Consulting Tool: OKA’s Cable Model

A Diagnostic Tool for Projects, Teams, and Organizations. OKA has developed a unique diagnostic tool to support our consulting efforts. The Wrapped Cable Model,™ is a comprehensive and scalable tool for assessing and interpreting the challenges facing organizations, projects, and teams. The model consists of seven core elements – mission, structure, leadership, processes, people, money, and environment – contained within a defining shell, representing the eighth element of culture. This structure reflects the reality that culture emerges from multiple factors; at the same time, culture defines and acts on other elements as well.

Key features of the model:

• Offers a structured and systematic way to think about organizations.
• Illustrates the integration and differentiation of system elements.
• Examines separate but inter-dependent parts, allowing for the assessment of whole systems, projects, work teams and/or isolated issues.

We use the Cable Model as a conceptual framework in most of our consulting efforts, and wrote an article about its application for CROSSTALK The Journal of Defense Software Engineering in 2006. Read and download below. Note: Authors are both now with OKA – so give us a call to talk about how the Cable Model could be used to better understand the factors at play in YOUR organization!

Download Transforming Cultures: A New Approach to Assessing and Improving Technical Programs (PDF).