Maturity level: where your organisation stands today

Before planning a route, it helps to know where you start. For this I use two different pictures, and because they are easily confused, their relationship is expressly clarified here. The eight areas of clarification from Chapter 5 describe what needs to be clarified; they are the substantive topics. The maturity level describes how far an organisation has come overall in clarifying and recording.

The two do not stand side by side but crosswise to each other. The areas of clarification say which topics you are working on. The maturity level says how far the organisation has already come in them overall. You work on all eight areas of clarification and grow through the maturity levels as you do so. In short: the areas of clarification are the What, the maturity level is the How far.

The maturity level is not a report card or a grade, but a map. Its only purpose is to determine the honest starting point and find the next sensible step.

Level 1: Person-dependent. Projects work mainly because experienced individuals carry them. Knowledge and decisions depend heavily on those people. Next step: record essential information and enable others to step in.

Level 2: Defined and documented. Initial roles, procedures, decision paths and templates exist but are not applied consistently. Next step: establish shared rules as a binding basis.

Level 3: Standardised across the organisation. Comparable undertakings follow shared minimum standards in practice, enabling easier handover and comparison. Next step: make purposeful use of management information.

Level 4: Actively managed and measured. Decision-makers use reliable information and indicators to prioritise, approve, correct course and assess impact. Measurement alone is not enough; the resulting decisions matter. Next step: embed improvements systematically.

Level 5: Continuously improved. Lessons from projects demonstrably change templates, decisions, collaboration and approaches for future undertakings. Learning begins earlier; at this level it becomes systematic across the organisation.

Digitalisation is not a mandatory fifth stage. It can help with documentation early on and later strengthen reliable information, shared processes and organisational learning. This is an independent orientation informed by established maturity approaches, not an empirically validated standard or certification.

The five levels help assess organisational capabilities. They do not prescribe a rigid development path. An organisation may work digitally or learn from projects early, even if roles and procedures are not yet fully standardised. The important thing is to identify the actual bottleneck and address it. The highest level is not an end in itself.

Digital support and systematic learning are different capabilities. A tool alone does not make an organisation capable of learning. It needs to apply insights from previous undertakings to new decisions and ways of working.

One pattern shows up even in mature environments: on the way until a decision reaches the top, individual participants build in their own interests instead of deciding in the interest of the whole. At its core this is a question of culture, of the Why, not of method. This model works neither on an organisation's Why nor on its base organisation; Chapter 5 sets out this boundary. The next chapter shows how the pattern arises and why clarification therefore so often stops halfway.

Research points to it · more