TEACHING ORGANIZATIONAL DIAGNOSIS AS
A "PRACTICE THEORY"
Marvin R. Weisbord
Organization Research and Development
Division of Block Petrella Associates, Inc.
Wynnewood, Pennsylvania
I want to describe a &dquo;practice theory&dquo; of organi-
zational diagnosis, and then outline a strategy I use for
teaching it.
A practice theory represents a synthesis of knowl-
edge and experience into a concept which, in the words
of Peter Vaill (1975), &dquo;bears some relation to public,
objective theories about organizational situations, but
in no sense [is] identical to them.&dquo;
The practice theory is not identical to formal
theories because it is based on practitioner’s experience
rather than methodical research. All OD practitioners
have diagnostic practice theories which constitute their
cognitive maps of organizations. Frequently these
theories remain implicit and unarticulated. Practice
theories can be deduced, however, by watching practi-
tioners work, for, to quote Tichy and Nisberg (1976),
&dquo;what they view is what they do.&dquo;
In diagnosis, what we look for is what we find. A
change agent sensitive to &dquo;communications,&dquo; will find
such dysfunctions everywhere. And the same is true of
unclear goals, sex-role stereotypes, and so on. Certain-
ly attention to such categories can improve organiza-
tions. However, it’s important to remember that
organization members have cognitive maps too. What
they wish to attend to, and the kinds of improvements
they seek, seem to influence far more the course of
social change than the categories OD consultants wish
to investigate. By and large (this too is a practice
theory!) organization members seek to improve situ-
ations they consider important
-
starting with such
survival-laden issues as satisfying the government, and
their customers, and each other.
Therefore, I find it impossible to think of a
diagnostic model, that is a cognitive organizational
map, purely in &dquo;content&dquo; terms. What to diagnose
seems to me to be inextricably bound up with who is
doing the diagnosing, and why, and how. The who,
why, and how constitute the &dquo;process&dquo; side of
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diagnosis. It is resolution of these issues which deter-
mines whether consultant reports are filed as &dquo;very in-
teresting&dquo; or whether consultant comments and in-
terventions become the basis for action even before the
reports are typed up.
This dilemma - the tension between content and
process, between research and action, or put another
way, between ends and means - has attracted me for
many years. I experience it dramatically in the most
tantalizing of all treasure hunts, the search for a &dquo;bet-
ter fit&dquo; between person and organization, between
organization and environment. That particular hunt
has for some time now also provided me a modest liv-
ing, not to mention a good bit of the pleasure I find in
my work. Fortunately, the tension between individual
and organization has no simple resolution. For once
we have advised people to &dquo;be more Theory Y&dquo; we are
stuck with the many paradoxes of translating Theory
Y assumptions into policies, procedures, and prac-
tices.
Organizations (as well as individuals), it seems to
me, tend always to swing between repression,
bureaucracy and constraint on the one hand and
laissez faire, structureless autonomy on the other.
Thus, the diagnostic task, or action research task, is to
help people discover issues which:
1. Reflect the tension between individual and
organization and highlight the interdependencies; and
2. Energize people to act.
Clearly some diagnostic categories are more
worth investigating than others. As manager of a small
industrial firm, my earliest organizational map was of
a battlefield, on which the forces of unpredictability
were arrayed each day, and against which I matched
wits. That I could choose the battlefield, and decide
for myself which issues to join, was a concept I learned
late in that career from an OD consultant.
 He showed me an alternative to the notion that
you take what you get and solve each problem (for
other people) in turn as it is presented. (This is a very
common practice theory of management in small
organizations.) He showed me how to think
systematically about my business that is, to con-
-
ceive of it as three interlocking systems: of work,
people, and rewards. The work system consisted of
policies, procedures, and equipment for getting the
product out the door. The people system consisted of
the knowledge and competence required to make the
work system work. And the reward system constituted
the pattern of incentives required so that people would
acquire the knowledge and competence needed to
make the work system work, and to change it when it
didn’t work.
I still marvel at the impact of this simple formula-
tion on my own cognitive organizational map, and
