total Quality Institute has developed the D.I.AL.O.G. Instrument.

The Total Quality Institute - D.I.AL.O.G Instrument

Rather than guess about the dynamics and shortcomings within the organization, the D.I.AL.O.G Organization Evaluation Instrument allows you to pinpoint strengths and limitations so that goal-directed actions can be taken.

Diagnostic Data

Indicating the

ALignment of

Organizational

Goals

The D.I.AL.O.G. Instrument provides an organization’s leadership with hard data, collected from the people within the organization, to discover where there are disconnects affecting results. These data to help identify specific issues that may need to be addressed as well as to highlight areas of strength that can be capitalized upon.

The D.I.AL.O.G. data make clear which categories need immediate attention from management. If the organization’s business results are not meeting expectations, then D.I.AL.O.G is the tool of choice to identify the issues that need to be addressed.

Who should consider using D.I.AL.O.G.?

If any of these symptoms sound familiar, you may wish to give serious consideration to making use of this service.

• Profitability is slipping.
• Customers are defecting.
• Employee turnover is high.
• Market share is eroding.
• Internal conflict is the order of the day.
• You spend more time reacting to competition.
• Or, the best reason of all: You just want to improve!

What it is

The foundation for the D.I.AL.O.G. Instrument is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the seven Baldrige categories, called the Criteria for Excellence. These categories address all of the elements critical for the good health and survival of an organization. They provide a framework that has been proven time and time again.

The key advantage of the D.I.AL.O.G. Instrument is that it takes a "systems" approach to the evaluation. This is based on the seven Baldrige categories that correspond to the D.I.AL.O.G. categories:

1. Leadership
2. Strategic Planning
3. Customer Focus
4. Information & Analysis
5. Human Resources
6. Process Management
7. Business Results

Criteria for Excellence Categories

The foundation for the D.I.AL.O.G. Instrument is the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the seven Baldrige categories, called the Criteria for Excellence. These categories address all of the elements critical for the good health and survival of an organization.

1. Leadership - addresses senior management’s leadership and involvement in creating and sustaining values, organizational direction, performance expectations and a customer focus that promotes performance excellence.
2. Strategic Planning - addresses how the organization sets strategic direction and how plans are put into action.
3. Customer Focus - addresses how the organization determines the requirements and expectations of customers. It also addresses how the organization strengthens relationships with customers and determines their level of satisfaction.
4. Information and Analysis - deals with the use of data and information in the organization to better understand areas for improvement and how the organization is performing.
5. Human resource development and management - determines how employees are encouraged to develop and utilize their potential. It also addresses efforts to build and maintain an environment conducive to performance excellence as well as personal and organizational growth.
6. Process management - addresses the key aspects of how processes are designed, managed improved and their cycle times reduced.
7. Business Results - focuses on the organizations performance and improvement in key business areas and how effectively these results are communicated throughout the organization.

FAQs about the D.I.A.L.O.G. Instrument

How is the instrument structured?
The instrument consists of 70 statements (approximately 10 in each category). The respondent indicates the degree to which he or she agrees or disagrees with the statement or checks the response: "I don't know." In addition, the respondent indicates his or her department and level within in the organization. The responses are entered onto an answer sheet and returned to Business Concepts for analysis.

How long does the analysis take?
The data are tabulated and analyzed and a summary report is prepared. The turnaround time is usually less than 10 working days from receipt of the final responses.

How is the summary report structured?
The data for the entire organization are presented in both color graphs and text form. All of the responses (degrees of agreement) are translated into organizational positives and negatives. All of the statements for each category are then listed in the priority order in which the organization should consider addressing them.

The data are then delineated according to organizational levels selected by the client. Data showing how each of the levels compares to the others is presented in color graph form for each of the categories. The data by department are presented in the same fashion.