The Relational Infrastructure Assessment for Healthcare Innovation Teams™

v1.0 Built by Nick Norman

In healthcare innovation, individuals and teams are often working to bring new ideas into environments that require coordination across partners, systems, and regions. As that work moves forward, maintaining alignment, trust, and clear decision-making becomes increasingly difficult, especially as more people and moving parts are introduced across digital and hybrid environments.

Beneath those efforts, relational and social dynamics are already present before a project begins, influencing how the work unfolds. These include how people relate, communicate, coordinate, build trust, and make decisions. If not understood or Left unexamined, they can create friction, slow progress, or bring the work to a costly stop altogether.

This assessment gives you a way to understand where those dynamics may begin to affect your work. 

How it Works

This assessment is structured around a set of targeted questions. Those questions are informed by the Relational Infrastructure Framework and applied within a healthcare innovation context, taking into account how relational and social dynamics can shift at key points as the work develops.

Based on your responses, it surfaces where those dynamics are likely to emerge at critical points and where they may introduce friction, misalignment, loss of momentum, or delays in execution.

What makes this different is that most approaches focus on relational dynamics at the surface level, how people interact or perceive one another in the moment. This goes deeper. It looks at how those dynamics are built into the structure of the work itself, even before the work begins, and how they carry through as the work develops and scales.

Apply to the 2026 Relational Assessment Cohort

Currently offering a limited number of no-cost assessments for select healthcare innovation teams and projects.
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Nick Norman

The Thinking Behind This Assessment

Nick has spent more than fifteen years working across complex projects in a range of environments. Over time, a consistent pattern emerged. Projects did not succeed based on funding, tools, or technical strength alone. They succeeded when the relational and social conditions were right.

Across that work, it became clear that these dynamics are often overlooked until they begin to affect progress. Teams may have strong ideas, capable people, and the right resources, yet still experience friction, misalignment, or loss of momentum.

This assessment was developed to make those conditions visible earlier. It helps surface how relational and social dynamics may influence the work as it develops, so teams can better understand what may emerge and decide how to respond.

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If this assessment connects with your work, use the form below to get started or learn more about participating.
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