therefore my behavior. Armed with three systems,
rather than infinite unrelated problems, I could do two
important managerial acts. One, I could understand
how changes in one system influenced each of the
others. None of the three could function independent-
ly if the business were to be as effective as I could
make it. Two, instead of thinking about crises to be
resolved ad hoc in the here and now, I could think
about systems improvement which would work
towards the reduction of unpredictable and unsettling
events. Now I began to ask new questions. How could
the work system be improved so that other people
would find it more satisfying to work it? What was re-
quired for people to build up their knowledge and
competence for the tasks? What new rewards were
needed to get others involved in this kind of analysis?
Asking these questions led me to introduce a
variety of changes: work teams without supervisors;
wage increases based on skill acquisition; employee
committees to analyze work-flow systems and the
economics of purchasing new office equipment; the
making of customer service policy in problem-solving
meetings, based on actual problems that came up
rather than past practices or lists of &dquo;shoulds and
oughts. &dquo;
When I became a consultant a decade ago, then, I
had three systems -
work, people, and reward - that
I understood pretty well, at least in small industry.
Suddenly, though, I found my horizons expanding. In
NTL labs I discovered &dquo;leadership style,&dquo; and
&dquo;process issues,&dquo; like authority-dependency and fight-
flight. Consulting with medical systems and public
schools, I learned that goal clarity (to which I’d never
given a second thought in my production business) was
a continual irritation to much of the (service) organiza-
tion world. Finally, for better or worse, I realized that
the number of diagnosable categories was infinite.
Blake and Mouton (1964) had one set of lenses, based
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on their research, and Likert (1967) had another set
based on his. Levinson (1972) had the most complex
laundry list of all, for he was attempting to deal not
only with task and process, present and future, but the
organization’s past history in psychoanalytical terms.
All of this I found absorbing and I sought to
understand them the only way I know how - by turn-
ing the ideas that attracted me into action. From this
exercise, I began to expand my categories not in-
-
finitely, for I soon found that I simply could not work
from three-dimensional tables relating levels of issues
to sizes of groups to classes of interventions but -
selectively, based on what had meaning to me as a
manager and what seemed to have meaning to my
clients regardless of organizational setting. From ap-
plying other people’s theories, I have concluded that
having a practice theory is more important than having
any particular one.
So the way I learned to do OD was by applying
others’ formal theories understanding Likert by do-
-
ing surveys based on his work and by helping clients
create &dquo;linking pin&dquo; task force roles; understanding
Lawrence and Lorsch by working with a client com-
mittee to design a new organizational structure, and so
on.
In the doing, much more than reading or thinking
about, I came to understand both the practicality of a
good theory, to paraphrase Kurt Lewin, and also its
limitations. Consultants, unlike researchers, find
theories a convenience, not a discipline. When a theory
no longer fits, the researcher must understand why and
collect data to formulate a substitute. The consultant
simply discards the theory, or, more accurately, swit-
ches (in action, not intellectually, for the process more
often than not is intuitive) to another theory more con-
gruent with the situation. Asked what he or she is do-
ing, consultants often reply, in a jargon as irritating as
it is accurate, &dquo;meeting the clients where they’re at.&dquo;
Now the trouble with meeting people where
they’re at, from a scientific standpoint, is that you
can’t learn anything repeatable from it -
until you
reflect on how and why they got there, and where
they’re going from here. In my opinion interpersonal
and group skills only become OD practice when il-
luminated by a set of concepts about how organiza-
tions behave and what constitutes improvement. I
repeat, therefore, that having a practice theory is more
important, for managers and consultants alike, than
having any particular one. We learn and grow by try-
ing out, discarding, or modifying unworkable
theories. We build a body of practice knowledge by
reflecting upon and codifying what we do.
I can think of three important reasons, then, why
the practice of organizational change will be less risky
if we build personal models, or &dquo;middle-range&dquo;
theories about what we are looking for in organiza-
 Figure 1

