Client Articles: Vision-Based Diagnosis
The Meaning of a Vision-Based Diagnosis
From Innovation to Invention
Gap analysis is a standard and well‑known motor for organizational development projects. Participants are asked, typically in a survey, to rank the status quo in their organization across a number of dimensions such as leadership, teamwork, communication, and the like. They are then asked to use the same items to rank how they think things should be. The difference between how things are and how they should be creates a gap to be filled by the organizational development process. As we will discuss, this process involves generating an action plan calculated to close the gap, full information to all concerned about the plan, and informed consent to participate.
Vision‑based diagnosis (VBD) parallels gap analysis in some ways but diverges from it in other significant ways. Although both are future oriented, gap analysis provides a cognitive focus and rational basis for agreeing to try and change. With VB D, in contrast, participants generate a coherent, complete, and compelling (i.e., idealized and highly valuational) picture of a future that naturally (and not necessarily just rationally and cognitively) elicits action and, perhaps more important, specific, contextual language in pursuit of it. There is a seamless flow from creating one's vision to pursuing it. More significantly, in VBD one thinks and acts in the present based on the who one has constituted oneself to be in the future. As we will explicate more fully in our discussion of the still‑emerging literature of organizational transformation, VBD means one comes to the present from the future. In short, VBD not only focuses but also deeply energizes the changes effort.
Furthermore, VBD differs from gap analysis in what interruptions or problems in the change process mean and how they affect progress. A difficulty in an organizational development process is a problem that needs to be solved so that people can continue to follow the action plan to which they have rationally agreed. For the most part, such problems are undesired and get in the way of progress. In an organizational development project, the fewer of them, the better. Although VBD starts with a vision of the future and comes back from there to evaluate the present, this just starts the process of diagnosis. The key idea is that the more discrepancies, the better, both initially and, even more important, all during the change process itself (see below the discussion of the diagnostic use of breakdowns).
One of the main differences between innovation and invention is that to invent is to create, to bring forth something that did not exist previously, whereas to innovate means to implement something previously invented elsewhere. Both refer, of course, to change and development, but they imply two very different types of development (Nadler, Shaw, Walton, & Associates, 1994). Innovation suggests adapting something known so as to make improvements in existing processes. Total quality management (TQM) is a good example of an adaptive, incremental improvement strategy‑an extrapolation of the present into the future. Invention suggests creating something not done before‑something that is a break with existing ways of thinking and acting and could not be predicted from the present or from projecting existing trends. It is business not as usual; it is organization that emerges from discontinuous change. A butterfly is not simply an incrementally improved caterpillar.
In the popular business literature, this kind of change is often called reengineering. This wave might be receding. There are strong indications that in its original form, it was naive about the human and social‑systems aspect of organizations so that only a small proportion of reengineering projects actually were successfully implemented. Furthermore, there is some question whether the people side of work, which was never engineered in the first place, can ever be reengineered. Nevertheless, one of the key ideas in reengineering, the idea of starting with a blank page, is an example of starting from nothing‑of inventing. It is a direct route to business not as usual‑that is, business from a new, invented future.
The Meaning of a Vision-Based Diagnosis
Review of the Literature on Reengineering and Reinventing
Magma as a Model of VBD
A Case Study at the Farm Service Agency
Mobilizing for Transforming Change
Appendix and References
Vision‑based diagnosis (VBD) parallels gap analysis in some ways but diverges from it in other significant ways. Although both are future oriented, gap analysis provides a cognitive focus and rational basis for agreeing to try and change. With VB D, in contrast, participants generate a coherent, complete, and compelling (i.e., idealized and highly valuational) picture of a future that naturally (and not necessarily just rationally and cognitively) elicits action and, perhaps more important, specific, contextual language in pursuit of it. There is a seamless flow from creating one's vision to pursuing it. More significantly, in VBD one thinks and acts in the present based on the who one has constituted oneself to be in the future. As we will explicate more fully in our discussion of the still‑emerging literature of organizational transformation, VBD means one comes to the present from the future. In short, VBD not only focuses but also deeply energizes the changes effort.
Furthermore, VBD differs from gap analysis in what interruptions or problems in the change process mean and how they affect progress. A difficulty in an organizational development process is a problem that needs to be solved so that people can continue to follow the action plan to which they have rationally agreed. For the most part, such problems are undesired and get in the way of progress. In an organizational development project, the fewer of them, the better. Although VBD starts with a vision of the future and comes back from there to evaluate the present, this just starts the process of diagnosis. The key idea is that the more discrepancies, the better, both initially and, even more important, all during the change process itself (see below the discussion of the diagnostic use of breakdowns).
One of the main differences between innovation and invention is that to invent is to create, to bring forth something that did not exist previously, whereas to innovate means to implement something previously invented elsewhere. Both refer, of course, to change and development, but they imply two very different types of development (Nadler, Shaw, Walton, & Associates, 1994). Innovation suggests adapting something known so as to make improvements in existing processes. Total quality management (TQM) is a good example of an adaptive, incremental improvement strategy‑an extrapolation of the present into the future. Invention suggests creating something not done before‑something that is a break with existing ways of thinking and acting and could not be predicted from the present or from projecting existing trends. It is business not as usual; it is organization that emerges from discontinuous change. A butterfly is not simply an incrementally improved caterpillar.
In the popular business literature, this kind of change is often called reengineering. This wave might be receding. There are strong indications that in its original form, it was naive about the human and social‑systems aspect of organizations so that only a small proportion of reengineering projects actually were successfully implemented. Furthermore, there is some question whether the people side of work, which was never engineered in the first place, can ever be reengineered. Nevertheless, one of the key ideas in reengineering, the idea of starting with a blank page, is an example of starting from nothing‑of inventing. It is a direct route to business not as usual‑that is, business from a new, invented future.
The Meaning of a Vision-Based Diagnosis
Review of the Literature on Reengineering and Reinventing
Magma as a Model of VBD
A Case Study at the Farm Service Agency
Mobilizing for Transforming Change
Appendix and References