What is Relational Capacity?
In short, Relational Capacity is about the ability to create a create strong and productive cooperation
across organizational and professional divides, and across formal hierarchies – and about ensuring
a strong coordinated management effort, both horizontally across organizational silos and
vertically across the management hierarchy.
It is the type of cooperation that creates:
A high degree of quality and efficiency regarding the most complex and costly work processes.
Motivation to take an active part in and responsibility for strategic management initiatives.
A high degree of change ability – the ability to handle planned and unplanned changes in a competent way.
The prerequisites for more agile and innovative organizations.
Why work with Relational Capacity?
We use a specially designed analysis tool, Joint Action Analytics, to create an overview of the Relational Capacity within an organization. It is a very effective way to establish a clear picture of otherwise highly complex work processes – the very processes that are most dependent on strong cooperation between professionals working in their respective fields.
Using the analysis tool, we can begin by asking everyone involved about their experiences with cooperation between the relevant groups of colleagues. By processing the results of the analysis, we can identify the biggest challenges.
We can also see whether the challenges have to do with a lack of respect, a lack of knowledge about the tasks of others, an inability to find good solutions to new challenges, or an inability to tackle existing challenges.
How can an organization develop Relational Capacity?
Ensuring the quality of cross-organizational cooperation and strengthening relations in the management chain – a key factor for successful implementation – are just two of the areas requiring focus in order to develop sustainable Relational Capacity in your organization.