Solution Area FAQs: Organizational Capability (OC)

Several of our colleagues recently revealed the most-asked questions they receive about our work at The Clearing. So far, we’ve covered FAQs around Customer Experience (CX), Hybrid Workplaces, Shared Services, and Workplace Culture. Today, we’ll focus on Organizational Capability (OC) with OC expert and published author, Hans Manzke. Here are the Top 5 questions we receive from our clients and partners in this area.

What is Organizational Capability?

We humans are social creatures – we group together naturally. This affinity is in our DNA, so we congregate together knowing that we can accomplish bigger things together than we can alone. So it goes for our professional organizations – agencies, companies, teams, professional groups, and more. However, the drivers that push us to come together naturally aren’t always aligned with the incentives that our professional organization calls for from us individually and collectively. That’s why The Clearing made Organizational Capability one of its Solution Areas – a combination of Leadership and Strategy.

Organizational Capability is, quite simply, a group’s ability to navigate change or transformation successfully and in an aligned way by achieving their most crucial outcomes. Sounds simple, right? If you think back to the last time your team, company, or agency had to navigate a big transformation effort, you know it’s not as easy as it may seem.

One of the reasons that navigating change and complexity is difficult is because while we’re social creatures, alignment between the constituent humans in a group becomes harder and harder to achieve or maintain as a group gets larger or as complexity increases. At The Clearing, we bring focused tools and approaches to bear to increase your Organizational Capability. This includes services such as:

• Change Management and Communications
• Organization Design and Organization development
• Culture Assessment and Culture Change
• Strategy Creation, Strategy Alignment, and Strategy Execution
• Facilitated Alignment Sessions
• Leadership Development and Executive Coaching
• Thought Partnership and Advisory Support
• Training and Outfitting

Why Does Investing in Organizational Capability Matter?

Each of the tools, approaches, and offerings is laser-focused on just one thing: getting your organization to its most important outcomes in an aligned way. For a few moments, think about the most complex, thorniest challenge you face – perhaps you’re tasked with creating a strategy for your organization for the next 1, 2, or even 5 years. Maybe you sense a discrete need for up-skilling your workforce, but don’t know where to begin. Or, perhaps you’re looking to drive positive culture change by investing in the shared vocabulary and sense of purpose that a tool like CliftonStrengths® can effect.

On the flip side, perhaps you have an important opportunity in mind such as measurably improving your FEVS scores, growing your business by 40% year over year, or creating a compelling vision of the future as a new leader. In any of these scenarios, The Clearing’s OC offerings provide you not just the tools, approaches, and support you need, but also the thought partnership that often feels lacking for many leaders and high flyers. One unique characteristic of our OC Solution Area is that you’ll never feel you’re walking the workplace change path alone.

Where Should I Start Building My Organizational Capability?

One great place you can begin an engagement with The Clearing through the lens of OC – or any of our Solution Areas – is with a Chalk Talk. Imagine an engaging, in-person or virtual, two-hour workshop that brings our visual consulting skills to bear as well as the OC abilities of some of our sharpest minds. We focus all of our energy on one challenge or opportunity you face, produce aligned progress, and you keep the results – free of charge.

Other great entry points into our OC universe are engagements where you have a discrete need already in mind. This may include developing a strategy, managing change, or focused training like an organization-wide or team-based CliftonStrengths® engagement.

What Sets OC Apart from Your Competitor’s Offerings?

Through the lens of OC, two big things come to mind that set us apart: 1) focus and 2) an all-for-one approach. Let’s break each of those down.

When we say we’re focused, we mean we focus our efforts on a few things – your most critical outcomes. We resist the natural inclination to do a little about a lot of things in service of achieving the game-changing goal you’ve been chasing. At The Clearing, we’re relentless in our pursuit of your outcomes, and we’re relentless in our focus on the human experience.

When we say we take an all-for-one approach, we mean you get access to the full breadth and talent of our firm. We have in-house, full-time graphic designers that produce world-class visual products and amplify the impact of anything we create. Our executive team is ready to engage with you one-on-one to give you crucial leadership training and perspectives. And, we feature an interdisciplinary team of consultants from non-profit, academia, government, finance, law, and other backgrounds.

These aren’t just differentiators that sound good on paper – they’re ways in which we provide an experience like you’ve never had before, all centered on making that critical change or organization transformation happen for your group.

How Will I Know if I’ve Achieved My Outcomes?

When you’ve achieved that game-changing outcome, there’s no mistaking it. Every individual in your organization can feel a change for the better. The progress is tangible and measurable, and the impact on your people and your customers changes how you engage with one another. Perhaps most critically, the way you and your colleagues feel at work will shift for the better – more positive energy, an increased sense of possibility and creativity, and a more equitable and pervasive sense of psychological safety at work are just three outcomes we’ve helped our clients create during our OC engagements.

And, very critically, we celebrate! One of the benefits of partnering with an external group like The Clearing is that groups are often so close or so in a change effort that they may not realize when they’ve achieved an important goal or milestone. Not only can our teams at The Clearing see that achievement, but we’re uniquely capable of designing and executing celebrations that fit inside your organizational culture. We bring not just our creativity and interdisciplinary backgrounds to bear here, but also the world-class skills of our in-house graphic designers. Social scientists have long realized the criticality of recognition – think of a celebration as a declaration of your outcome achievement as well as a way to harness and direct your group’s energy toward its next outcome.

What’s Next?

If you have more questions about Organizational Capability or want to chat about beginning or revamping your organization’s OC, please reach out to one of our Organizational Capability consultants. I’m available at hans.manzke@theclearing.com; while Solution Designer Sonya Patel can be contacted at sonya.patel@theclearing.com.

In the meantime, you can read more about OC impact in the private sector here. And, if you’d like to get big, creative ideas on how you can move yourself and your organization forward through complexity, read my recently published book – For All: Democratizing Big Ideas.