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tions: arranged radar
I think of the categories as on a

1. The formal theories with the most power to ex- screen (see Figure 1). The screen constitutes the in-
plain how organizations work are often too abstract to nards of a black box (Figure 2) sometimes called
-

be of much use in day-to-day consultation (e.g., the &dquo;core transformation process&dquo; in open systems
work of Talcott Parsons). language. Inputs, outputs, and various environmental
2. Unless practitioners of organizational change demands/constraints impinge on the box. What’s in-
&dquo;own&dquo; their models of how and why change should side -

in terms of six factors, and how they are

managed relative to resources constitutes the sub-
-

take place, it is unrealistic to expect clients to &dquo;own&dquo;

data based on same. For &dquo;data&dquo; are formless, and
largely useless until shaped up into a diagnosis, that is,
a value-laden statement about the gap between the way
things are and the way they should be.
3. Unless we bring our values and assumptions up
front we will find it impossible to tell people what we
are trying to do in a way that they will find plausible.
A diagnosis, therefore, will be opaque and con-
fusing unless based on some model of reality that
makes possible an explicit comparison of the con-
gruence between the values of consultant and client.
This particular consulting dilemma can be ameliorated
through a personal practice theory.
There is another dilemma, one which all organiza-
tions share. The organization’s dilemma has to do with
surviving and growing at the same time it provides
security and growth for its job holders. Hence, as con-
sultant I seek out organizational issues those-
ject matter for organizational diagnosis.
More, since nothing stands still, I imagine the six
factors as interactive, always in flux, and each needing
continual fine-tuning. However, at any given time, one
or two issues will require more attention than others.
These will be issues which are so much out-of-balance
they become lightning rods for strong feelings and ir-
rational behavior. When this happens, work slows
down or stops, and consultants say the organization
has &dquo;process issues.&dquo; The uncovering and mapping of
these process issues in the here and now is the goal of
diagnosis.
I’ve written quite a lot about the &dquo;content&dquo; of the
six boxes (Weisbord, 1976, 1978). Rather than rehash
other materials here, I will sketch briefly how each box
throws certain critical individual/organizational
dilemmas into focus.

categories which symbolize people working together

for some common goals. Only then do I diagnose the
ways in which individual, or idiosyncratic, needs are
met or not met by the organization. My diagnostic
work is largely catalytic. That is, I try to galvanize peo-
ple to understand their organizational lives better and
to take steps they predict will make things better.
Sometimes this means reducing structure. Sometimes
it means creating more.
Thus, my own diagnostic map is designed for
practitioners and managers, rather than for resear-
chers and theorists. It provides a way of organizing
past research and theory in the light of my own ex-
perience so that it can be replicated in the here-and-
now.
For some years I’ve been calling my personal
cognitive map a &dquo;six-box model&dquo; for diagnosing
organizations. I have feared to give it a fancier name,
for I cannot claim methodological rigor. The strengths
of the six-box model seem to be its face validity,
simplicity (which makes it easy for others to own), and
its relative freedom from cultural bias. Because it’s at
once loose, comprehensive, and simple it permits the
utilization of any other theories you might know or
Figure 2
learn.
Most important individual/organization dilem-
mas can be diagnosed, and relationships among the
dilemmas observed by focusing in turn on data related
to six categories Purposes, Structure, Relation-
-

ships, Rewards, Leadership, Helpful Mechanisms.

