A Practical Way to Read What Your Organization Is Trying to Tell You

In today’s episode, Bob ’n Joyce unpack an article Joyce wrote years ago on a powerful OD technique she used to assess organizational wellness. Culture can feel fuzzy and hard to diagnose, but this simple inquiry tool makes it concrete, practical, and actionable for leaders, coaches, and OD practitioners.

You’ll hear when this tool is most valuable—such as during a leadership transition, when performance is slipping, or when an organization has lost its competitive edge—and then we walk through the roadmap step by step.

Joyce’s Diagnostic Roadmap Includes:

Getting a Balcony Perspective

1. What’s causing the distress?
2. What internal contradictions does that distress reveal?
3. What is the history behind those contradictions?
4. What perspectives or interests do I (or others) now represent that may be in conflict?
5. How might we, as a team or organization, be mirroring these broader dynamics?

Identifying the Tolerable Range of Distress

1. How do we typically respond to disequilibrium—confusion, conflict, external threats, shifting roles?
2. When in the past has distress escalated to a breaking point?
3. What actions have senior leaders traditionally used to restore equilibrium, and what can I influence now?

Patterns of Work and Work Avoidance

1. What work and work-avoidance patterns are showing up?
2. What do these patterns reveal about the real adaptive challenge?
3. What clues do leaders (often unintentionally) provide?
4. Which issues are ripe for action—and which may need ripening?

There’s a lot to unwrap (pun fully intended), so settle in, grab a healthy snack, and join us for a lively conversation on diagnosing culture in a way that actually helps organizations heal and grow.