What are the Five Dimensions?
Together, the five dimensions provide a framework for applying principles of human progress to enable everyone to improve their own condition by helping others improve theirs.
A dimension organizes principles of human progress to make them more effective in improving essential aspects of individual and organizational success.
Because the five dimensions are interrelated and mutually reinforcing, they are most effective when applied holistically.
No matter what your job is, you are expected to apply the five dimensions to get better results. The tool below can help you!
Using the Five Dimensions to Identify and Close Gaps in Your Work
At Koch we continually seek to close the gap between what we are accomplishing and what we could be accomplishing if we were fully applying our principle-based framework. To identify ways to increase your contribution, ask yourself, your supervisor or others the following questions:
Maximizing my group’s contribution to Koch’s long-term success.
- Do I understand my group’s and Koch’s visions and how I can best contribute to them?
- How do I use these visions to prioritize, make decisions, identify opportunities and innovate?
- What capabilities does my group need to add or improve?
Living Our Values and strengthening our culture.
- How can I improve my understanding and application of Our Values? What other principles would help me contribute more?
- What will enable me to become more contribution motivated? Who can help?
- How do I further develop my talents?
Continually learning to succeed in a rapidly changing world.
- How can I improve my knowledge networks to better innovate and transform? In what ways can I better share knowledge and motivate others to do the same?
- What information, measures and principles would help me understand which parts of my work are profitable? What do I need to start, stop, change or improve?
- How can I better provide and solicit beneficial challenges and use them to help me and others improve?
- What experiments would enable us to learn how to increase profitability?
Given the opportunities, fostering superior application of individual abilities, cooperation and teamwork.
- Given my interests and abilities, and those of other team members, how can my supervisor and I optimize my role?
- Is my group continually reoptimizing roles and responsibilities as team members and conditions change?
Recognizing that I succeed by maximizing my contribution to Koch's long-term success.
- How can I make my work more energizing and meaningful to me?
- Have I asked my supervisor how to increase my compensation by improving my contribution?
- What external and internal barriers keep me from contributing more? Who can help me overcome or remove them?
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Closing Gaps as Leaders - Unscripted
Hear how applying the five dimensions can help leaders identify and close gaps.
Everyone Can - and Should - Apply the Five Dimensions - Unscripted
Leaders describe how applying all five dimensions is how we get work done, not something extra to do.
Examples: Applying the Five Dimensions
Below are examples of employees applying the five dimensions in different situations.
- Connecting to Vision
- Improving Team Effectiveness
- Starting Something New
- Solving a Problem
Ayla discusses the Vision questions in the “Using the Five Dimensions to Identify and Close Gaps” tool with her supervisor and teammates. As a result, she has a better understanding of what her team is trying to accomplish. Ayla finds she has better ideas for improving team processes and what skills she wants to sharpen since the discussion.
Martin’s team has been doing okay, but he believes they can do more. He works with his supervisor to talk through the five dimensions, using “Supervisor Responsibilities and Expectations” as a guide. They decide the Comparative Advantage Dimension is where Martin needs to focus first. Martin begins by talking with each team member about their responsibilities and expectations and exploring new ways to organize the group’s work.
A new project team decides to be disciplined about using the five dimensions from the onset of their project. While this was a new approach to some team members, at the end of the project they all agreed that proactively using the five dimensions led to better results.
Several customers have complained about late deliveries. Maurice can see from the data that the number and length of delays have increased over the last quarter. Maurice brings together a small group and uses the five dimensions to explore the problem and identify gaps that need closed.