Organizational Diagnosis

Organizational Diagnosis is a creative method for getting to know an organization at all levels- from the surface levels to the deepest hidden parts that aren’t visible to the eye. Performing organizational diagnosis is not so far off from a doctor trying to diagnose their patients. Some doctors diagnose differently by focusing on nutrition, food, and natural remedies, whereas others diagnose by using chemical medications, or even by trying a remedy, seeing whether it has positive effects, and then trying something new. This is very similar to what we have learned to do in the business sense to organizations. Typically, organizational diagnoses can be done when leadership has identified issues that they would like to fix, or when things are going well within an organization but they want to continue to further improve their performance. In either situation there exist two “major sets of problems that all groups, no matter what their size, must deal with: (1) Survival, growth, and adaptation in their environment; and (2) Internal integration that permits daily functioning and the ability to adapt and learn” (Schein, p. 18, 2010).

Organizational Diagnosis - The Diagnostic Cycle
In recent years organizational diagnosis has evolved from a technique used as part of the organizational development process to a major technique in its own right. Effective diagnosis should be an organic process in that as you start to look at an organization and its structures and what it does and does not do, change starts, as change progresses so does the ‘now’ performance and as such the diagnosis process also needs to re-start. The purpose of a diagnosis is to identify problems facing the organization and to determine their causes so that management can plan solutions. An organizational diagnosis process is a powerful consciousness-raising activity in its own right, its main usefulness lies in the action that it induces. The major steps of a diagnostic cycle include

• Orientation
• Goal setting
• Data gathering
• Analysis/ Interpretation
• Feedback
• Action Planning
• Implementation
• Monitoring/ Measure
• Evaluation