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Four Types of Business Performance Assessments
Business performance assessment programs are comprised of periodically scheduled and event driven assessments. Because these assessments are not performed on a continual basis, they are inappropriate for the monitoring of rapidly changing conditions. Circumstances for which periodic and event driven assessments are performed can be described as:
Scheduled Assessments- Foundational: assessments occurring at a given frequency within a defined time interval typically focused on core business risks, operational goals, and organizational values. These assessments target those critical organizational functions and characteristics which present significant risk, must be performed with precision, or require continuous improvement to maintain marketplace competitiveness
- Situational: assessments targeted at specific high-risk activities to ensure risk mitigating behaviors and mechanisms are present during these critical times. These assessments include reviews of the integrated training, execution, and follow-up improvements associated with these events
Unscheduled Assessments
- Even-based: assessments performed after a significant performance expectation violation that sets a dangerous precedent or causes significantly adverse impacts to the organization. The assessments scans a broad number of organizational groups, especially those performing similar operations to that group in which the violation occurred, so to identify the extent of condition of the undesired deviation and to broadly reinforce adherence to proper management standards. Note that the self-assessment and corrective action programs should also be examined to determine why precursor deviations were not identified and corrective action taken prior to the event’s occurrence
- Random: assessments reinforcing desired behaviors performed at the discretion of the self-assessment program manager and/or senior organization leaders. Such random assessments reinforce with employees the need to be ever vigilant to the adherence of workplace standards because their compliance is monitored at all times
As illustrated by StrategyDriven’s Information Development Model, business performance assessments belong to the third tier of performance data refinement. Performance reports at this level benefit from human intelligence added to supporting data during: initial data synthesis, basic trend identification and analysis, multi-trend synthesis, and basic model application. It is the infusion of human knowledge and experience at these points that makes these assessments broadly integrated and highly insightful.
To learn how to maximize the value of your business performance assessment efforts:
About the Author
Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal, and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
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Admit it; you perform differently when your supervisor is watching you. Suddenly, all of the performance rules become clear and important. You feel a sudden urgency and compulsion to recall them.
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