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Business Performance Assessment Program Best Practice 14 – Separate Fact from Opinion
Business performance assessment findings drive organizational actions. Consequently, a great deal of care must be taken when deciding what to include within a self assessment report. Findings based on logically derived conclusions founded on observable, quantifiable facts provide leaders with insightful information on how to improve performance. Findings built on opinion-based conclusions or founded primarily on individual experience frequently lack the vigorous underpinnings necessary to ensure a performance improvement opportunity. Thus, these suggestion-type findings should be excluded from formal self assessment reports.
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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.
Rigorous business performance assessments rely not only on observable, quantifiable facts but also on the experience of those conducting and participating in the assessments. When properly applied, experience accelerates issue identification and deepens contributed insights. Experience, however, should not be represented as fact nor should it be used as the primary mechanism to combine otherwise unrelated facts when making the case for a performance strength or improvement opportunity.
Business performance assessments represent a second tier aggregation of organizational data, benchmarking references, and industry experience. As such, assessment team members are challenged to combine the often disparate data they collect in a way that allows them to draw meaningful conclusions upon which the organization can act to improve performance.
“Don’t make a mountain out of a mole hill.”
Business performance assessments seek to identify meaningful improvement opportunities for an organization, typically in the areas of safety, performance reliability, and operational efficiency. Meaningful or material opportunities are those representing a performance improvement that satisfies a regulatory requirement, exceeds the organization’s financial return on investment threshold, and/or provides a not easily replicable advantage over competitors. As such, assessors should evaluate potential performance improvement opportunities for their materiality; focusing on those offering the organization meaningful gains.
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