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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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“The road to ruin is paved with good intentions.”
Business 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.
Fact 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.
Executives, managers, and individual contributors familiar with the day-to-day workings of their organizations undoubtedly know or have contrived the reason for ‘why things are the way they are.’ Beyond this understanding, sometimes at an unconscious level, these individuals will perceive one or more drivers to these organization shaping whys. What remains unseen and unthought-of are the tertiary and lower level drivers to why the business performs as it does. It is here that truly useful insight can be gained; insight enabling the foundational changes needed to alter the organization’s direction and propel it to the next level.
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