7S Model

Ensuring that all parts of your organisation work in harmony.

The question, How do you go about analysing how well your organisation is positioned to achieve its intended objective? is one that has been asked for many years, and there are many different answers. Some approaches look at internal factors, others look at external ones, some combine these perspectives, and others look for similarities between various aspects of the organisation being studied. In the end, the issue comes down to which factors to study.

While some models of organisational effectiveness go in and out of fashion, one that has persisted is the McKinsey 7S framework. Developed in the early 1980s by Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, two consultants working at the McKinsey & Company consulting firm, the basic premise of the model is that there are seven internal aspects of an organization that need to be aligned if it is to be successful.

The 7S model can be used in a wide variety of situations where an alignment perspective is useful, eg improve the performance of an organisation, examine the likely effects of future changes within an organisation, determine how best to implement a proposed strategy.

The McKinsey 7S model can also be applied to elements of a team or a project as well. The alignment issues apply, regardless of how you decide to define the scope of the areas you study.