Business Excellence Assessment – making the most from feedback

Assessment using business excellence framework is an excellent approach for change management. The opportunities identified for improvement are nothing but triggers for change initiatives. Each of the genuine Opportunity For Improvement (OFI) or group of OFIs with similar essence have the potential for providing a break through in the management systems /practices / business results in the organization.

Point to remember is that, not all opportunities for improvement given in the assessment report are justified, so it is important that an organization picks up the most relevant points from the report and chalks out clearly actionable points for making a “meaningful difference” to the company.

The problem does not end here, the next crucial step in the process of utilizing the assessment report gainfully involves bringing out a clear rationale for taking up the improvement – tangible as well as intangible outcomes must be clarified for making an informed decision on “go ahead” or “let go” signal from top management. The rationale and clarity of outcomes will ensure continued support and commitment from those who matter and also from those who have to make it happen, so that the initiative is not lost in the maze of “other urgent issues”, around which the temptations in an organization typically play.

Framework for using the assessment feedback for improvement
How can one do this? Here is a simple framework for taking up the task.

1. Study the OFI report thoroughly to separate out strengths which were misread by the assessment team (items which do not really are your strengths today). These are the areas which the assessment team thinks are important and also gave you credit for and hence are the areas you must look into build you strengths around.
2. Separate out the OFIs which you do not agree with as they could have been the result of overlook by the team (these are typically the points given by the assessment team as OFIs but you may have different opinion e.g. the points may not be relevant to your kind of industry at present or in the near foreseeable future etc.).
3. Separate out OFIs which you do not understand (these are typically the points coming out of assessment team members’ individual experience and either not relevant to you or the organization is not at the maturity level to implement actions on these point).
4. Seek assessment teams’ intervention in getting clarification / interpretation on issues not clear.
5. Have a re-look at the report and classify the agreed / understood areas for improvement under various themes / broad aspects that they address eg. Competency building, segmented analysis of results, strategy deployment and monitoring etc.
6. Once the OFIs are categorized / segregated into related areas / broad organizational issues, typically an organization will have no more than 10 areas to act upon – this will ensure that right from the early stage there is focus on few important issues.
7. Analyse impact of each of the area proposed for improvement against the few indicators that the organization measures it success – e.g. fulfillment of organizations’ objectives, cost, quality, customer satisfaction, realization and so on and so forth. This step not only would clarify the impact of improvement on achievement of the company objectives and enables you to set the priority, but also to study and understand the ways an improvement activity is related to the essential things that an organization works for or aspires for.
8. Make a tidy and crisp presentation showing the case for improvements through impact analysis and the criteria used for prioritization.
9. Make cross functional teams lead by members of top management team to study the analysis carried out so far and suggest suitable corrective actions with respect to each of the areas along with possible requirement of resources. The team must include people who will be held responsible for taking up the activity once the projects are cleared.
10. Obtain final “go-ahead” signal from the top management for the activities identified in the previous step along with responsibility, time frames and outcomes.
11. Make and communicate a clear implementation / monitoring framework against which the progress will be monitored. This may include who will review, what the norms / standards against which the review will be done, frequency of review, clear implementation plan with milestones etc.
12. Once the improvement initiatives are completed, the outcomes must be assessed carefully and the concerned system must be standardized so that base level performance in raised to the levels achieved by implementing the improvement initiative.

The above steps will definitely help organizations in gainfully utilizing the assessment feedback and more significantly the exercise helps in connecting the business essentials with assessment and improvements and hence taking the organization higher up on the ladder of maturity. In the absence of such an exercise the rigour and expenditure involved in the assessment process will be wasted and the understanding of linkage between “business excellence assessments” and “excellence in business” will never dawn upon the organization. In the absence of which the organization will never be able to capitalize on the potential of business excellence assessments in creating change and managing change.