Avoid the most common pitfalls
Tips for a successful Assessment
5. Always orient the senior leaders and obtain their informed commitment before starting
It is essential to ensure that the senior leaders properly understand what they are getting into before launching the process.
They definitely don't need to become experts in the criteria! But they do need to understand the essence of the criteria, and how the criteria are used to arrive at strengths and opportunities for improvement.
They need to understand that there will be lots of opportunities for improvement in the report, and that this is good.
They need to understand the scoring system and how brutal this is, so that they have realistic expectations about their own organization's likely score.
If the chosen approach involves an assessment team, they need to know what type of people (and how many) to select.
They need to know how to support the data gathering performed by the team, and what messages to communicate to their people in order to create an open, honest atmosphere for the interviews. And they need to be clear about the absolute need to take action based on the findings.
All of this information (and more) is essential to the senior leaders. If any one of these messages does not get across to the senior leaders, this opens the door to some specific, predictable problems later in the assessment.
This orientation doesn't need to be lengthy, but it does need to address all of these issues.
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".