Organizational Development A practitioner's guide for knowledge workers

Part 11

Questionnaires and templates

Copy, adapt, and use. All scales are 1–5 unless stated.

McKinsey 7S alignment questionnaire

Rate each 1 (poorly aligned) to 5 (fully aligned).

Hard elements

  1. Strategy — Does our strategy clearly define our competitive advantage, market positioning, and growth goals? Do our daily actions reflect this plan? [ ]
  2. Structure — Are our reporting lines, decision-making hierarchies, and team boundaries logical for executing our strategy without bottlenecks? [ ]
  3. Systems — Do our daily operational tools, IT platforms, reward tracking, and formal workflows make work easier and support our objectives? [ ]

Soft elements

  1. Shared values — Are our core values widely understood and genuinely lived, rather than just written on a wall? [ ]
  2. Style — Do our leaders behave in a way that matches what they preach? Is leadership communication open, supportive, and action-oriented? [ ]
  3. Staff — Do we have the right number of people with adequate support, onboarding, and career paths to sustain our workload? [ ]
  4. Skills — Does our workforce possess the right mix of technical, digital, and interpersonal competencies to hit our strategic goals? [ ]

Analysis. Average the three hard S's and the four soft S's separately. A wide gap — high strategy and structure, low shared values and style — explains why change initiatives meet resistance. Then look for specific mismatches: a remote-first Strategy against an old-school management Style; advanced Systems failing for want of Skills.

Run it individually first, then compare. Divergence within the leadership team is a finding in itself.

Burke-Litwin causal questionnaire

Rate each 1 (strong misalignment / dysfunctional) to 5 (strong alignment / optimal).

Input

  1. External environment — How well does leadership monitor and respond to external shifts: market, client demand, technology, regulation, competitors? [ ]

Transformational

  1. Mission and strategy — Is our purpose and strategic direction clear, inspiring, and understood by everyone? [ ]
  2. Leadership — Do executive leaders model the behaviors, values, and accountability they expect from everyone else? [ ]
  3. Organizational culture — Do our unwritten rules, daily norms, and shared values foster trust, collaboration, and high performance rather than politics or fear? [ ]

Transactional

  1. Structure — Are reporting lines and functional boundaries clear, allowing decisions without excessive bureaucracy? [ ]
  2. Management practices — Do managers allocate resources, plan workloads, and coordinate projects effectively to support the strategy? [ ]
  3. Systems — Do our procedures, HR systems, and IT tools facilitate smooth workflows rather than adding friction? [ ]
  4. Work unit climate — Do teams experience psychological safety, cooperation, and positive working relationships day to day? [ ]
  5. Task requirements and individual skills — Do employees have the training, competencies, and tools required for their specific duties? [ ]
  6. Individual needs and values — Do reward, recognition, and flexibility structures match what employees actually value? [ ]
  7. Motivation — Are employees genuinely energized and willing to go beyond the minimum? [ ]

Output

  1. Performance — Are we consistently hitting our key indicators: productivity, quality, retention, financial goals? [ ]

Analysis. If Performance (12) or Motivation (11) is low, trace upstream. Determine whether the breakdown originates in transactional elements (5–10) or transformational roots (2–4). Do not attempt to fix a low Culture score (4) with a tweak to Structure (5). Transformational gaps require executive-level intervention and years, not a process change and a quarter.

Psychological safety scale

Rate 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Items 1, 3, and 5 are reverse-scored.

  1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you. [ ]
  2. Members of this team are able to bring up problems and tough issues. [ ]
  3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different. [ ]
  4. It is safe to take a risk on this team. [ ]
  5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help. [ ]
  6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts. [ ]
  7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized. [ ]

Report at team level only, with a minimum of five responses.

The fuller instrument — adding the safety-and-accountability grid and a set of behavioral indicators that are harder to fake than a survey — is at topics/psychological-safety-questionnaire.

Westrum culture scale

Rate 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree).

  1. On my team, information is actively sought. [ ]
  2. Messengers are not punished when they deliver news of failures or other bad news. [ ]
  3. Responsibilities are shared. [ ]
  4. Cross-functional collaboration is encouraged and rewarded. [ ]
  5. Failure causes inquiry. [ ]
  6. New ideas are welcomed. [ ]

Item 2 is load-bearing. If it scores below 4, treat every other score as unreliable: in a unit where bad news is punished, a survey is also bad news.

