Hack:
CMMI or Corporate Management Maturity Index

By Olivier Lavergne - Technology Services Engagement Manager Europe at Hewlett Packard

December 2, 2010 at 2:48am

Moonshots

Enlarge the frame of management education

Stretch management timeframes and perspectives

Summary

I suspect most of you are mostly familiar with CMMI as the Capability Maturity Model Integration. What about CMMI as the Corporate Management Maturity Model? Such a model could be used to assess the level of maturity of an organization in applying Corporate Management best practices...

Problem

It is no secret that Leadership development is a top priority for most if not all organizations. However, I'm not aware of any management maturity model that could be used to make a fairly objective assessment of the maturity of the management practices within an organization in terms of People (Leadership skills), processes and tools and how they support the company vision and long-term strategy. Once we have been put in front of the hard reality of where we are (the current state, our current maturity level), then workshops could be used to define where the company would like to be (the desired state) and a close the gap plan could be created with focused interventions in the specific areas that were highlighted as weak in the initial maturity assessment. This way leadership development is no longer an investment made in a vacuum because everybody understands that leadership is key to the company success. Leadership development becomes part of a broader plan aiming at taking the company management practices at the level where they should be in order to realize the company vision and execute on the company strategy.

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January 7, 2011 at 11:10am

Jeremy Clark

Olivier - it's an interesting notion to apply a metric to illuminate a need to evolve a management model. I could see many organizations benefiting if the diagnostic and 'You-Are-Here" output could be developed into a credible standard. A couple of thoughts:

1. Why do you think we don't already track the maturity of the average organization's management model? In other words, what untested assumption or belief is behind the lack of effort here? Do managers, as human beings, simply believe they are present at the highest possible level of capability, or do we just inherit a model without examining it, like the proverbial fish and its water? This might be useful in mobilizing effort around the diagnostic you propose.

2. Diagnosis comes upstream of treatment, so to be of value there would need to be some way to map symptoms of relative immaturity to better paradigms, or at least further inquiry. Can you elaborate on how the diagnostic would clarify the treatment?

Thanks for the contribution.

Jeremy

January 8, 2011 at 1:53am

Olivier Lavergne

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for your feedback.

To your point #1, I'm not aware of any "Management model" that corporations may use and whose maturity could be assessed as a result. When I first saw the MIX, I had the idea that the moonshots could provide a basis to assess Management maturity in multiple dimensions as they are described in the moonshots. The untested assumption or belief as you called it is that any organization as a human being construction is imperfect and can be improved. In order to improve, you need to assess where you are (Current state) and define where you would like to be (Desired state). In order to assess the current state, a Corporate Management Maturity Model as I called it (CMMI) could be of tremendous help. The other untested assumption or belief is that Managers should be ready to apply to themselves and their own practice what they expect from their employees and their organizations. By showing that they are committed to improve their own practice, they are conveying a key message to the organization that nobody is perfect but everybody is committed to improve and it starts from the very top, senior management is showing the way.

To your point #2, you are spot on, diagnosis comes before treatment. As I eluded to above, the assessment would be used to define the "current state" in order to build a "close the gap" plan with the "desired state". My proposal is to base the assessment on the 25 management moonshots. Just a little correction, as problem solvers, we don't want to overly focus on symptoms, we want to address the root causes of why there is a gap between what management maturity has been assessed to be and what people would like it to be.