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The Six Boxes in Brief
Rational PURPOSES will be related to EN-
VIRONMENTAL DEMANDS. That is, an organiza-
tion’s priorities usually grow from its will to survive.
What society values and will pay for heavily influences
mission. Thus, I’m interested in diagnosing at three
levels: (1) How appropriate are the PURPOSES? (2)
How clearly do people see them? (3) How much com-
mitment is there? In multipurpose organizations a -
medical center for instance -
this issue cannot be
diagnosed as it might be in a business firm. Purposes
are a tangled web of teaching, research and service.
Each unit must determine its own mix, based on its
own sub-environment.
STRUCTURES, of course, ought to be based on
PURPOSES (e.g., &dquo;form follows function&dquo;). For ex-
ample, functional (or departmental) units are strong
structures for building in-depth special competence.
They are much less effective for carrying out in-
tegrative projects, which require diverse expertise. By
contrast, a product (or program, or project) organiza-
tion is strong for coordinating efforts to solve special
problems; it pays for this capability by trading off in-
depth special competence (e.g., production, sales,
etc.).
Where both capabilities are important, some
organizations (e.g., aerospace industry, medical
schools) have gone to a mixed form, or matrix.
I think of structure mainly as a division of labor
issue. What is the most sensible way to divide up the
work, given the nature of the task? Asking this ques-
tion sometimes leads to surprising answers - for
people in the same organization may use a variety of
structures, depending on what it is they are trying to
do today. Industrial firms tend towards too much
structure, universities and medical centers toward too
little, or the wrong kinds for the tasks.
RELATIONSHIPS, in my lexicon, refer primari-
ly to the way people deal with each other in regard to
the work they are doing. Thus, I diagnose in terms of
task accomplishment; I’m interested in &dquo;style&dquo; dif-
ferences to the extent they make it hard for people who
have to work together to do it. On the other hand, I’m
equally interested in the extent to which people must
interact, or the extent to which units need things from
each other to do their work.
I view much organizational conflict as growing
from task differences. The more different are the in-
terdependent tasks, such as production and sales, or
teaching and service, from each other, the more likely
people are to fight with each other over goals, time,
-
dollars, or attention.
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REWARDS help or inhibit the &dquo;fit&dquo; between in-
dividual and organization goals in many ways. A Uto-
pian organization would have perfect incentives (e.g.,
promotion, recognition, money) for every needed
task. In practice, reward systems sometimes work
against the organization’s best interests (piecework in-
centive plans, for instance, sometimes serve to hold
down productivity; in academic medicine promotion
may hinge on research, while schools are under severe
pressures to do more teaching and patient service).
Cutting across the four boxes above is the most
troublesome category, and therefore the most in-
teresting. I call it HELPFUL MECHANISMS, and I
mean it to be a catch-all for a great variety of poten-
tially ingenious devices for the accomplishment of
work. Procedures, policies, systems, forms, commit-
tees, meetings, whether formal or informal, which
contribute to more rational purposes, structure, rela-
tionships, and rewards qualify as helpful mechanisms.
Those that don’t are unhelpful. A good organization
keeps revising its mechanisms, scrapping some, adding
others, as the world turns.
Whenever a &dquo;gap&dquo; is diagnosed between what is
and what should be, that usually means no present
mechanism exists to close it. Hence, the creation of
new mechanisms is a central outcome of effective
diagnosis.
Finally, only LEADERSHIP can scan the en-
vironment and sanction actions on behalf of the
whole. This is an appropriate role for top management
-
to keep the boxes in balance, continually monitor-
ing and creating mechanisms to articulate purposes,
alter structure, order internal conflict, introduce
rewards. More, these are useful tasks for leaders at
every level, from supervisors to ad hoc committee
chairpersons. Somebody should stand back regularly
and look at the whole contraption. Especially, such
persons should be involved in contracting for
diagnoses. Their involvement greatly enhances the
possibility for future actions.
An Educational Rationale
The stratgegy I practice for teaching this
diagnostic model has three ingredients:
1. A back-home case organization, against which
to test concepts and discover gaps in one’s own
knowledge;
2. A &dquo;live&dquo; case organization, with which to in-
teract, as a way of understanding the messiness of
theory in action, and the degree of behavioral flexibili-
ty appropriate to the complexity of the action research
dilemma;
3. The workshop organization, itself subject to
diagnosis and fine-tuning.
Let me describe the techniques used, and the
learning value, as I see it, of each of these ingredients.
1. Back-home case organization Diagnosis, in
- facilitate or hinder the desired learnings. Thus, I use a
my opinion, can’t be learned as a set of abstract con-
cepts. Thus, I’ve not been able to teach this model to
people who don’t have firsthand organizational ex-
perience. Given that my clients and learners in my
