Team Clinic Diagnostics
Complex organizational problems rarely sit in one place. Team Clinic Diagnostics examines how people, information, decisions, expertise, and work move through the organization, then connects those relationships with workforce, workflow, climate, and operational evidence to understand what is driving the problem.
The Standard Behind the Work
Each diagnostic begins with a defined organizational pain point and uses multiple sources of evidence to investigate it. Organizational network analysis is a core method across all four diagnostics because many organizational problems depend on relationships: who people go to for information, advice, expertise, problem-solving, coordination, influence, and decisions.
Network evidence is interpreted alongside validated measures, interviews, organizational records, workflow evidence, and operational data. Network position describes relational structure; the broader evidence helps explain what that structure means. Findings are strongest when different sources point toward the same explanation and especially important to investigate when they diverge.
The four diagnostics
Team Effectiveness & Organizational Dynamics
Why is this unit tense, and why do the same conflicts keep coming back?
Why does work keep breaking down between people or groups that depend on one another?
Examines team climate, coordination, information flow, expertise, and informal structure to understand how relationships and dependencies are affecting the team’s ability to work. ONA can reveal overloaded connectors, isolated groups, weak cross-team ties, concentrated expertise, and relationships that carry work across formal boundaries.
Leadership Behavior & Performance
Why do the same people get the opportunities, and why are good people leaving?
How are leadership behaviors shaping performance across the organization?
Examines how leadership decisions are experienced across the organization through communication, access, resource allocation, opportunities, evaluation, workload, and accountability. ONA adds another layer by showing how influence, information, access, and opportunity move through relationships surrounding the leader.
Work-as-Done
Why do people work around the procedures we already have in place?
What are employees doing to keep the work moving that never appears in the formal process?
Compares formal work with how work is actually accomplished. The diagnostic examines workarounds, informal coordination, shadow knowledge, role spillover, escalation pathways, and dependencies that may be invisible in policies or process maps. ONA helps trace who people actually rely on when the formal process does not support the work.
Organizational Intelligence
Why do the numbers look acceptable while the same problems keep surfacing?
Connects relationships, workforce conditions, workflow dependencies, operational performance, and relevant external developments over time. ONA helps show whether information pathways, critical connectors, silos, or dependencies are changing as the organization changes. The broader analysis asks whether separate signals form a meaningful organizational pattern and what changed after leadership acted.
How a diagnostic works
The methods are selected around the pain point. Organizational network analysis shows the relational structure of the problem; the other evidence helps explain why that structure exists, what consequences are associated with it, and which explanations are supported.
- 1
Define the pain point
Clarify what is happening, where it is occurring, and what needs to be understood.
- 2
Map the relationships
Use organizational network analysis to examine the relationships relevant to the problem.
- 3
Layer the evidence
Add the evidence that helps explain the network, drawn from what the pain point requires.
- 4
Test explanations
Compare what people report, what the organization records, how relationships are structured, and how work actually happens.
- 5
Develop findings
Identify explanations supported across sources and areas where the evidence remains mixed.
- 6
Decide what follows
Translate findings into specific decisions, changes, further investigation, or measures for follow-up.
Organizational Network Analysis
Different relational questions produce different networks — who people rely on for information, advice, expertise, problem-solving, coordination, approval, or influence. A person central to one network may be peripheral to another.
Validated Measures
Team climate · psychological safety · workload · support · relevant organizational constructs
Interviews & Qualitative Evidence
Employee experience · explanations · context · how people understand the work
Organizational Records
Roles · assignments · evaluations · opportunities · policies · decisions · historical evidence
Workflow & Work-as-Done Evidence
Processes · handoffs · workarounds · hidden tasks · escalation · dependencies
Operational & Workforce Data
Quality · incidents · workload · vacancies · turnover · performance · trends over time
The analysis looks for convergence, contradiction, and change over time.
Start with what you are seeing.
Describe the problem, who is involved, what has already been tried, and what you need to understand. The diagnostic approach follows from the pain point, and the work may draw on more than one of the four areas.