The Development of TriPol

From the field into practice – from the economy into the economy and administration

We have repeatedly made the same observation in our work environment in IBM Switzerland and IBM Australia across various industries and company sizes: really bad, severe and long lasting problems were always about people and their different views. It was often possible to solve business problems and also technical problems.

Human problems, however, whether about differing views of the objectives, or about misunderstandings or conflict, continued and grew. These sorts of problems caused many projects to fail and resulted in poor outcomes for many organisational units. Action was taken rarely, because people did not know what to do. Generally there was also very little professional and effective support.

The base study made it clear

To thoroughly analyse and understand these connections and interrelations, Eva Bichsel initiated a study in IBM Switzerland in 1992. She was able to show that the reason for crisis and failures in organisations and projects is in more than 50% of cases a lack of human competence and not a lack of business or technical competence (sometimes up to 80% of cases).

After discussion of these results with the board of directors of IBM Switzerland and based on her findings, Eva Bichsel developed the first version of the barometer. The factors that differentiate successful from unsuccessful projects and organisations were measured. She then developed and initiated a service offering to perform systematic organisational development for clients. The barometer and the method were very successfully used in many industries and companies.

TriPol was founded

In April 2000 the TriPol company was founded. The method and assessment with the TriPol Barometer are being continuously developed. Furthermore, A new database management system was implemented for the barometer. This enabled more differentiated analysis and results, which increased the value and benefit to customers. In 2003 Lilian Gasser joined TriPol. TriPol conducted further studies, collecting more data to differentiate the results even more (including overall differences of economy vs. government, sizes of companies and teams, configurations of teams etc.)

We are delighted that the TriPol assessment and method has proven to be so widely valuable, from the very top through all the levels in a hierarchy, in both small and in very large organisations.

For your information: The TriPol Method is TM protected