So far on the podcast, we've talked obviously a lot about vision, journey, culture, and results, but we've never really defined the terms healthy and effective. In this episode, we're gonna dig into how you can use this new paradigm, this new framework to assess the health and effectiveness of your organization. Make Work, not suck. Our podcast talks about exactly that. Our process: vision, journey, culture, and results. We present real-world business solutions that make a difference. Our goal is to make work not suck. Hosted by Ryan Hodges, co-host Daniel Steere. Join us each episode and make work not suck.

Okay. So we have vision, journey, culture, results. Yep. So let's talk about health for a second. And those, uh, four, vision and culture are what comprise health. Okay. So it's like the vertical axis if you're looking at the wheel. Yeah. The vertical axis of the wheel. And what that is, is you got your belief side and your social-emotional.

So it's what you believe you're working towards, and then how you operate as a culture, as a team. Sure. Okay. And so the more aligned the culture is to the vision, the more health you are, because it means everybody knows what the vision is and we know how, and what we believe our core values to be, what we believe our vision to be, right. And how the people are actually living it. Do they believe, you know, are they actually believing in the vision? Are they actually living the core values and holding people accountable to those behaviors? Yeah. As a tribe, so to speak. That sounds like a healthy organization, A healthy organization. The more aligned those are, the more healthy you are. Yep. It's just like a marathon race. I think we used this in one of the earlier episodes. You know, if you're 400 pounds, you're not gonna run a marathon. Right? Right. You're not gonna run it very well or a huge time. I mean, maybe, but I don't think so. More than likely not. I, perhaps somebody has, but they probably paid dearly for that. So if you are gonna run a marathon with a good time, you've gotta be healthy. Yep. You've gotta, you've gotta, you know, lean yourself down and do the things to get there, right. In order to actually run the marathon. Sure.

So that is what health is. And then the other one you said was effectiveness. Right. And that is the horizontal axis, which is the balance between journey and results. Hmm. The, uh, if, again, same thing, you want to drive the two together. You want your journey to be in harmony with the results in a way that the SOPs are delivering the results you want. Right. And the results are indicative of the SOPs. When those are not in alignment, that is, uh, that's, it's an ineffective company, ineffective organization. Right. Because it either means you're measuring too much or you're processing too much, but you're not either getting, the processes are inefficient or the results aren't getting hit.

So the more in alignment, the KPIs, metrics, et cetera, are in line with the SOPs, the journey, and the experience, the more effective the organization is. Now, here's a crazy one: you're never more effective than you are healthy. Out of thousands of organizations we run this through, hmm, never had an organization where their effectiveness score was higher. Right. Than their health score. Interesting. Because I've run this with both for-profits and non-profits. Now, I don't remember the numbers on everything, and so maybe my perception is off, but my gut feeling is that non-profits oftentimes tend to be more healthy. Mm-hmm. Right. They've got, uh, a really compelling vision. They're gonna change the world, and they've got a great team. They all love working together, but they have no strategy, no processes, and they're losing money hand over fist, and they're gonna go bankrupt here any minute. Right. Um, I see that a lot with non-profits and then with for-profits, I tend to see the inverse, right? Mm-hmm. They're, they're more effective than they are healthy. Um, where, you know, they've, they've got a lot of processes. They're making a ton of money, but they have no idea why. And they hate working together, but they're at least making a lot of money. Right. And so they're, they're more effective. Now, that's what my gut says, but I, how does that square with your experience and with the math that you've done?

So in your example where they're more effective, it's not that they're more effective. Okay. It's actually more that they're more result-driven. Oh, okay. And, and so that doesn't mean they're healthier, it just means they're really good at, uh, what I'd say pedaling in first gear. If you think about the average, you think about all that stuff. Yeah. Mountain bike, right? Yep. You know, usually you got, what, two or three gears in the front? Mm-hmm. And you've got, you know, 7, 8, 9 gears in the back. Let's just say more, yeah. More gears, just for even sake, let's just say seven. Okay. I don't know if that's right or not. Let's go seven. We'll go with that. So typically a, um, an unhealthy organization would be in the first gear on the front gear. Yep. And they could be at a very varying, uh, gear in the back. But typically the only way for them to overcome that obstacle is just to pedal faster. Just pedal harder. Yep. Yep. Which, but in an unhealthy organization, what they try to drive effectiveness is they'll just try to pedal harder. Mm-hmm. But what that really means is you end up burning your people out. Right. And then, so then what happens is you have some turnover, and then you bring some new people in and you get them on the bike, and they start pedaling for, might peak, you might peak for a slight period of time. Okay. Over the, the health mark. But, but I've never seen an organization out of thousands. I think if we have hundreds of thousands of data points, thousands of companies have gone through this. We've never seen one where it actually is above. Okay. 'Cause you, you might have, you know, as you, if you look at an individual, you might, they might actually score higher. Sure. On an individual level, I can see that. But there's always been people that have been in the organization for a longer period of time. Okay. And they'll bring the averages back down. Right. Because they're feeling the pain.

