An organization’s viability, scalability, and sustainability depend on its self-reliance. It takes strategic planning and supportive frameworks to achieve a stable but dynamic state with minimal external interference — independence encouraged by USAID and UN Strategic Development Goals.
Self-reliance leads the social impact expectations of grantors and grantees, a key to safeguarding the Value for Money of donors, implementers, and beneficiaries.
And, it offers added value when supported by Three Pillars: Organizational Resilience, Enabling Bureaucracy, and Agile Enterprise.
Pillar 1 — Organizational Resilience
Self-reliant organizations have the systemic resilience to anticipate and mitigate threats and opportunities whether internal or external environmental factors change gradually or suddenly. Enhancing organizational resilience is an invaluable strategic goal, the result of best business practices and proactive risk management. The S4F.Solutions™ organizational model combines the best practices of ISO 22316: 2017 (Security and resilience—Organizational resilience—Principles and attributes) with British Standard BS65000: 2014 (Guidance on organizational resilience).
Pillar 2— Enabling Bureaucracy
Self-reliant organizations benefit from enabling bureaucracy. Where a coercive bureaucracy uses standardized processes to control people, enabling bureaucracy employs fluid and flexible processes to help people leverage their confidence, guarantee reliability, improve work quality, and increase efficiency.
Coercive bureaucracies cost the U.S. over $3 trillion in lost economic output annually. The OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) reports the cost of excess bureaucracy among 32 countries is $9 trillion. Coercive bureaucracies trigger such costs because they slow decision-making, promote insularity, risk aversion, and dis-empowerment. Coercive bureaucracies also impede proactive change, exacerbate internal politics, and cultivate a toxic organizational culture.
However, workers in enabling bureaucracies serve as success agents and problem solvers — not merely to complete work. The culture of teamwork and mutual respect builds confidence in talent, increases productivity, and improves quality control and delivery.
Pillar 3 — Agile Enterprise
Self-reliant organizations optimize Agile thinking and execution. There are four key elements to this shift in paradigm mindset :
Velocity to accelerate the performance of activities in the shortest possible time;
Flexibility to adapt to internal and external changes;
Responsiveness to changes as opportunities; and,
Competence to achieve organizational goals and objectives.
The definition and characteristics of the Agile Enterprise clearly demonstrate a high correlation with organizational resilience and enabling bureaucracy.
Self-reliance assessment
The S4F.Solutions™ Organizational Self-reliance Assessment helps organizations understand to what extent the three pillars promote or undermine innovation, performance, delivery, and prosperity. It offers the talent, tools, and training to identify organizational complexity, weakness, strength, and necessary courses of action.
S4F.Solutions™ developed its assessment to meet emerging needs for strengthening organizations with reliable and valid metrics to benchmark the role of these pillars in moving the organization from where it is to where it wants to be. The S4F.Solutions™ Self-reliance Assessment streamlines measurement, data analytics, and easy visualization of causes, conditions, and capabilities.
Contact S4F.Solutions™ for more information.