Indispensible Tools

I was walking out of a bank recently, noticed a height measurement chart on the door jamb and thought to myself, ‘Oh, how cute.  My daughters would love that.’  Then, like a truck or a really poorly done movie realization moment, it hit me that the chart was for bank tellers to judge the height of bank robbers! 

That chart on the wall was a vital tool for tellers to not only feel like they had a plan in the face of a horrible situation, it was also an indispensible tool without which they could not live.  My topic for the next blog thumped me in the noggin right there!

If I only had one tool to use as an administrator, what would that be?  I sifted through all the things I have found this year and kept coming back to a tool Dr. Shannon Flumerfelt from Oakland University shared with me: the CX tool.  Now, my example is a really simplified version.  This tool is a way for an organization to assess what is wrong with it and why.  Here is my simplified version:

Here is how to use the tool at a personal level:

Written explanation:

I think it is important to be healthy, but my actions don’t align with that.  I am overeating, especially at night. How do I know?  My scale tells me so, at least that I am heavier than I want to be.  (However, the scale isn’t a great measure of healthy since I am riding my bike a lot and have a low resting heart rate.)  When I investigate why it is that my actions don’t align with my beliefs, it seems relatively clear that I work a lot and struggle to find the time.  So, those 4 areas all combine to create the organizational system and whether or not it is in balance.

The thing is, most organizations that used this tool, and people, would find not only that they are out of balance between their ideas and actions but also that a simple tweak of their structures or measures would pull them into balance.