workshops all belong to organizations, I use a prework
assignment to raise peoples’ awareness of organiza-
tional concepts.
I have devised two &dquo;helpful mechanisms&dquo; for
prework. One is a short exercise booklet of questions
on each of the boxes (Weisbord, 1976). I ask people to
fill in the blanks on their ongoing organization before
the workshop and note two kinds of things:
1. Concepts they want to understand better, and
2. Gaps in their knowledge about the organiza-
tion they belong to.
During the workshop, I supply copies of a longer
workbook (Weisbord, 1978), from which homework
assignments are made each evening. The workbook
contains brief text on each of the six boxes, plus in-
depth application exercises, and &dquo;resource readings&dquo;
from other sources.
Because people are always interested in back-
home uses, I have them meet once a day for half an
hour with a partner solely for the purpose of discus-
sion applicability of learnings to the back-home case
organization.
2. &dquo;Live&dquo; Case - the diagnostic client. Since my
first days as a participant in my own laboratory educa-
tion, I’ve found that nothing forces learning more
dramatically than the healthy anxiety generated by
&dquo;playing for keeps.&dquo;
One important staff task, then, is finding
diagnostic client organizations and facilitating entry
for diagnostic teams. Potential clients are told they
have a chance to learn some useful things about their
organizations in return for allowing people to apply
some new techniques. They needn’t decide until they
meet the team, and can negotiate any conditions they
wish.
Diagnostic clients have included business firms,
banks, mental health centers, government agencies.
Since the focus is on the organization as a system, I
urge people to seek diagnostic contracts that include
contact with many parts of the system and feedback of
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data to a group empowered to act, rather than to one
person.
People work in teams of four or five to make and
carry out their diagnostic contracts. Since dealing with
variables outside of our control is the critical
behavioral skill, a &dquo;live&dquo; client is essential to learning
diagnostic behavior.
3. The workshop organiztion itself -
Obviously,
the way the educational event is organized will
learning design intended to facilitate interdependent
learning of the six-box concept by the teams (rather
than by individuals). This is an important distinction,
for it forces people to address the central purposes of
all organizations to do things together that in-
-
dividuals value and cannot do alone.
Moreover, in the learning formats I three-,
use -
four-, or five-day workshops - people cannot develop
in-depth competence in every box. However, they can
pool their expertise for a common task, which is the
meaning of teamwork.
So, I set up the workshop so that each team picks
one member to become a &dquo;specialist&dquo; in one or more
boxes. It’s common, for example, that the team
manager becomes the leadership specialist. Prior to
visiting clients, the various specialists from each team
form into &dquo;Specialty Task Forces.&dquo; These are ad hoc
groups, cutting across teams, whose goal is to develop
in-depth competence in rewards, or structure, or rela-
tionships, etc. from a diagnostic standpoint. Thus, the
task forces review theories, write diagnostic questions,
and develop practical methods for examining their
specialty in the time available.
In the diagnostic teams, the specialists must pool
their expertise to produce a single diagnostic strategy
for the &dquo;live case&dquo; client. In so doing, they also teach
one another their specialties.
To facilitate this self-teaching, I provide a
resource library of readings in each of the boxes plus
other diagnostic models, action research methods, and
so on. For instance, for a viewpoint on &dquo;purposes&dquo;
there’s Peter Drucker’s chapter on &dquo;Business Purpose
and Business Mission&dquo; from his magnum opus
(Drucker, 1973). For structure, people can dip into
Galbraith’s Designing Complex Organizations (1973)
or Davis and Lawrence’s Matrix (1978). For rewards
there are materials by Lawler and others. I have
resources on many leadership models - Fiedler,
Likert, Blanchard and Hersey, Selznick, etc. In addi-
tion, I invite participants to bring materials which can
be added temporarily to the library. Those becoming
&dquo;expert&dquo; in a particular box become familiar with
what’s available. More, they must make choices about
how to think about the issue to be diagnosed in a real
organization. Finally, I have &dquo;how-to-do-it&dquo; stuff
too, books and articles on survey data feedback,
diagnostic instruments, data collection, contracting, 4. Break out into Specialty Task Forces, which
etc. then alternate with Diagnostic Teams (first learn, then
Thus, the learning organization integrates the ma- utilize).
jor ingredients of the teaching strategy: pairs to discuss 5. Discussions of diagnostic contracting, nature
back-home applications; diagnostic teams to deliver
of client systems, diagnostic methods.
services to client organizations; specialty task forces to
6. Large blocks of discretionary team time, dur-
acquire in-depth knowledge about diagnostic
categories. ing which teams contract with clients, develop data,
In effect, we create a matrix organization because organize and conduct feedback sessions. These blocks
of the complexity of the twin tasks can be interspersed with staff clinics, either as general
acquiring new
-

