Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program – The Vertical Slice Assessment Approach
2. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 3 – Conclusion Bias
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
4. Self Assessment Program – Criticisms Appear Harsher When Put into Print
5. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 2 – Crediting Good Intentions

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 3 – Conclusion Bias
2. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 5 – Seek Local Participation for Context
4. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 2 – Crediting Good Intentions
5. Self Assessment Program – Criticisms Appear Harsher When Put into Print

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 2 – Crediting Good Intentions
2. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 1 – Inwardly Focused Performance Assessments
3. Self Assessment Program – Criticisms Appear Harsher When Put into Print
4. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 5 – Seek Local Participation for Context
5. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship

German Proverb

Communicating assessment conclusions can be a difficult task, particularly in the case of improvement opportunities being presented to those directly managing or performing the function. Delivering the message is all the more difficult if those receiving it are organizationally senior to the self assessment lead or are influential favorites of the organization’s leaders. In these cases, self assessment leaders seeking a tactful way of communicating the ‘bad news’ often fall into the trap of crediting the good intentions and/or self identification of the issue by those responsible in order to put a positive spin on an otherwise negative message. Doing so, however, avoids the real issues at hand and can rob the organization of the opportunity to realize substantive performance improvements.

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 1 – Inwardly Focused Performance Assessments
2. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
3. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
4. Self Assessment Program – Criticisms Appear Harsher When Put into Print
5. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 5 – Seek Local Participation for Context

How to Prepare for a Self Assessment

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 3 – Avoid Using Absolutes
2. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 6 – Three Whys Deep
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
4. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 4 – Random, Unannounced Inspections
5. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 5 – Seek Local Participation for Context

Avoiding defensiveness while still conveying improvement opportunities and their importance is the challenge faced by all assessment leaders. While total resistance avoidance is not realistically achievable, following these few principles will help make assessment findings more palatable and accepted:

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 3 – Avoid Using Absolutes
2. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
3. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
4. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 5 – Seek Local Participation for Context
5. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 6 – Three Whys Deep

To be of real value, self assessments must get to tertiary and lower drivers; otherwise they are nothing more than simple collections of already known data. Assessors should therefore strive to ask three whys deep before drawing their final conclusions on organizational performance.

How to Get to the Third Why

Getting to the third why and its valuable insight can be challenging, after all, these drivers are largely outside of the organization’s collective conscious. Therefore, the following method is offered as a means of third level driver identification.

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 3 – Avoid Using Absolutes
2. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 2 – Multidiscipline Teams
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 4 – Random, Unannounced Inspections
4. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 1 – Inwardly Focused Performance Assessments
5. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 5 – Seek Local Participation for Context

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
2. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 3 – Avoid Using Absolutes
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 2 – Multidiscipline Teams
4. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
5. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 4 – Random, Unannounced Inspections

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 3 – Avoid Using Absolutes
2. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 2 – Multidiscipline Teams
4. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
5. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 1 – Inwardly Focused Performance Assessments

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 2 – Multidiscipline Teams
2. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
3. Self Assessment Program Warning Flag 1 – Inwardly Focused Performance Assessments
4. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
5. Strategic Planning Best Practice 9 – Avoid Using Jargon

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 2 – Multidiscipline Teams
2. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
4. Resource Management Warning Flag 2 – Parkinson’s Law
5. Strategic Planning Warning Flag 1 – Business Unit versus Goal-Based Planning

Multidiscipline teams help ensure the full range of needed knowledge and experience resources are brought to bear when evaluating a complex program, process, or procedure. Having enough knowledge and experience resources occurs when the team includes individuals that together possess the background necessary to recognize significant beneficial and adverse performance drivers. By extension, this implies that not all functional disciplines need be represented during every self assessment. Additionally, as an assessment progresses, circumstances may arise requiring engagement of personnel possessing knowledge and experience not originally identified as needed for the evaluation.

Relate Articles:

1. Decision-Making Best Practice 2 – Multidiscipline Teams
2. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
3. Self Assessment Program Best Practice 1 – Executive Sponsorship
4. Evaluation and Control Program Best Practice 1 – Data Synthesis
5. Strategic Analysis Best Practice 2 – advocatus diaboli, The Devil’s Advocate

Become a StrategyDriven Premium Member
for only $9.95 / month or $94.95 / year !

Want to learn more? Click here to learn about the benefits of a StrategyDriven Premium Membership.

Relate Articles:

1. Self Assessment Program – Introduction
2. Evaluation and Control Program Best Practice 1 – Data Synthesis
3. Strategic Analysis Best Practice 3 – Identify the Hidden Drivers
4. Strategic Analysis Best Practice 4 – Independent Assessors
5. Strategic Planning Best Practice 7 – Shared Accountability

Self assessment programs are comprised of periodically scheduled and event driven assessments. Because self assessments are not performed on a continual basis, they are inappropriate for the monitoring of rapidly changing conditions. Circumstances for which periodic and event driven self assessments are performed can be described as:

• Periodic: often recurring on an annual basis, these evaluations focus on those critical organizational functions and characteristics which present significant risk, must be performed with precision, or require continuous improvement to maintain marketplace competitiveness
• Event Driven: initiated based on environmental or performance trends, these self assessments are used to enhance limiting or deficient practices to drive performance improvement

As illustrated by the Information Development Model, self assessments belong to the third tier of performance data refinement. Performance reports at this level benefit from human intelligence added to supporting data during: initial data synthesis, basic trend identification and analysis, multi-trend synthesis, and basic model application. It is the infusion of human knowledge and experience at these points that makes self assessments broadly integrated and highly insightful.

Focus of the Self Assessment Program Topic

An organization’s self assessment program plays a key role in identifying the performance improvement opportunities that will propel an organization to the next level of performance. Articles in this topic area are dedicated to discussing the leading practices of companies successfully executing a self assessment program in support of strategic business planning and tactical business execution. The following articles, podcasts, documents, and resources cover those topics critical to a strong self assessment program.

Articles

Principles

• The Vertical Slice Assessment Approach    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• The Horizontal Cut Approach    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Criticisms Appear Harsher When Put Into Print    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

Best Practices

• Best Practice – Executive Sponsorship    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Multidiscipline Teams    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Avoid Using Absolutes    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Random, Unannounced Inspections    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Seek Local Participation for Context    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Three Whys Deep    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Best Practice – Be Prepared from the Start    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

Warning Flags

• Warning Flag – Inwardly Focused Performance Assessments    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Warning Flag – Crediting Good Intentions    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]
• Warning Flag – Conclusion Bias    [StrategyDriven Premium Content]

FREE StrategyDriven Trial Membership Start your FREE trial membership* and receive: FULL ACCESS to StrategyDriven’s premium content for 14 days FREE COPY of a StrategyDriven Expert Contributor book† EVALUATE how StrategyDriven gives you a competitive advantage

* Free 14 day trial included with a monthly membership registration. A monthly recurring subscription of $9.95 will begin after the initial 14 day trial period. Memberships can be cancelled at any time. Premium Member access will continue until the free/paid subscription expires.

† Available only to those living within the United States after the first monthly membership payment is received. Name and address information required. Books typically valued from $14.95 – $29.95 USD. Book value is not guaranteed.

Relate Articles:

1. Evaluation and Control Program – Introduction
2. Strategic Planning Whitepaper Introduction – Analysis
3. Strategic Planning Best Practice 5 – Defined Program
4. Evaluation and Control Program Best Practice 1 – Data Synthesis
5. Strategic Planning – Introduction