Main goal of the course:


The main goal of the course is to convince the students, that psychological organizational diagnosis should be the starting point to any organizational and management actions in such aspects as strategic management, process and project management, marketing, personel management. The second goal is convincing the students that recognition of cognitive constructs which influence the activity of the organization is the core of psychological diagnosis. The third goal is to make the students understand the multidimentionality of organizations and the need for holistic approach to diagnosis.        

Course content:

1. Introduction – how to best study in the course? How to become a consultant?
2. The essence of diagnosis – Chapter 1 (Introduction to NPI Project)
3. Nozology of organization pathologies – Chapter 2 (NPI Strategy)
4. Organization development – Chapter 3  (NPI Communication)
5. Healthy organization – anatomy – Chapter 4 (NPI Fundraising)
6. Strategic contex of diagnosis – Chapter 5  (NPI Finance)
7. Pragmatics of the process of organizational diagnosis  Chapter 6  (NPI Social impact)
8. Cognitive maps as a tool – Chapter 7 (NPI Coworkers)
9. Interviewing – Chapter 8 (NPI Project)
10. Psychological tests – Chapter – 9 (NPI 4 organizational dimensions)
11. Observation and simulation – Chapter 10 (The NPI Audit Process)
12. Analysis of documents – Chapter 11 (NPI Reporting)
13. Towards participation – Chapter 12 (NPI Future)
14-15. Final exam – term 0


NPI Tools to be presented by 2 trainers each
(30 minutes presentation or activity, possible use of e-learning platform at school.stocki.org)


1. NPI Strategy

2. NPI Communication 
3. NPI Fundraising 
4. NPI Finance 
5. NPI Social impact 
6. NPI Coworkers 
6. NPI Project
7. NPI 4 organizational dimensions


Translation of  The NPI modules to other languages.


Scoring the course achievements

Course component
No of points
Presence in class  15 x 20 pkt 0-300
Preparation for the discussions (short test) 13 x 20 0-260
NPI tools, Organizational pathology book translation,  briefing on the papers 0-240
Good case study or work on the tool 150-200
Sum 1000 point

Final grade
The grade depends on the number of points achieved during the cours

92% - 100%              5
83% - 91 %               4+
74%-82%                  4
65%-73%                  3+
56%-64%                  3
55% i mniej               2

Trust building
1.Ability to discriminate main conditions for building trust within groups of people.
2.Ability to discern behaviors destroying trust.
3.Build trust with individuals, particularly the customers and their employees.
4.Ability to admit failure or a mistake
5.Ability to facilitate trust building meetings.
6.Discrimination between organizational practices and systems leading to trust and destroying trust.
 
Personal dignity
7.Accept and give respect to all people regardless of their age, race, sex, nationality, profession.
8.Practically be ready to accept the other’s point of view and be ready first to change one’s own point of view before convincing the other.
9.If other person is mistaken be able to courteously, yet assertively pay attention of that person to that mistake.
10.Distinguish the person from his or her behavior and attitude.
11.Be able to honor dignity of any person regardless the person’s behavior.

Responsibility
12.Be aware and take appropriate action to secure strong will an self-control as prerequisites of responsible behavior.
13.Take personal responsibility for all problems which may arise in the consulting relationship.
14.Understand and accept personal responsibility as a key feature of both a manager and a consultant.
15.Understand the responsibility of our generation for the future generations, particularly in aspects of protection of natural and cultural environment,
16.Be aware of dispersed responsibility of consumer decisions on the unethical and exploitive economic behavior of companies in different parts of the world (e.g. China, Africa)
17.Be able to recognize and discern between responsible and irresponsible behavior in organizational context;
18.Keep promises and commitments towards colleagues and other stakeholders.

Subsidiarity
19.Understand and prove by action that problems are best solved in the subsystem where they arise.
20. Understand the psychological dynamics of mental change in social situations.
21.Perceive the difference between economy related versus people related aspects of social and organizational change
22.Be able to recognize the limit of pressure that allow people do develop without violating their sovereignty.
23.Be able to differentiate between what may be done and what should be done taking into account  individual and organizational development of an organization.

Solidarity
24.Understand the economic, social, cultural and other reasons of differences between main groups of the society
25.Be able to relate to all people regardless their class
26.Be able to communicate psychological and economic aspects of management in language understandable to all people regardless their education.

