How our organizational assessment tools work

To provide you with a clear picture of your organization’s performance, we’ll relentlessly pursue every tidbit of relevant data that helps us understand the strengths and weaknesses unique to your organization. Our methods include:

• Extensive research of your organization’s archives
• Informational interviews with current employees of the organization and the leadership, as well as your customers (if applicable)
• Recommendations of what steps you can take to improve the inefficiencies discovered by our team

While nobody knows your organization as well as you, it sometimes takes another set of eyes to clearly see what you need to do to improve.

How we’ve helped clients with our organizational assessment tools

The issue

As a follow-up to an internal review of an organization at a large public research university, we conducted a strategic and operational assessment of that organization. We promised to evaluate the university’s organization’s ability to execute the university’s mission, as well as provide concrete recommendations for improving the university’s mission strategy, structure and roles.

Our solution

First, we used our organizational assessment tools to diagnose how the university was performing. This included a review of archival materials such as organizational charts, strategic plans, workforce demographics, and financial documents.

We also recommended the creation of several committees and the hiring of a transition leader to manage the upcoming changes to the organization. Based on our advice, the university also put in place a framework for internal communications about the upcoming changes, allowing the leadership and the transition team to stay on the same page.

The result

Our diagnosis using our organizational assessment tools revealed the following:

• Uncoordinated independent functions muddling the university’s overall strategy and goals
  
  
• A perception of special treatment applying only to “favorites” of the organizations
  
  
• A reputation among customers as being inconsistent and disorganized
  
  
• A high-stress work environment plagued by risk aversion and lack of clarity about responsibility of individual roles

Based on these and other findings, we recommended concrete actions the university could take including redefining the mission of the organization to explicitly serve the university’s mission, better incorporating all business needs into the organization’s processes, and committing to develop the competency of the leaders and staff.