The Congruence Framework
The congruence framework is an easy-to-use framework, where companies can analyze their performance, and work towards having their visions and values align with the internal structures and practices. Achieving congruence within your business can largely boost company morale and overall productivity. Failing to achieve congruence, however, will have the opposite effect.
Developed in the 1930s by organizational theorists David A. Nadler and Michael L. Tushma, the congruence framework is an excellent tool to identify where behavioural and organizational performance issues stem from, and how you might be able to fix them.
Examples of when the congruence framework might come into place are when bad or unethical work practices in the workplace, a CEO is leading in the wrong direction, or when a company lacks leadership and systems.
Applying the congruence framework includes analyzing the following four components and how each of them relate to each other:
Vision:
-What is the vision of your company or client?
Values:
-What are the company's or client's values?
Jobs:
-Who is responsible for implementing these values? What is their role within the company? How does this role affect the company's values? Is there conflict?
Structures:
-There are two different organizations when it comes to structures; formal and informal.
-Formal structures are more assembled and rely on authority. Formal structures are oriented toward specific goals and are company profit-based.
-Informal structures have less structure and lack hierarchy and processes. Informal structures are oriented towards human needs and are much more social.
After analyzing the elements and their relations to one another, it should be simple to determine where the weaknesses in the company lie. From here, you can identify solutions to improve these areas, and eventually reach congruence.
The main idea of this framework is that businesses can only reach success and high performance when all four components are congruent.
The congruence framework is a change management process inspecting the performance of a company based on how it operates as a system. Understanding the congruence framework is essential to creating harmony in a company through the cohesiveness of each component.
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