1. Laying the foundation. This initial stage provides organization members with the basic knowledge and information needed to get started with organization transformation. It involves three kinds of activities. The first is acquiring knowledge about how organizations function, about organizing principles for achieving high performance, and about the self-design process. This information is generally gained through reading relevant material, attending in-house work- shops, and visiting other organizations that successfully have transformed themselves. This learning typically starts with senior executives or with those managing the transformation process and cascades to lower organizational levels if a decision is made to proceed with self-design. The second activity in laying thefoundation involves valuing determining the corporate values that will guide the transformation process. These values represent those performance outcomes and organizational conditions that will be needed to implement the corporate strategy. They are typically written in a values statement that is discussed and negotiated among multiple stakeholders at all levels of the organization. The third activity is diagnosing the current organization to determine what needs to be changed to enact the corporate strategy and values. organization members generally assess the different features of the organization, including its performance. They look for incongruities between its functioning and its valued performances and conditions. In the case of an entirely new organization, members diagnose constraints and contingencies in the situation that need to be taken into account in designing the organization