Situation Assessment
The majority of organizational performance improvement efforts receive careful, detailed study internally before any action is taken, particularly if the need is important or the stakes are high. In some cases, however, internal assessments can be too narrowly focused, carry a cultural bias, reflect internal politics more than realities, or simply miss important factors. Where stakes or risks are high or the need is very important, an outside assessment is often worth the cost to help insure the effort against such hidden deficiencies.
This is a traditional role for consultants. Their job in general is to provide an expert, objective and broad-based assessment of the situation and, usually, of some appropriate action options.
One of the most important contributions of an outside resource for situation assessments is the fresh viewpoint supported by solid experience. It is very hard for internal people to distance themselves from organizational culture, local politics, and some degree of myopia. Their assessments may reflect policy and standard procedures and not enough creative, open thought.
Consultants reports, of course, are not always adopted and acted upon instead of internal reports but they do provide valuable balance and perspective not often available internally.
Our Services
In our situation assessments for clients, we try to identify at the outset the factors and drivers that are most likely to impact the success of any action. This requires an early outline of possible action alternatives and their consequences. From this end-point, we can trace back into the situation to pinpoint factors and drivers critical to the success of each action alternative. This reverses the standard approach but we find that it is often far more effective and efficient because it focuses efforts on the most important aspects.
Most consultants spend a lot of time, and a lot of your money, studying aspects of a situation that are not really important. They claim to do this in the interests of "completeness" but it is usually more a CYA response. While the best consultants can go quickly to the heart of a situation and know from experience what matters and what does not, they can miss important elements if they do not have a clear picture of possible actions that might be taken. This is especially true if a likely course of action can impact the organization quite broadly. You need to know where to look for possible adverse consequences and understand how to structure action recommendations to minimize these. This is our approach.
If you have questions or would like to discuss a situation assessment for your organization, please contact us.