Maturity Index Aims to Standardize Stakeholder Management Metrics

Conceived of in 2013 by business analysts in the UK and first used in 2015, the Organizational Maturity Index (Omindex) aims to do for stakeholder management evaluation what ratings have done for finance: provide an objective means of measuring an organization’s effectiveness at managing the value of stakeholder capital.

What an Omindex Assessment Might Have Revealed About Boeing
The Right Questions to Ask of Yourself and Organization

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What if someday any investor, customer, employee, or other stakeholder could quickly access an objective score of an organization’s commitment to a strategic approach to value creation through people? That’s the long-term goal of the Maturity Institute, creator of the Omindex® scorecard to objectively evaluate and compare organizations based on the effectiveness of their people management. In the meantime, Stuart Woollard, a Co-Founder, says he is helping a growing number of law firms and other organizations in the UK and on the continent objectively score the maturity of their stakeholder management practices using Omindex to identify weaknesses and opportunities related to value creation through people.

In 2016, ESM first published a feature article on the Maturity Institute and the Omindex scorecard and recently checked back on progress. See ESM: New Evaluation Process Aims to Score Any Organization’s Human Resources Maturity. Since then, says Woollard, “We have trained hundreds of people in Maturity Institute frameworks and standards at over 70 organizations in the Omindex methodology, and it has been used to assess and rate over 300 organizations.” In addition, he says, “Our online Omindex Workforce diagnostic now has a dataset comprising 80 firms. The Law Firm Maturity Index has 29 firms and now has a good sector baseline so we can create meaningful insights specifically for that sector.”

What an Omindex Assessment Might Have Revealed About Boeing

Omindex is designed to be a risk and opportunity assessment tool for any organization, enhanced by using a standardized approach as both a metric for performance improvement and potentially even a talent or customer marketing tool, Woollard explains.

The goal remains to “become a recognized standard used to measure the health of organizations in the same way ratings are used to assess the financial health of institutions. This has become more relevant as investors increasingly recognize the role of culture in organizational results. What might investors have learned about Boeing had someone been conducting Omindex assessments over the last decade when the culture appears to have so radically changed from being focused on engineering excellence to financial management.”

The company’s business model is to train companies and individuals in the use of the Omindex methodology primarily by investment analysts and management consultants, but he says it can be used by any organization to evaluate its own level of maturity. The training takes about 10 hours and is broken into several sessions, he adds.

Woollard says the index is being increasingly used in finance for evaluating mergers and acquisitions and in the law sector, in which he says his company has made significant progress. “Many of these companies are seeing increased demand for work in the ESG (environmental, social, governance) arena so feel compelled to better understand the role of stakeholders in the sustainability equation and in their own legal practices.”

The company provides a free 10-minute self-assessment to “provide an insight into how well your organization is meeting its social responsibilities together with achieving its desired financial performance, and under your own position to contribute to overall success.”

The company says that “evidence of direct links between Organizational Maturity and business value has been building since 2013. Omindex studies show that highly mature companies can have up to four times the market capitalization of their peers. Maturity Institute data also shows that
financial performance and social impact are not mutually exclusive for mature firms. This evidence comes via the diagnostic questions of Omindex. Any leader who seeks to understand the advantages that come with maturity can start by asking themselves these questions. They are used to help any leader assess, gauge, and link their contribution to the organization’s ability to create true, Total Stakeholder Value.”

The Right Questions to Ask of Yourself and Organization

Here are the questions included in the Omindex diagnostic, adapted for any business leader to ask of themselves, advises Woollard.

What is the purpose of my organization?
Have I defined value in clear and simple terms?
What is our intrinsic and market value?
Is our business staying in tune with changing societal expectations?
Am I trusted?
Do principles of responsible human governance apply to all the people we manage or affect?
What are my core values?
Do I live by clear principles?
What am I accountable for?
Do we have a clear, coherent, and widely understood business strategy?
Do our business plans always consider the full implications for our people, customers and society?
Do we fully integrate how all human stakeholders can deliver business value propositions?
What is our return on human investment?
How far into the future am I prepared to look?
What is our mission?
Do I attach enough importance to my communication?
Do I understand the power of the organization’s whole system?
I want us to be flexible and agile, but do we know how?
Do we have an effective quality assurance system?
Am I obsessive about never-ending improvement?
How do I encourage and enable all people to innovate?
Are we trying to manage performance process instead of a value improvement system?
Are we a true learning organization?
What do I know about our people risks?
Are we evidence based?
Are we incentivizing and rewarding the right things?
Do we have the right culture?
Are we all doing our best work together?
Is the thinking and behavior of our top team collegiate?
Am I and the leadership team trusted?
Is primary accorded to one stakeholder group?
Am I authentic?

For More Information

Stuart Woollard
Managing Partner, OMS LLP
www.omservices.org
44-7940-585661
stuart.woollard@omservices.org

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