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Maturity Model

The OIF maturity model describes how an organization develops Organizational Intelligence over time.

The model is a draft for version 0.1.0. It is intended for learning, assessment, and improvement planning. It is not a certification.

Levels

Level Name Summary
0 Isolated Knowledge, decisions, and learning are fragmented.
1 Digitized Information is captured digitally but remains siloed.
2 Connected Systems and teams begin sharing data and context.
3 Aware The organization can form useful shared understanding.
4 Learning Feedback loops improve future decisions.
5 Intelligent Intelligence is governed, persistent, measurable, and organization-wide.

Level 0: Isolated

Organizational behavior: Work depends on individuals, local habits, and isolated tools. Teams solve problems independently.

Memory: Knowledge is mostly personal, informal, or scattered.

Context: Context is local and often lost during handoffs.

Reasoning: Reasoning depends on individual experience and is rarely reusable.

Decision-making: Decisions are inconsistent and weakly documented.

Learning: Lessons are accidental, local, and rarely preserved.

Governance: Governance is informal or limited to narrow compliance needs.

Technology characteristics: Spreadsheets, messages, local documents, and unconnected tools dominate.

Evidence required:

  • examples of siloed decision records
  • limited or no reusable decision rationale
  • missing feedback loops
  • reliance on individual memory

Transition criteria: Move toward Level 1 by capturing core information digitally and identifying critical knowledge and decision domains.

Level 1: Digitized

Organizational behavior: Core processes use digital tools, but each tool mostly serves its own function.

Memory: Information is stored digitally, but context and rationale are often missing.

Context: Context remains embedded in documents, messages, or team-specific systems.

Reasoning: Reasoning may be supported by reports or dashboards, but prior experience is not systematically reused.

Decision-making: Decisions may be recorded, but rationale and outcomes are not consistently linked.

Learning: Lessons may be documented after projects or incidents, but they are not reliably connected to future work.

Governance: Basic access, retention, and compliance controls exist in some systems.

Technology characteristics: Systems of Record and collaboration tools exist, but integration is limited.

Evidence required:

  • digital records for core processes
  • documented but disconnected knowledge repositories
  • examples of decisions without linked outcomes
  • basic system-level controls

Transition criteria: Move toward Level 2 by connecting critical systems, standardizing terminology, and preserving source context.

Level 2: Connected

Organizational behavior: Teams and systems begin exchanging data and context across boundaries.

Memory: Some shared repositories, histories, or knowledge bases exist, but they are incomplete and unevenly used.

Context: Shared terminology and relationship mapping begin to emerge.

Reasoning: Decisions can use more than one source of evidence, but reasoning is still inconsistently documented.

Decision-making: Cross-functional decisions improve where data and context are connected.

Learning: Feedback is captured in some workflows but does not reliably update future reasoning.

Governance: Governance begins to cross system boundaries.

Technology characteristics: Integrations, APIs, shared data platforms, and workflow tools connect selected domains.

Evidence required:

  • integrations between critical systems
  • shared terminology or data definitions
  • examples of cross-functional context use
  • early feedback capture

Transition criteria: Move toward Level 3 by creating reliable shared understanding, linking decisions to rationale, and improving context quality.

Level 3: Aware

Organizational behavior: The organization can form useful shared understanding across important domains.

Memory: Organizational Memory exists for selected decisions, processes, and knowledge domains.

Context: Context is explicit, reusable, and connected to observations and decisions.

Reasoning: Reasoning uses current context and prior experience in selected domains.

Decision-making: Important decisions have clearer rationale, evidence, and accountability.

Learning: Learning is recognized as a requirement, but feedback loops remain partial or domain-specific.

Governance: Governance covers key memory, reasoning, and decision processes.

Technology characteristics: Systems of Understanding begin to appear in selected domains.

Evidence required:

  • reusable Organizational Memory in at least one important domain
  • decision rationale linked to evidence
  • explicit context models or relationship maps
  • governed access to shared understanding

Transition criteria: Move toward Level 4 by closing feedback loops and proving that outcomes improve future decisions.

Level 4: Learning

Organizational behavior: The organization uses feedback-driven learning to improve future decisions.

Memory: Organizational Memory is updated based on outcomes and review.

Context: Context improves over time as the organization learns from errors, exceptions, and changing conditions.

Reasoning: Reasoning uses feedback and prior outcomes to improve recommendations and decision support.

Decision-making: Decisions become more consistent, explainable, and adaptive.

Learning: Learning loops are active, measured, and connected to future work.

Governance: Governance controls learning, model updates, workflow changes, and decision authority.

Technology characteristics: Evaluation, monitoring, memory, workflow, and reasoning capabilities are connected in important domains.

Evidence required:

  • feedback loops linked to decision outcomes
  • evidence of changed policies, workflows, rules, or models based on learning
  • metrics showing decision improvement or repeated-failure reduction
  • governance records for learning-driven changes

Transition criteria: Move toward Level 5 by expanding governed learning across the enterprise and proving persistent, measurable improvement.

Level 5: Intelligent

Organizational behavior: Organizational Intelligence is governed, persistent, measurable, and organization-wide.

Memory: Organizational Memory is durable, portable where practical, governed, and reused across domains.

Context: Collective Understanding is actively maintained across people, processes, systems, and AI.

Reasoning: Reasoning is consistent, explainable, evidence-based, and connected to prior outcomes.

Decision-making: Decisions improve measurably over time and remain accountable.

Learning: Intelligence Compounding is visible across the organization.

Governance: Enterprise-wide governance covers memory, reasoning, decisioning, AI, automation, learning, security, audit, and portability.

Technology characteristics: OCE capabilities operate across the enterprise through centralized, federated, or hybrid architecture.

Evidence required:

  • enterprise-wide governance
  • persistent Organizational Memory across critical domains
  • measurable improvement in decision outcomes
  • traceable learning loops
  • evidence of portability and organizational ownership

Transition criteria: Level 5 is the target state. Continued maturity requires ongoing measurement, governance, public review where appropriate, and adaptation as organizational conditions change.

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