Maturity Models

Maturity Models are useful devices for building ownership for improvement within a viable strategy of overall change.

They basically consist of a number of dimensions over which change is to take place, which represent the columns of the model, and a number of levels within each dimension reflecting different levels of maturity or proficiency. These become the rows of the model.

You can see an example of this in the coloured (non-grey) cells of the diagram below.

The value of a maturity model is that it enables you to describe utopia without requiring anybody to sign up for it (well not just yet anyway). It is a map of progress in which people are invited to identify their starting position and their next destination. In other words it provides a framework within which people can take ownership of their current performance, their next stage of development and, by inference, their improvement actions.

Maturity models provide a structure for dialogue between the improver and their coach/manager which enable practical steps toward a vision that could well be overwhelming if required from the outset. This is very useful where the virtues of the more advanced stages of development might not be easily appreciated by those at the lower stages of development until they have been enlightened in their efforts to close some of the gap.

We invite you to see how this works by reflecting on your own development in using web-based meetings using the maturity model below. (You can see more detail in it by clicking the diagram, or clicking here). Take a look at the diagram, and follow these instructions:

It is easy to use a maturity model on your own, but it works better when you use it with a coach or trusted friend. It also works well with those that you are coaching/developing to help them take responsibility for their own plans.

In the diagram above, the different horizontal levels (platforms) represent pictures of progress from incompetence through to excellence; the grey plinths represent the technical foundation each platform needs to be built on; and the different coloured squares represent the skills built on each technical foundation to harness the value of meetings – they grow in intensity of colour from weak, at the bottom (relative incompetence) through to strong at the top (where they reflect a high degree of facilitative ability in each dimension).

The dotted line part way up the chart represents a transition point … below this line, virtual meetings will be largely inferior (or at best only equal to) physical meetings.  Above this line however, the available tools in virtual meetings better utilise the different dimensions of the skills people are developing, and thereby make virtual meetings able to outperform basic physical ones.

Maturity models can be created for virtually any topic. They can be created by an individual for use within a meeting, or they can be created by a meeting to track their own progress. The TBA on the top row of a maturity model reflects two things: