Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Managing Partner, The Federal Circle
DrSmith@Dr-Smith.com
Dr-Smith.com
Assessment programs are an important tool for the board of directors – and the senior management team. They are inexpensive, easy to manage and generate critical information that helps the board meet its principal task of protecting and extending shareholder value. I have helped organize many of these programs and presented findings to boards. I regularly hear comments like:
- We didn’t know that?
- How could we have missed that?
- I thought that this was just going to be cheap and fast – but wow!
- Now what are we going to do about this?
- Its time to make some serious changes
- There’s more liability here than we thought
- Management seems a bit off base on this one
- I had no idea that our customer service was this bad
- There are big holes in the organization that we need to see to right away
I generally run four different types of assessment programs. They are web-based and have the following characteristics:
- Confidentiality: data is collected in the privacy of each person’s office or cubical – anonymity is maintained and no one is able to connect a particular response to a particular individual.
- Focus: the assessments focus on a pre-agreed upon set of issues – taking multiple passes at each – the resulting data clearly indicates both the depth of the challenge and the possible solutions
- Data collection: data is collected in a low-impact manner with individuals responding to series of questions – the entire process generally takes less than half an hour
- Feedback management: presentation of results can occur within days of the assessment itself – processing of the raw data is quick and the results are presented in both tabular and graph form – these are always high-gain events
I generally recommend that a company establish a baseline by conducting three assessments within a two-month period. This gives the board and senior management the ability to measure progress in key areas and provides a reference point for all interested parties. The three assessment programs are combined into one for this purpose:
BAP (Board Assessment Program): This is board governance, best practice assessment. The data is provided by board members and provides a measure of how they are performing in critical areas of board governance. Whether it Sarbanes-Oxley, or other board related imperatives, this assessment supports the needs of organizations that are committed to board effectiveness.
MAP (Management Assessment Program): Helps to pin point your company’s best opportunities for strategic business improvement, illustrates management and employee alignment, identifies areas where management is falling short or exceeding expectations – aligns priorities with business realities.
LAP (Leadership Assessment Program): Develops a snapshot of the leadership of the company – identifies areas that require attention – covers both leadership competence and character.
In order to establish a baseline, these three assessment programs are combined in to one package.
GAP (Global Assessment Program): This is a top down, holistic snapshot of your organization. It combines the focuses of a MAP, LAP and BAP into a global assessment of your organization, leadership and board effectiveness.
It is said that, in business, ignorance is expensive and cultivated ignorance is insanity. Given the modest cost and high return of these assessment programs, every company should have them run on a regular basis. Their principal benefit is in providing the data that helps a company anticipate problems before they dissolve into full-blow catastrophes. A well run and delivered assessment puts everybody on the same page and helps the team strive towards common goals. In business, the ostrich is an endangered species and the Chairman or CEO who insists in knowing has a major leg up on the one that is cultivating ignorance.
© Dr. Earl R. Smith II
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66 Responses to “Assessment Programs – Important Governance Tools”
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Dave Opton wrote:
This may sound too idealistic, but at the end of the day I think it comes down to TRUST, especially on the Sr. Mgt. team. My feeling is that for feedback to be really effective people need to trust the person giving the feedback and that whatever it is that I am hearing is offered to help, not to hurt.
The minipulation usually comes from those who are only giving lip service to being part of the team when in truth they have their own agenda, and while I can’t prove it, my belief is that this could comes about as the result of that individual’s personality, but more likely because the members of the team see what behavior is rewarded and behave accordingly. Not something that should surprise anyone.
Dave, thanks for the comment. I agree that the programs are vulnerable to both misuse and misinterpretation. Senior executives seem particularly prone to attempting manipulation. How would you work to see that they are not subject to either? Dr. Smith
Dave Opton wrote:
This is indeed an interesting discussion and certainly one that has been on going in the corporate executive development universe for as long as I can remember which is rapidly approaching 46+ years in the business word
While my area of expertise is not MD/OD ( I am a generalist) in my
experience I would agree with Phillip that there is indeed a difference between management assessment programs, team and personal development and organizational change efforts.
It has also been my observation that irrespective of the objective to which any of the foregoing a program’s efforts are directed, they often fail because the organization does not have the “will” to sustain the effort – particularly follow-up and when it comes to assessments, the use of the term immediately puts people on the defensive.
these programs have been around a long time, and unfortunately the perception that most executives have is that they are subjected to them as a means to an end, with the end being that the instrument is going to be used as tool to take them out of the business.
In short, what was intended to be viewed as developmental has often been misused and in many organizations that reputation is nearly impossible to overcome.
Henri Birmele wrote:
Great discusion and Mark is right on target. I pesonaly love the 360 and have used them may times in my career however in most cases found the Individual not very open to the results and in some cases even worse, did not respond positive when anounced. I also found that most of them had challanges with creating an action plan based on the result however a few of my team members surpriseed me very positive and turned out to become much more effective.
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360 degree assessments, where multiple individuals assess their performance subjectively in an attempt to highlight problem areas – and in the hopes that doing so will result in change.
360 degree assessments are a fine tool for figuring out WHAT isn’t working (e.g., John isn’t a good communicator, or Frank doesn’t provide enough details to his team), and even then there are lots of issues with honesty, bias, dishonesty due to lack of anonymity, etc.. The problem is, simply pointing out that John isn’t a good communicator does little to explain WHY he isn’t. Understand WHAT the problem is (e.g., Mary doesn’t close, Betty doesn’t prospect or gives away the product) does little to resolve the problem if you can’t then understand why Betty or Mary, or Frank or John do what the 360 says they do (or don’t).
In our consulting, we use ‘Innermetrix’ trilogy of assessment tools to offer clients (staff, managers/directors, and executives) personality profiles as a glimpse into how powerful such information (1. WHAT natural talents you possess, 2. HOW you prefer to behave, and 3. WHY you are motivated to do things) can be in helping them answer whatever questions they have.
The key will be to figure out what’s the pain or the symptoms they are trying to resolve, then we can show them what/why/how their profiles measure and we help provide those answers in ways a 360 never can.
Bill Boyer wrote:
Check out the podcast from Tino. To quickly explain, the D is for Dominance, I for Influence, S for steadiness, and C for conscientiousness. Just from the name of the each behavorial style you can quickly see how each of the styles will impact how these individuals interact, manage, or sell to others. You can also instruct this person for to determine which of the four behaviors the person you are interacting with fits. Do a seach on DiSC and many of the sites will allow to do a free DiSC on yourself. While you can work with people just from the report itself, I would strongly recommend that anyone is planning to use DiSC have some training in intrepreting the results.
Bill & Tino, thanks for the comments. It is this real world stuff that I was looking for. There are a lot of programs out there and such information helps to sort them out. I found Bill’s comment on measuring “behaviors more than personality traits” very interesting. Bill, could you expand on that? Dr. Smith
manager-tools.commanager-tools.com
Tino Go wrote:
I’ve found DiSC to be very useful also. There is a great podcast series on DiSC (and many other useful topics) at http://www.manager-tools.com/purchase-the-disc-profile . The web page I’ve cited has a number of free podcasts (as well as links for the purchase of the test).
Myers-Briggs provides interesting insight into a personality type, but can be hard to translate into management actions or routines.
Bill Boyer wrote:
I have used DiSC with a fair amount of success. This measures behaviors more than personality traits. Not only does the individual learn a great deal about his behaviors, he/she also taught how to better interact with others my determined their basic behavioral traits.
I have not had any problems getting executives to take this. It only takes about 15 minutes on the internet and the results are totally non threatening.
DiSC and Myers-Briggs are used equally in organizations per some surveys I have read. And the “360″ evaluations are even more popular.
Dave Opton wrote:
I too have been exposed to any number of assessment products over the years. I have yet to find one that I thought was particularly reliable in terms of prediciting success in a leadership role. Probably because no one as yet has been able to really define what leadership is.
What I have found, however, is that the use of assessment tools in terms of teambuillding has been very helpful. Primarily, I think, because once all team members have taken the same instrument and it has been shared with each other by an experienced facilitator it can be a powerful force in improving how team members communicate with each other. Among other things, it helps to create a common vocabulary amongst the team so that people are less likely to become defensive because everyone knows and undersrtands that the characteristics that surface through the common experience are present to one degree or another in us all.
Greg McDonald wrote:
I completely agree, Tino. You need full authority to carry through a turnaround!
Thanks, Graham. I’ll look at that website. I know who to go for for help on communication. “I’ll be back”!
Reagan, Thanks for a ‘real life’ addition to the discussion. I have seen this over and over again with management that receives a complex message and turns it into a simple-minded conclusion. Many assessment programs highlight the need to change the culture of an organization for instance. One that I worked with had a very bad attitude towards customer service. Senior management just could not get their mind around the real problem so they took to changing the personnel around. This was like moving the flatware around on a table top and calling it change. The situation finally resolved itself when the board replaced most of the senior management team. Even on the way out the door, they could not see that they were the problem. I am a firm believer that the experience and gravitas of the team running the programs is critical to its success. Light-weight consultants may be able to generate the data but the real heavy lifting of managing the aftermath is far beyond them. As a result, many of these programs do far more harm than good. Dr. Smith
Reagan Rawe wrote:
I went through several “assessment” programs; The surveys were very confidential and the responses were very accurate as what was happening in the organization (major oil & gas corporation); I was one of the people was asked to roll out the tabulation out to the field personnel so that they would feel comfortable that the concerns had reached the “top”; I was allowed to sit in on the initial presentation to management (up to the region VP); The reaction from management was hilarious; They spent 4 hours going slide-by-slide to 1)See which group had the most “problem” people and 2)Try and figure out which person in that group was the “disguntled employee” so they could seek revenge; Management came to the conclusion that the “real problem” was with the level of management just below them…. Good information, extremely bad presentation by the company that charged several million dollars for the work and widened the gap between “the suits” and “workers”;
systemsthinking.co.uksystemsthinking.co.uk
Graham Truscott wrote:
Greg,
I went to a superb lecture by John Seddon last night. I think you’d enjoy his take on successful organisations and radical turnarounds in organisational performance. Take a look at http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk . As you know, effective communications make a massive difference to successful implementation or delivery of anything – and you know where to come for help with that…It would be great to work with you again in one capacity or another.
Tino Go wrote;
Great comments from everyone.
Communications in all directions are necessary. The problem is when there are key members who “just don’t want to play ball,” and with whom one doesn’t have any authority over. When senior management allows disfunctional or incoherently disruptive behavior, all of the assessment tools in the world won’t help a company.
Without eliminating the impediments (the people who resist change from self-generated inertia) to evolution, all change initiatives will underperform or fail.
Yvonne, Thanks for the comment and for the reminder that assessment programs are not limited to use with management teams of for-profit companies. Dr. Smith