Business literacy
1.Know main functions and processes of a business organization.
2.Understand strategic position of a company (product) within a framework of BCG environment matrix.
3.Understand the organizational development and growth process, e.g. on the basis of Greiner model.
4.Understand the political, economic, social, technological, ecological and regulatory aspects of business environment.
5.Understand the impact of globalization on  business and world economy.
6.Understand advantages and drawbacks of various legal forms of enterprises.
7.Have a deeper understanding of  various forms of participative business purpose, values and principles.
8.Understand the impact of national and organizational cultures on functioning of the organization.
9.Be able to easily recognize main points of improvement and possible difficulties in implementing change in various businesses.
10.Understand and use the idea of business processes.
11.Understand the concept of strategy and strategic management.
12.Be able to explain and develop the balanced scorecard and be able to implement it in the perspective of professional specialization.
13.Be exposed to and understand the business issues and management skills needed in the emerging global economy.
14.Understand advantages and limitations and apply in consulting the principles of open book management (i.e. ownership culture, participation, business literacy, sharing the finacial results and  pay for results).
15.Know fundamental legal issues associated with employment law and trade contracts.
16.Knows financial management such as how to read an income statement, a balance sheet, cash flow statements to make important operating decisions.
17.Manages a project effectively using GNAT charts and other PM tools.
18.Is aware of how managerial decisions affect the financial picture, indicate key financial drivers of a business.
19.Knows financial institutions and their expectations regarding business enterprises.
20.Is able to communicate financial concepts in simple terms.

Anthropological foundations of economic systems
21.Understands the consequences of  using economics concept of a person.
22.Differentiates between personalistic, darwinistic (sociobiological), economics views of human beings with their consequences for economy and enterprises
23.Understands the consequences of different time perspective on human functioning and interpretation of  social phenomena.

History and development of social systems
24.Knows the world's economic history
25.Recognizes the remnants of past economic systems in contemporary world
26.Knows different theories of the firm.
27.Is able to discern past economic systems in contemporary institutions.
28.Is able to interpret the data from the perspective of different theories of the firm
29.Knows the effects and consequences of social auditing.

Personal development
1.Uses basic psychological learning rules in planning and conducting his or her lifelong personal development.
2.Regularly analyzes one’s own knowledge, skills and attitudes as a response to the changing environment.
3.Uses available strategies and resources in relevant institutions and individuals in personal and professional development.
4.Is acquainted with 24 most influential books and papers in management.
5.Has the knowledge and is a member of associations of management and consulting professionals.
6.Regularly subscribes to and reads  journals and newsletters in the topic of management.
7.Is competent in using Internet as a source of management knowledge.
8.Is aware of the change factors (both negative and positive) influencing individual development.
9.Is able to choose among different approaches to personal and professional development; their advantages, disadvantages, limitations and adequacy
10.Uses challenges, mistakes and problems as a learning opportunity.
11.Differentiates between individual, group and organization development goals.
12.Modifies one’s own behavior in line with personal development plan.
13.Adopts new responsibilities when required by the consulting situation
14.Is ready to adopt new competencies and  profit from new approaches and other cultural perspectives.
15.Is able to apply different self assessment tools to assess his or her current communication style, conflict management style, management knowledge and diagnostic competencies.

Facilitating others’ individual development
16.Convinces others to change in order to cope with new challenges.
17.Provides and promotes development opportunity to all employees in his own and customer's organization
18.Facilitates, influences others, negotiates, coaches and mentors to achieve of  training and development goals
19.Identifies strategies most suitable for personality types, roles and activity styles in professional development.
20.Advices others in personal and professional development issues
21.Understands the role of mission and strategic goals in guiding people’s actions and behavioral change.
22.Is able to formulate tasks for people in a way that enhance their development activity.

Social networking
23.Recognizes main stakeholders of any organization including share owners, employees, management, customers, local community, future generations, direct and indirect beneficiaries, suppliers, etc.
24.Uses the social network in individual and organizational development.
25.Organizes, conducts and promotes among customers systematical approach to the social networking in creating partnership relationships with stakeholders of the organization
26.Is able to formulate and monitor social contracts, know their goals and character.
27.Manages relationships with customers, competitors, sponsors, other consultants and consulting companies, managers, students, academics, trade organizations, labour unions,  etc.
28.Negotiates and monitors contracts with people engaged in diagnostic process.
29.Promotes on daily basis to all of the stakeholders building visible links between organization activity, goals and  personal development.
30.Promotes his services with the realistic understanding and presentation of weaknesses, strengths, possibilities and resources.
31.Develops cooperation relationships with other persons; activates and enables mutual, clear understanding of the roles, results and expectations.
32.Ensures continuing of one’s services through professional activities such as periodic review and supplying information to one’s internal and external customers.
33.Promptly reacts to both internal and external customers’ needs, problems, complaints.
34.Builds deep partnerships with all main stakeholders.
35.Plans the development of stakeholder relationships.

