The Organizational Capability Formation Scan
Seventeen questions, fifteen scored, read your organization on density and optionality, the two axes that place you in the matrix, and measure alumni capital separately. Then they tell you what your position is actually costing or compounding.
A preliminary leader self-read. It is directional, reflects one respondent's perspective, and covers only the organizational scope you know. It can surface questions worth investigating. It does not replace the paid Organizational Capability Formation Read, and it is not a full enterprise diagnosis.
Looking for the individual diagnostic instead? →
What are you reading for?
Answer for one scope you know well, based on what has happened in the last twelve to eighteen months.
Before You Begin
Answer for one organizational scope you know well. This might be the whole organization, a business unit, a function, or a team.
Base your answers on what has usually happened during the past 12 to 18 months, not on formal policy or intended design.
Choose the option that best describes the dominant pattern in the scope you selected.
If practices differ materially across the scope, choose a narrower scope before continuing.
Density
Judgment formed through consequential work.Density is not workload, tenure, or hardship. It reflects the development and repeated application of judgment under meaningful conditions.
How are consequential decision rights typically distributed?
When an unfamiliar, consequential problem appears, who usually owns the response?
When work is most demanding here, what creates the demand?
After difficult decisions or unfamiliar work, what usually happens?
Who typically receives the stretch assignments that build the most judgment?
Optionality
Portable, or trapped.How readily the judgment people build can be applied across roles, priorities, and organizations.
For a typical strong performer, how portable is the judgment they build here?
Over the last year, how often has someone here actually applied their expertise outside its original setting?
How clearly can people demonstrate the capability they have built here?
If priorities changed next quarter, how much of your critical talent could be redeployed into different high-priority work without extensive retraining?
When familiar systems or processes are unavailable, how well can people adapt what they know?
Alumni Capital
What stays after they go.What knowledge, relationships, and value continue to circulate after people leave.
For people who leave in good standing, what usually happens to the relationship?
How often do former employees create value for the organization after leaving?
When someone leaves a key role, is the work itself still doable without them?
How does the organization use what it learns from departures?
When someone who holds important internal or external relationships leaves, do those relationships survive the departure?
Conditions shaping your result
These final questions help interpret your organizational position. They do not change your Density, Optionality, or Alumni Capital scores.
Over the past 12 to 18 months, the level of consequential judgment expected in most roles has...
How sustainable is the pace in a typical month?
One Last Question
Not scored. It is here because the answer is usually the most honest thing in the report.
Honestly: does your organization build capability by design, or does it accumulate it by accident?
Answer the questions above, then generate your preliminary read. Optional context sharpens the scan.