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Business Performance Assessment Program – The Horizontal Cut Approach

An organization’s limited personnel resources necessitates that its business performance assessments be performed in the most efficient manner possible. While at times there may be the need for an in-depth end-to-end process review, at other times it will be appropriate to examine performance of a specific task or activities by numerous performers from across the organization. On these occasions, the horizontal cut assessment approach is most appropriate.


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Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag 3 – Conclusion Bias

Business performance assessments can be a powerful tool for determining the unknown drivers of performance; their effectiveness derived from the diverse knowledge and experience of the multidiscipline team and the vast amounts of information from causal evaluations, work performance observations, executive, manager, employee, and customer interviews, financial reports, independent analyst reports, performance measures, and condition reports leveraged to perform these assessments. So rich and robust are these assessments that their credibility often goes unchallenged, yet a single flaw in the business performance assessment’s initial execution can make this power tool for continuous improvement an instrument of disaster.


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Business Performance Assessment Program Warning Flag 2 – Crediting Good Intentions

“The road to ruin is paved with good intentions.”

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, business performance 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.


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Additional Resources

Lack of organizational accountability plays a significant role in the crediting of good intentions and recently self identified issues as assessment report conclusions. Principle, best practice, and warning flag articles on organizational accountability helping leaders enhance their company’s performance in this area can be found within the StrategyDriven topic: Organizational Accountability.

Other StrategyDriven recommended practices helping assessment teams avoid good intention and recently self identified issue conclusions can be found in:

Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 7 – Be Prepared from the Start

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice ArticleBusiness performance assessments aggregate huge amounts of data in order to provide a very few high value insights. (See Figure 1: Data Refinement and Consolidation Model below) As an assessment progresses, evaluators often feel increasingly overwhelmed by the volume of data they must sift through, organize, and analyze. Time seems to slip away and pressure to find the key insights mounts; making the objective appear to be that of finding a needle in a haystack with only a moment’s notice. To be successful requires thoughtful, deliberate preparation.


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Business Performance Assessment Program – Criticisms Appear Harsher When Put into Print

StrategyDriven Business Performance Assessment Program ArticleFact or fiction, anything formally documented assumes an air of legitimacy. Combine this implied legitimacy with the stark black and white of the printed words and any identified improvement opportunity can appear overly harsh and critical, especially to those responsible for the performance. Apparent aggressiveness within a self assessment can result in resistance to the evaluation findings; often by those who stand to benefit the most and who must own the corrective actions.


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