Personal communication skills
36.Has active listening skills of all kinds.
37.Is able to see the world from other person’s perspective.
38.Is able to ask non directive and non evaluative questions which help in understanding others’ point of view.
39.Refrains from emotional reactions to personally unaccepted points of view presented by others.
40.Is able to suspend one’s own point of view and try to keep others’ point of view by asking clarifying questions.
41.Is an authority among colleagues and customers who is asked for advice.
42.Responds to different types of communication styles for example: unresponsive, indifferent, ironic, aggressive, etc.
43.Has skills in helping people to deal with conflicts or disputes effectively.
44.Is able to react appropriately to different communication styles including gender and cultural differences.
45.Negotiates using interest based negotiation techniques.
46.Is patient in explaining one’s point of view to nonprofessionals.

Giving and receiving feedback
47.Gives respectful feedback to customers.
48.Ask for feedback on personal, group and organizational basis.
49.Is ready to give sincere feedback information when asked for it.
50.Welcomes and accept feedback from subordinates, supervisors, peers and customers.
51.Leads others, particularly customers to discover threats and possible pathological symptoms on organizational level.
Team and group work
52.Appropriately reacts to the group dynamics, particularly shows appropriate behaviors in storming, norming, performing phases of the group process.
53.Is able to form teams and working groups consisting of members of variety of stakeholder groups.
54.Efficiently coordinates, plans, organizes and controls the group work.
55.Understands and facilitates good group and organizational climate.
56.Diagnoses the group decision process and recognize common group pathologies such as groupthink.
57.Diagnoses the (explicit and implicit) group norms and their impact on decision making.

Statistics
1.is able to differentiate between dependent and independent variables while formulating hypotheses for the studies.
2.Understands the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics.
3.Knows the typical measurement scales and main methods of operationalizing variables in organizational and psychological research.
4.Knows how to apply multivariate analyses in organizational research.
5.is able to use elementary methods of data mining.

Information systems
6.Systematically builds, on individual and business level, an environment of information sources important for the proper functioning of oneself and the business unit.
7.Knows the netiquette
8.Knows how to build communication systems for employees to receive and give information
9.Sets up e-mails, discussion groups, blogs and simple web pages.
10.Is able to prepare complex presentations with the help of Open Office and MS Power Point.
11.Puts data and information on easy to access web pages
12.Is able to use advanced search mechanisms in the Internet
13.Is able to use video recordings as part of presentations
14.Is able to use multimedia projectors, overhead projectors, laptops, screens for making presentations.
15.Writes business reports in a variety of layouts.
16.Writes business offers.
17.Types fluently.

Finance
18.Understands how different aspects of management including the communities in which organization functions influence the financial results
19.Understands the role of people related systems on financial results
20.Encourages calculation of the influence of soft data on financial outcome
21.Encourages referring to soft data in terms of hard numbers
22.Encourages customers to show the importance and meaning of financial outcome on the daily employees activities
23.Assists customers to show employees how daily activities influence final  financial outcome.

Organizational pathologies background knowledge
1.Knows the taxonomy of organizational pathologies.
2.Is able to recognize the most important pathologies from its symptoms.
3.Understands the importance and specificity of different aspects of organizational diagnosis.
4.Differentiates organizational analysis from organizational nosological diagnosis.
5.Assists customers to show employees how daily activities influence final  financial outcome.
6.Understands the process of social mirroring in the organizational development.
7.Knowledge of cognitive constructs behind the phases of organizational development.
8.Knows from practical experience well functioning organizations and is able to explain the reasons and conditions why it is possible.
9.Knows components of well functioning organization and their mutual relationships.
10.While diagnosing organization, is able to take into account strategic aspects associated with the size, business and strategic environment.

