It May Be Time For A Self- Assessment

Many of us believe life can be kept a little simpler by not asking too many questions or turning over too many stones. For every question we ask, every stone we turn, there is a chance it could lead to something we are not very enthusiastic to deal with.

Take closets, for example. Sometimes it's easier to avoid the spare bedroom closet -- you know, the one that has been a catch all over the last number of months--because once you do, it's too late. You may feel compelled to get it organized once and for all.

There are closets in the work place, too. They represent problem areas, unknowns and opportunities for improvement. Every business has a different approach to dealing with them. Some work on the premise that the status quo should be preserved at all costs. Others tend to react only to those situations where there is little choice but to deal with them. But still others openly seek opportunities to continually improve the way they do business. This article is written for the latter group.

Unlike houses with a finite number of closets, businesses offer significant numbers of improvement opportunities. The difficulty lies in knowing which ones afford the greatest opportunity to make real advancements in key areas such as customer satisfaction and retention, product or service quality, market share, employee development and/or profitability.

Having the desire to improve is the first hurdle. Once the desire is there, making some random improvements comes naturally. But random enhancements are not usually enough to generate the type of positive outcome a business needs to be incredibly successful. Knowing which critical areas to align and systematically improve gives the business leverage to bring about significant performance enhancements--the type that pay substantial, long-term dividends.

So how does one identify and improve the right things? An important first step is to clearly understand how effective your current business practices are. By knowing exactly where you are, it becomes much easier to evaluate and prioritize what needs to be done to reach your goals. The challenge becomes how to objectively determine just how well you are doing in different areas. What one organization may consider good performance may be deemed poor by another. Furthermore, if one doesn't have some sort of yardstick to measure performance, then the evaluation may be compromised.

One way of understanding relative performance is by comparing yourself to other organizations with similar characteristics. Most business managers and leaders have heard the terms benchmarking, comparative analysis or best practices. These all refer to activities that look at what others are doing in order to encourage better performance within your own organization. Successful companies, especially those that operate by the concept of Total Quality Management, or TQM, have been doing these things for years. Not only does it allow for the sharing of ideas and processes, it challenges organizations to achieve break-through performance they would otherwise have thought impossible.

Unfortunately, in the past these practices were typically reserved for large companies because they were the only ones that felt comfortable allocating the necessary capital and human resources to find and evaluate appropriate sources for comparison and to stimulate change. Now, there are affordable and highly practical ways to achieve significant performance improvements relative to world-class standards. For Southwest Florida businesses and organizations, the Florida Sterling Council's 1998 Sterling criteria for organization performance is a powerful improvement tool. It can be used as a strong backbone for a self-assessment process to gain an in-depth understanding of how the organization is currently performing in all facets. The process directs continuous improvement activity on the necessary areas for long term, sustainable, high performing results.

Based on practical, field-tested criteria and a management model referred to as the Business Excellence Model, the process serves as a framework within which companies can evaluate themselves and be evaluated by others. Its power is derived from the applicability in organizations large or small, private or public, service, manufacturing, health care or education.

Organizations explore key areas with the involvement of managers and associates, ideally in cross-functional, cross-hierarchy teams. Many organizations also look to coordinators for outside help. The process directs them to evaluate the organization in key areas with specific questions. The organizations are then able to consider how effective their business practices are compared with world-class performance standards. They therefore identify their strengths and opportunities for improvement.

Once the self-assessment process is complete, the primary result is a clear understanding of how an organization performs in the areas that count. Further, improvement opportunities are identified to ensure efforts will be directed in the right direction. An organizational assessment process can also be used as an integral component for:

- Developing a plan for the future

- Taking action

- Enhancing cross-functional teamwork and trust

- Gaining employee buy-in on proposed changes at all levels

- Initiating and reinforcing a culture of continuous improvement

- Empowering the workforce

- Increasing energy, commitment and passion

- Base-lining the current situation from which to track progress over time

Organizations that feel they do not have the resources to effectively conduct a self-assessment can bring in a coordinator from outside the company. Others may want to have someone qualified perform the assessment by interviewing key people in the organization. Or, if the organization is down the road on its performance excellence journey, it may want to apply for one of the Florida Sterling Council's prestigious awards, which are assessed by a team of state-certified quality examiners.

Regardless of where your organization fits in, a formal assessment will provide the organization with the confidence and insight to understand how effective your current business practices are, where they ought to be and what you should do next. No stone should be left unturned.

Rorie Wilson is a state-certified quality examiner for the Florida Sterling Council. His firm, BPM International, is a Southwest Florida-based consulting firm that assists organizations in achieving performance excellence through customer satisfaction processes and Total Quality Management.