How Mindful Is Your Organization? The Mindful Organizing Scale

The picture in words

Nine statements in a grid of circles, each scored one to three, describe shared habits: knowing and using each other’s skills, learning from mistakes, discussing other ways to do routine work, identifying what must not go wrong, and pooling experience in a crisis.

A key bands the total: 22 or more is excellently mindful, 14 to 21 moderately mindful, and 13 or less insufficiently mindful.

To deal with crises, handle unexpected situations, and be able to make continuous improvements, organizations need to be mindful. The Mindful Organizing Scale helps you figure out how mindful your organization is.

The notion of mindfulness is one applied broadly at the individual level, and stands for more conscious living, in touch with oneself and the rest of the world.

In organizations it stands primarily for smart organizing, using the collective intelligence and sensemaking abilities of people throughout the organization so that one can better deal with surprises and unexpected events—such as crises.

To find out how mindful your organization is, Karl Weick and Kathleen Sutcliffe, together with others, have developed a simple “Mindful Organizing Scale.” The tool consists of nine statements, which can be answered with 1 (not at all), 2 (to some extent), or 3 (a great deal):

We have a good "map" of each other's talents and skills.
We talk about mistakes and ways to learn from them.
We discuss our uni …

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Source: Jeroen Kraaijenbrink on LinkedIn.