The process of diagnosis
11.Is able to start diagnostic process in reply to a customer's need for change management intervention.
12.Is able to launch data collecting process to facilitating diagnosis. 
13.Uses a variety of accurate  data collection techniques depending on the context and the organization to be diagnosed.
14.Uses a variety of diagnosis methods, having in mind their advantages and disadvantages
15.Recognizes barriers to diagnostic process and knows how to overcome them.
16.Knows the scope of particular consultants' knowledge and styles and is able to find an accurate approach to the given group and problem.
17.Knows how to support groups and individuals in the diagnosing process. 
18.Plans, monitors and records the course of the diagnosis process
19.Demonstrates facilitation and coaching skills during the diagnostic process.

Methods of diagnosing organizations
20.Has the practical knowledge how to use cognitive mapping technique in organizational diagnosis.
21.Creates and reports a group diagnostic process based on oval mapping, focus group or other group techniques.
22.Has practical knowledge of psychological methods of interviewing.
23.Knows advantages and weaknesses of psychological testing.
24.Is able to adopt and construct psychological tests for the purposes of diagnosis of  a specific organization.
25.Knows how to use observation and simulation techniques in organizational diagnosis.
26.Knows how to use financial documents for organizational diagnosis.
27.Knows how to use other kinds of documents for organizational diagnosis.
28.Uses analysis of organization web pages for organizational diagnosis.

Intervention
29.Uses appropriate forms and styles in business communication. Knows and uses text  rhetoric.
30.Behaves appropriately in business situations. Knows and uses interpersonal rhetoric
31.Presents difficult organizational situations and problems as challenges and encourage organizations to act immediately into overcoming them.
32.Interprets problems and weaknesses as opportunities for individual and organizational development.
33.Questions the organizational and business routines.
34.Assists in building organizational climate encouraging innovativeness and creativity.
35.Encourages the management to equip all employees with the tools, structures and information systems to give them opportunity to participate in decision processes.
36.Applies the management systems that encourages innovation and development.
37.Knows and encourages the customers to use the Vroom’s model of decision making styles by adopting appropriate style to the requirements of the situation and values.
38.Knows and takes into consideration the temporal dimension of decision making.
39.Sees hidden impact of decisions on all stakeholders of an organization.
40.Controls and gives feedback on the implementation of recommendations.
41.Knows definite area of one’s own expertise in organizational pathology diagnosis.
42.Is able to recommend rewards systems such as profit-sharing, employee ownership or bonuses
43.Knows the details and examples of reward systems promoting employee involvement.
44.Is able to formulate appropriate grievance systems in the company.

 

Research shows that communities of practice will soon substitute traditional institutional learning. The phenomenon was noticed a long time ago. But only now with the development of Internet technologies do these communities have powerful tools for their functioning at hand. Internet communicators (e.g. skype), free e-learning software like moodle and internet conferencing software like yugma make learning today a completely different phenomenon than it used to be, even 10 years ago. I invite you to our learning community related to total participation. For the time being it is hosted at my private web page as it has no commercial character. Before you decide to join us let me present the major differences between this way of learning and the traditional approach.

1. Everyone here can be both teacher and learner, regardless of their institutional membership or scientific title; this is similar to buying/selling communities like ebay or allegro.

2. The community character of the process makes it possible to learn quite cheaply, or even for free, and offer knowledge to others with no tuition fee. No independent institution is rich enough to afford this.

3. The lack of institutional limitations allows anyone to study throughout their lifetime and change their involvement in the process depending on their life situation.

4. The learning community is a community united by the same ideas. Therefore borders and nationality should present no obstacles to the exchange of ideas. As most materials, books and practices are available in English, I have decided to conduct the page also in English.

5. When you buy anything on ebay, the minute you receive it at home you are able to say whether you have been cheated or not. You and other cheated persons' negative comments quickly eliminate such an individual from the community. Unfortunately, this quality management process is not so easy with teaching, as the teachers' mistakes are often visible only after many years. Sometimes they are never discovered. This is why we decided that participation in the community has to be certified by an independent board on the basis of objective, clear criteria. 

6. To make participation as broad as possible I propose a broad and multilevel certification program. As the certification process may be quite costly we are going to find sponsors. For instance, the first draft of Certification Standards was formulated by an International Ownership Education Project of Capital Ownership Group in the State University of Ohio. We hope to further develop the certification in cooperation with this and other international institutions - the European Federation of Employee Stock Ownership in Brussels has wholeheartedly supported this project. 

Anyone who is ready to undertake the effort to go through the development in total participative management and support it by certification is welcome to join the community.  

Access to full description of the project is limited only to those who introduce themselves and register in the registration panel. I would like to keep in contact with such persons and keep record of their interest in the project.