Okay. So if you go back to our mountain bike analogy, when you change, when you increase the health of the organization, it's like clicking that first, that, that other gear up. It's, it's where the leverage is. So then now you're in second gear in, on the first gear in the first set of gears. Right. On the front wheel, not the back wheel. It's all powdering the back wheel. But yeah, that's true. I guess pedal. It's just the first set set of pedals. Of gears pedal. There you go. That's right. On the gear, the, the, the gear on the pedals. And then on the back, you, you might actually be at a lower gear. Mm-hmm. But you've got more room to ramp up. Okay. So if you can increase the health of the organization by 10%, exponential impact on the business. Because if the people are aligned to the vision and the culture, then it adds meaning to the journey and the results. Hmm. If there is no meaning to the journey and the results, you, you really have anarchy. You don't have autonomy, you have anarchy. Right. And so then, and that's, that's why typically you never see a score. I've seen scores get very close. Okay. But you know, typically if, if they're, they're very close, uh, the organizational health might score at something like a 60, uh, 68.7%. Okay. And the effectiveness will be at like 66%. And, and what they'll try to do is they'll go, we just need more process. And it's like, well, hey, you know what, if we just, if we actually just align the culture and the vision, we can actually increase the, uh, effectiveness score by 10% just by increasing the, uh, health score by, you know, three to 5%. Interesting. Because people are more aligned. Right. And you're, you're actually not doing, what you'll end up doing is you'll have less KPIs and less processes because people are more aligned to the culture. 'Cause you're not compensating for it. Hmm. When you compensate for the health, all you're doing is putting band-aids on the symptom.

What I think I hear you saying is, is that if you didn't know where you were in an organization in terms of like your health and effectiveness of the organization, you, you would say that there's more leverage, that it would be more valuable to put effort into improving the health of your organization than putting effort into improving the effectiveness of your organization. Did I hear that right? Yeah. But I'm gonna throw another variable in there. Nice. 'Cause it wasn't complicated enough. Good. Go for it. It's all simple. It's all simple. Okay. It's simplify. Go for it.

So really when you're looking at this, you know, if your health is, let's say 85%, okay, that's pretty good. It's pretty good. B, B, you're hitting B plus, you're hitting A minus. Sure. And then your effectiveness is 75%. Well, it's still good. 75%. You got 10% delta. And it's not like people are unhappy, but there's not enough alignment, right? Right. And what typically happens is if you, as an organization, you improve health by 10%, effectiveness will usually go up by 10%. Okay. Okay. But the flip side is if you only improve effectiveness by 10%, it'll actually improve health by 2 to 3%. Huh. So, and it's not linear. It's not, it's not. The improvement isn't linear. No, it's not linear. So, and it's not just that you're improving effectiveness by 10%, but then improving health by 10% is actually an exponential change. And it's not always, like I said, it's not linear, so it's not necessarily a 1-to-1, but typically improving health will make, uh, effectiveness improvements that are exponential compared to effectiveness, improving health in a linear, incremental way.

So, so if you really want to make an impact in the organization, focus on health. Health is the key. If you really want to make an impact, focus on health. It is the key to unlocking effectiveness. I love that. Good. Good. All right. Well, we should be good. Do you have any other? I don't think so. Questions, thoughts? Okay. We should do it. Well, uh, we should be good. Great.

Yeah. Even, and then, and then when you actually do the thing, right, That they, that there's, that you see you need to do Health increase more. That's awesome. Which then guess what, right. Effectiveness follows, right.Because now we're focusing on the right thing. We're heading in the right direction. It goes back to the, the, the armada boat analogy. Yep. From the other day is now every, all the boats are in the same direction. And, uh, yeah. It's a, it's an armada on, you know, central Park, which I, one day I still wanna do that.I wanna see an armada of boats on, on the little lake in Central Park in New York. Let me know when you go. I'll, uh, I'd love to come see it. Right? Well, maybe, maybe if this podcast gets big enough, we'll do a meetup and we'll have enough people and it'll be crazy. Love It. Let's make it happen. Right. Work sucks When you're paying a health and effectiveness tax.If you want your organization to become more healthy and effective, check out the resources on our website.