For our third blog entry in our series of five, we will look at the different types and beneficial outcomes associated with performing Organizational Assessments. Simply defined, an Organizational Assessment is a systematic process for obtaining information about the performance of an organization and the factors that affect performance. We believe the Organizational Assessment is a tool that every organization should use in the quest for continuous improvement. Performing a formal organizational assessment identifies strengths and weaknesses and requires the participation of key stakeholders. An organizational assessment is also an excellent method to take a figurative step back and evaluate how the organization operates as a whole. Forward-thinking organizations understand there are always ways to improve stakeholder, customer, or constituent services and support. When conducting an organizational assessment, businesses and government agencies often identify strengths and weaknesses that lead to improvement opportunities exploiting the previously untapped potential.
Let's briefly examine the four main types of organizational assessments:
Business Operations - operations assessments help an organization take an in-depth look into their processes and help to identify areas for improvements. This type of organizational assessment focuses primarily on the processes of an organization.
Cultural Health - the cultural health assessment provides indicators of how well the organization’s staff and management systems work together. This type of assessment helps to identify potential shortcomings in the management structure from top to bottom.
Organization-wide Leadership Capability – the organization-wide leadership capability assessment helps pinpoint the effectiveness of the leadership team and highlights the untapped potential in individual members of the team.
Organizational Health - the organizational health assessment is the most vital as it investigates every aspect of the organization. The typical outputs from organizational health assessments include improved business processes, prioritization of goals, efficient allocation of resources, and restructuring.
In all four types of assessments, once the organization's current state is baselined, the most critical output is the future state objectives. The objectives establish the blueprint for improving overall organizational performance.
What business outcomes can you expect from an Organizational Assessment?
Reduced Bureaucracy
Improved business execution
Increased profitability
More innovation
Increased speed to market
Strategic cost reduction
To measure your organization's progress towards the desired future state, use Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) (financial and non-financial) to track results as changes are implemented. KPI's play a key role post-implementation to measure progress towards desired outcomes. KPI’s are wide-ranging and may include office work processing times, manager/staff ratio, process standardization, the total cost of ownership, overhead rates, customer satisfaction survey results (from sponsors, internal users, or taxpayers), output quality, and office productivity.
Without an organizational assessment, how do you know if your business or government agency is reaching its highest potential? Contact us today to learn how your organization can begin performing at maximum effectiveness.