Avoid the most common pitfalls
Tips for a successful Assessment
1. Conduct an assessment before Trying to decide what needs to be improved
One of the most common failure modes in organization-wide improvement efforts is to work on the wrong things. This may happen for various reasons, for example:
- because the leaders feel instinctively that they know what needs to be fixed (although they may not have sufficient facts)
- because insiders within an organization are often blindsided and don't see some of its most serious weaknesses
- because there are many narrowly-focused improvement methods marketed to decision-makers as the 'latest thing'.
So it is common for the leaders to decide on a course of action – to tackle a certain set of problems or to adopt a certain methodology – without an adequate understanding of the current situation. This is like embarking on a course of treatment without first diagnosing the disease. If doctors worked this way, people would be routinely taking aspirin for cancer and chemotherapy for headaches.
A much better approach is to start with a Baldrige-based assessment. In medical terms this is like a full-body scan. It is a systematic, repeatable, fact-based process that provides a comprehensive picture of the organization's strengths and weaknesses. Armed with this information, it becomes much easier to make rational decisions and to identify the correct priorities for improvement.
Further reading
This
article just touches on some of the key issues.
For lots more information on how to conduct an assessment effectively, see
"From Baldrige
to the Bottom Line".