The Need for Independent Assessments

By Ken Monroe

If we are good stewards of our members’ investments in our associations, and committed to meeting their needs and providing them with excellent value, then we have to take time periodically to make sure we’re doing that job well and that we are constantly looking for opportunities to improve.

In the accounting and financial function, this review process is known as the audit, and typically takes a retrospective look to verify the books and determine if the organization is in compliance with accounting practices and regulations. But what about the balance of the organization’s activities and processes—how do we determine their effectiveness? A growing number of associations are turning to a process known as the organizational assessment to review the efficiency and effectiveness of their strategic and operational activities.

Peter Drucker makes a classic distinction between “efficiency” and “effectiveness,” i.e., “efficiency” means “doing things right” and “effectiveness” means “doing the right things.” An organizational assessment ties both concepts together to give an organization confidence that it is both efficient and effective, in Drucker’s sense.

In a nutshell, an organizational assessment is a planned systematic review of an organization’s environment, operations, structure and processes that is conducted to enhance its ability to meet its goals and objectives. It gives a sense of how efficient and effective the organization is (i.e., is it as successful as possible, is it employing best practices, etc.) and identifies if something is broken that requires change or improvement.

The bottom line is that there are many different ways to perform an organizational assessment, and the benefits you can expect to derive depend on what is driving the assessment (e.g., is something broken, are you trying to make sure the organization is as efficient and effective as possible, or do you want to make sure you are using best practices).

Elements of an Assessment
An organizational assessment requires careful planning if it is going to provide a good review of an association’s effectiveness and efficiency. Key elements to consider in planning an assessment are:

1. Scope. Careful thought should be given to what processes and activities of the association should be covered by the assessment. Often an assessment is launched because of a specific concern that surfaced in one of the processes or activities of the association. But that doesn’t mean that the assessment should be limited to that particular concern or process. Root causes of problems are often found in places other than where the problems most obviously manifest themselves—so think and look broadly.

2. Team approach. An assessment should be conducted by a team of “outsiders” and “insiders.” The outside people are the experts in the assessment process and bring the independent judgment factor that is essential to the credibility of the assessment process and findings. The inside people, on the other hand, are familiar with the organization, its processes, and where information can be found. Process expertise is essential to knowing what to look for; without it, the assessment usually becomes just a general “looking around” process that can be very time and resource intensive and can end up generating only random observations.

3. Audience. Management, the Board and the membership can all be the audience for an assessment. Most often, the CEO or Executive Director commissions an assessment as a periodic, proactive attempt to assure the leadership and membership that the association is on the right track and is executing a plan well. At othertimes, assessments are commissioned to address particular incidents or problems. The Board should always be made aware of a planned organizational assessment and, in the case of an  assessment intended to address a problem, should be considered the principal audience for the report.

4. Staff. To minimize the nervousness that inevitably accompanies any process called an assessment or audit, it is very important to keep the association’s staff fully informed about the assessment process and related activities. Keeping the staff “on board” with the process will also make it easier to enlist their support in the  information and data collection component of the process.

5. Research and data collection. The collection of perspectives, research and data is an essential element of any organizational assessment, including both quantitative and qualitative information. Care should be taken to gather information from all of your association’s stakeholders, including members, leadership, volunteers and staff.

Associations that are intent on learning more about themselves include their competitors in this list. Thought should also be given to the types of research that can be employed (e.g., telephone interviews, surveys, and focus groups) The use of multiple research techniques will increase your confidence in the results. For a more detailed discussion of research, see a related article, “Research Helps Uncover Member Needs,” Solutions, Issue Five, by Daniel Martinage.

Link Your Strategy to Execution
Boards and executives at many organizations believe they have a good plan, have their best people assigned to the effort—and yet, they are coming up short and missing their goals and objectives. A number or organizational experts have studied this problem and agree that the issue lies in “execution,” or the way that many organizations go about getting things done. For that reason, organizational assessments must focus on both the strategy and how the organization is implementing the strategy (i.e., execution).

A good discussion of execution is provided in the recent #1 bestseller of the The New York Times List, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done, by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan.

In their book, they propose that the secret to execution is the integration of an organization’s three key processes: people, strategy and operations. When leaders put the right people in the right jobs, people can work together to create a strategy, building block by building block, that’s in-sync with the realities of the marketplace, the economy and the competition. Once the right people and strategy are in place, they are then linked to an operating process that results in
the implementation of specific programs and actions and that assigns accountability.

Summary
Organizational assessments are an excellent way of determining how well an association is running; addressing specific issues or problems that the association is facing; and providing an overall assessment of how efficiently and effectively the association is meeting the needs of its various stakeholders. Care should be taken to agree, in advance of the review, on the scope of what the assessment will cover; on the roles of the “inside” (staff) and “outside” (assessment experts); people involved in the assessment; on who the audience for the assessment is (the Board); and on the manner of collecting perspectives and data. Effective organizational assessments also consider the relationship between people, strategy and operations as the key to an organization’s ability to execute. (i.e., get things done.)

Ken Monroe is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Bostrom Corporation.

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Footnote
Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan, Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done (Crown Business, New York, NY, 2002).