The fuller instrument — adding a placement grid across all seven of Westrum's dimensions and the behavioral evidence to check the scale against — is at topics/westrum-organizational-culture-typology-questionnaire.

Change readiness check (Beckhard-Harris)

Score each 1–5, twice: once with leadership, once with a frontline sample.

  • D — Dissatisfaction. Do people believe the current state is genuinely unacceptable? [ ]
  • V — Vision. Can people describe the destination in their own words? [ ]
  • F — First steps. Can people name a concrete first step they could take this week? [ ]
  • R — Resistance. How large is the combined cost of loss, effort, risk, and history? [ ]

Analysis. Any of D, V, or F below 2 means the change will not start, regardless of the others. Compare the leadership and frontline scores; the gap is usually larger than the scores.

ADKAR barrier point assessment

For a defined change and a defined population, score 1–5:

  • A — Awareness of why the change is needed. [ ]
  • D — Desire to participate and support it. [ ]
  • K — Knowledge of how to change. [ ]
  • A — Ability to do it under real conditions. [ ]
  • R — Reinforcement that sustains it. [ ]

Analysis. The first element scoring below 3 is the barrier point. Work there. Interventions aimed past the barrier point are wasted.

Team charter template

TEAM CHARTER — <team name> — <date> — review on <date + 3 months>

PURPOSE
  Why this team exists:
  What would fail if we did not exist:

SUCCESS
  How we will know we are succeeding, by <date>:
  Our leading indicator:
  Our balancing measure:

SCOPE
  In scope:
  Explicitly out of scope:
  Our dependencies, and who owns each:

ROLES AND DECISIONS
  Who decides what (list decision types and the decider):
  Who must be consulted:
  Who must be informed:
  How we escalate, and to whom:

NORMS
  Core hours and response-time expectations:
  Meeting cadence and who may decline:
  How we disagree:
  How we handle mistakes:
  What we do when someone is overloaded:

REVIEW
  We revisit this charter on: <date, in the calendar now>

Diagnosis one-pager

OD DIAGNOSIS — <unit> — <date> — <author>

PRESENTING PROBLEM (verbatim, as stated by the sponsor)

DATA GATHERED
  Interviews: <n>, roles:
  Observation: <what, how long>
  Documents and telemetry:
  Survey: <instrument, n, response rate>

FINDINGS (each triangulated across at least two methods)
  1.
  2.
  3.

FRAME USED
  <7S | Burke-Litwin | six-box | congruence | star | other>

IS THIS TRANSFORMATIONAL OR TRANSACTIONAL?

WHAT WE RULED OUT, AND WHY
  Structure:
  Incentives:
  Workload and capacity:
  Capability:

HYPOTHESIS
  We believe <cause> produces <observed effect>, because <evidence>.

PROPOSED INTERVENTION
  Family: <human process | technostructural | HRM | strategic>
  What:
  Owner:
  Date:
  Prediction (what we expect, by when, and by how much):
  Balancing measure:
  Abandon condition:

WHAT WOULD CHANGE OUR MIND

Contracting checklist

[ ] Presenting problem recorded verbatim
[ ] My own hypothesis recorded separately
[ ] Sponsor identified
[ ] Client system identified, and difference from sponsor discussed
[ ] Scope in, scope out, and what happens if diagnosis points outside
[ ] Access agreed: people, meetings, documents, telemetry
[ ] Confidentiality rules agreed, including disclosure exceptions
[ ] Decision rights named: who authorizes which interventions
[ ] My role agreed: expert / pair of hands / collaborator
[ ] Feedback sequence agreed: participants before sponsor
[ ] Success criteria agreed
[ ] Exit conditions agreed, including "this is not working"
[ ] Data handling, retention, and regulatory regime confirmed
[ ] Wants and offers stated aloud by both parties

Organizational Development — a comprehensive practitioner's guide to OD for health care professionals, software engineers, and senior executives. Every framework says what the evidence is, and where it is weak.

Source and contributions: github.com/organizational-development. Built with the Lily Design System™.