Beyond Training to Capacity: Kaizen Catalyzes Human and Institutional Capacity Development
Strong local institutions and empowered individuals are essential drivers in achieving sustainable results. Development assistance efforts, however, all too often focus solely on isolated interventions, failing to address more systemic gaps in organizations that hamper performance. The Kaizen Company utilizes proven performance assessment and improvement methodologies to support locally-owned and driven reforms. Since 2004, Kaizen has provided human and institutional capacity development (HICD) assistance to over forty public and private sector organizations in the Middle East and Asia.
The Organizational Self-Assessment and Transformation Program (OSTP), a flagship Kaizen service, develops local level HICD expertise through the identification and equipping of internal reform leadership teams. Consisting of 5 to 25 individuals, each leadership team is committed to institutionalizing a culture of kaizen, ‘ongoing improvement at all levels at all times,’ within their organization. Guided by experienced Kaizen consultants, internal reform teams conduct assessments to discover root causes of performance gaps, craft improvement plans that prioritize reform areas and delineate tangible, measurable steps towards improved organizational performance.
A Visual Representation of Kaizen’s OSTP ModelRecognized by UNDP’s “Capacity is Development” Knowledge Fair as an innovative and successful program catalyzing HICD worldwide, Kaizen’s OSTP incorporates organizational development building blocks such as strategy, human capital, knowledge management, leadership, processes and finance, and addresses all six universal performance factors outlined by The International Society for Performance Improvement. A notable feature of Kaizen’s approach to HICD is the selection of partner organizations that demonstrate clear commitment to reform by dedicating resources and providing top-level championing of the work of the internal reform teams, thus increasing the likelihood of HICD efforts being sustained in the long term.
Complimenting institution-specific capacity development under OSTP, partner organizations and their internal reform teams also have the potential to benefit from Kaizen’s Professional Communities (PC) and Sector Support Network (SSN) programs focused on capacity building for individuals and fostering sector-wide connections between numerous organizations. Featuring both live and virtual components, Kaizen’s PC program emphasizes applied learning, resource sharing and support networks of professional peers involved in implementing reforms within a particular sector. Professional community participants draw upon KaizenConnect, a growing portfolio of over 3,000 reform support resources (tools, templates, presentations, webinars, e-trainings, etc.), all furthering HICD performance improvement efforts.
