Orgenogram™, or “Organizational Genogram”, “Organizational Genealogy Tree”, is a graphic representation of critical relationships between organization’s executives and the historic patterns of organizational development. Development of Orgenogram™ is a powerful Executive Team building and strategic planning activity that allows participants to reflect on historic organizational development patterns, power relationships, identify organizational strengths, and capitalize on these strengths.
Genograms have been widely utilized in social work, family counseling, genealogy, medicine, and education for the last thirty years. Genograms not only visually present delineation of family members’ relationships, but they also go beyond a traditional family tree. Genograms allow the user to identify repetitive patterns of behavior, recognize hereditary tendencies, and capitalize on family’s strengths.
Orgenograms have not been widely utilized in business world so far, however utilization of Orgenogram™ have much potential in organizational and business development fields. While genogram focuses on family patterns, Orgenogram™ identifies organizational development patterns since the inception of business or organization. Differently than genograms that depict generational levels and relationships between family members, Orgenogram™ is created in historic blocks that includes decision makers, products, events, organizational culture, and strengths and weaknesses during a particular time period. Participants have an opportunity to reflect on lessons learned, identify how organization capitalized on strengths and opportunities, and how it overcame threats and weaknesses. Development of Orgenogram™ allows participants to reflect on organization’s historic relationship patterns with its external environment. Creation of Orgenogram™ also prompts participants to reflect on how organization has capitalized on its talents, and identify future direction. Orgenogram™ serves as high impact team development activity that increases participants’ ownership to the mission and their loyalty to organization. Finally, Orgenogram™ is used as a cornerstone to strategic planning.