knowledge; delivering services. During each workshop sessions, or individually with each team after every
I set aside time to discuss in a more theoretical way the client contact.
pros and cons of an organization such as ours. The Integration of learnings
7. One or more ses-
-

discussion usually proves fruitful because of the in- sions, toward the end, pulling together what has been
tense firsthand experience. learned (a) about diagnostic models, (b) about the
General sessions also are used to provide timely issues of performing diagnostic services, and (c) issues
input and discussion of such issues as: of teamwork, use of self, etc., (d) unfinished business
1. Questions people have about the six-box
-

agendas for future learning.

model.
2. Data collection methods.
3. Contracting for data collection,
decision to act.
4. Other diagnostic models and methods.
5. Division of labor within diagnostic teams.
6. Differences between industrial and nonin-
dustrial organizations.
7. Role plays or simulations of contracting, inter-
viewing, feedback sessions.
8. Debriefing of client experiences.
While I have been describing relatively short, in-
tense workshops, I see no reason why this teaching
strategy can’t be used in other formats, ten or twelve
weekly sessions, for instance, over the course of a
semester. Obviously, the more time people have to
mull over, try out, and rethink what they’re doing, the
more knowledge and skill they acquire. Regardless of
length, I would follow roughly this sequence of ac-
tivities.
1. Prework -self-diagnosis of learning needs,
plus first cut atorganization (to heighten
own
awareness of vocabulary and concepts).
2. Getting acquainted based on nature of
-
back-home case and learning expectations.
3. Formation of diagnostic teams.
feedback, and References
Blake, R. R., and J. S. Mouton, The Managerial Grid,
Houston, Texas: Gulf, 1964.
Davis, Stanley M., and Paul R. Lawrence, Matrix, Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1977.
Drucker, P. F., "Business Purpose and Business Mission," in
P. F. Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices,
New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Galbraith, Jay, Designing Complex Organizations, Reading,
Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1973.
Lawrence, P. R., and J. W. Lorsch, Organization and Environ-
ment, Boston: Harvard University, Graduate School of Business
Administration, 1967.
Levinson, H., Organizational Diagnosis, Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1972.
Likert, R., The Human Organization: Its Management and
Value, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967.
Tichy, N. M., and J. N. Nisberg, "Change Agent Bias: What
They View is What They Do," Group & Organization Studies, Vol.
I, No. 3, September 1976, pp. 286-301.
Vaill, P. B., "Practiced Theories in Organization Develop-
ment," in J. D. Adams (ed.), New Technologies in Organization
Development: 2, La Jolla, California: University Associates, 1975.
Weisbord, M. R., Diagnosing Your Organization: A
"Six-Box" Learning Exercise, Organization Research & Develop-
ment, a division of Block Petrella Associates, Inc., Wynnewood,
Pennsylvania, 1976.
Weisbord, M. R., Organiztional Diagnosis: A Workbook of
Theory and Practice, Reading, Pennsylvania: Addison-Wesley,
1978.

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