Are you a Membership Organization?

 

The Membership Organization Rating Form
The following questions offer an opportunity to rate the performance of your workplace community as a Membership Organization. (The book includes a Personal Membership Performance Rating Form also.) You may wish to print this form. After each question write the most appropriate number from the following scale:

1 Never     2 Seldom      3 Sometimes      4 Frequently     5 Always

Membership
    1. My Workplace community encourages me to actively participate in achieving the goals of the organization.
    2. My community functions in ways that are beneficial to its members and its customers.
Contribution
    3. Most members in my community believe that, for the most part, people want to do a good job.
    4. Most members have a sense of urgency regarding the success of this organization.
Motivation
    5. Members are motivated to exert high levels of energy in their work.
    6. The community demonstrates that each person's performance is valued and valuable.
Decisioning
    7. When decisions are made, consideration is given to the long-term impact on human, social, and financial outcomes.
    8. Decisions are made with the participation of those members who do the work.
Relationship
    9. The organization encourages informal, interactive relationships that create the willingness to be accountable to each other and others.
    10. There are many examples of effective formal and informal partnerships across the workplace community.
Leadership
    11. Our leaders are positive models for how to work well together.
    12. Members at all levels are encouraged to assume active leadership.
Accountability
    13. Accountability for workplace community performance is distributed across the organization.
    14. Our leaders encourage members to take responsibility for learning new skills.
Advocacy
    15. The external community sees this organization as a good corporate citizen.
    16. There are many examples of members striving to nurture a positive work climate.

Total











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The Membership Organization Scores


65-80: You have a Membership Organization. This mind-set has made it possible to purposefully blur the lines of title and status, creating a climate in which acting on input from members at all levels is the way work is accomplished. All members are vital to the growth of the workplace community, and the members are energized by expanding possibilities in the future for themselves and for their community.

49-64: This community is a good place to work, but it is not yet a high-achieving Membership Organization. For the most part, members can work together across lines of titles and status, but there are still difficult barriers to working together at a deeper level. Change agents within the organization are seeking ways to move to deeper levels of member participation.

33-48: The community is struggling and is sensing a need for change. There is an awareness throughout the organization that new, more successful ways of working are possible. This creates the potential for moving toward becoming a Membership Organization, but those who sense this possibility feel lost as to where to begin.

16-32: Bringing up the concept of membership would be a good way to get a cynical laugh in this organization. Many members feel discouraged, depressed and discounted--and rightly so. It will require a major change effort in this organization to create hope of becoming a higher-performing Membership Organization.