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Before starting a self-assessment, you will need to make many decisions. You will need to ask some questions: Why are we doing this? How will we do it? Who will do it? In this chapter, we discuss

• Reasons for undertaking a self-assessment;
• Your organization’s readiness for self-assessment;
• The users of the results and the interests of different stakeholders in the process;
• The scope of the intervention and required resources; and
• The self-assessment team.

WHY WOULD YOU CONDUCT A SELF-ASSESSMENT?

It is important to clarify your reasons for undertaking the self-assessment. Once you are clear about this, you will find it easier to determine

• The scope of the intervention;
• The depth of data required;
• Its focus in terms of issues (such as performance, capacity, organizational motivation, environment); and
• The cost.

Some typical reasons for conducting a self-assessment

It is common for an organization to conduct a self-assessment when it is at a turning point in its history. An organization may also find a self-assessment useful when it needs to make decisions about particular aspects of the organization itself:

• Strategic decisions – Should the organization grow? Merge? Shrink? Change its mission?
• Program decisions – Should programs be expanded? Should two or several programs be integrated? Should new services be offered? Financial-feasibility decisions – Should new investors be sought? Should funding sources be more diversified and how? Should new approaches to fundraising be identified?
• Staffing decisions – Should staff with different skills be hired to support the mission? Should the organization let some staff go, and if so, who?

Other reasons might be less specific; for example, the self-assessment might have the following objectives:

• To identify the organization’s strengths and weaknesses – a first step toward improvement;
• To identify issues and problems before correction becomes difficult or impossible;
• To identify the needs that should be addressed through specific action;
• To identify human and other resources the organization can use to effectively improve its performance;
• To document the desired outcomes of the organization’s activities;
• To generate information useful in planning and decision-making;
• To assist in fundraising; and
• To provide donors and other stakeholders with information about the organization’s performance.

DEALING WITH FUNDING CUTS

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The agency’s major source of funding was to be cut within 9 months. The agency had to decide whether it should close down, cut down on staff and programs, or privatize. Each option had major implications for the agency’s programs and services, staffing requirements, and funding mechanisms. To gain an understanding of these implications, the agencyunder-took a self-assessment. With this knowledge, the organization was able to make an informed decision.

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

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The centre had never carried out a comprehensive review of its strengths and weaknesses, although it had conducted numerous project and program evaluations. The need for an in-depth organizational review was triggered by

• The arrival of a new executive director;
• Increased pressure on the organization to identify alternative funding sources; and
• The organization’s desire to respond to the changing needs of its member institutions.

The process was also supported by one of its funders, who saw this approach as a way to build the capacities of the research centre.

EXERCISE 1. Identifying the reasons

Instructions: The following exercise can help members of your organization understand why they would conduct a self-assessment. Ask senior managers and other individuals or groups you think should be involved to reflect on this question and begin a list of their reasons for self-assessment. Their ideas can be shared and can become the basis for future decision-making. This exercise may be conducted on an individual basis, with the information then collated by one person, or it may be carried out as a group exercise, facilitated by either an internal or an external person.

In your organization, identify the three main reasons for undertaking a self-assessment at this time.

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ARE YOU READY?

Organizations need to have a certain degree of readiness to engage in self-assessment. Although there is no set number of variables to assess, you will want to consider some readiness concepts before beginning the process:

• Cultural readiness – This means that your organization has an organizational culture in which it is acceptable to provide suggestions for improvement.
• Leadership readiness – This means that leaders support the self-assessment and the allocation of resources to the process.
• Resource readiness – This means that you are prepared to commit the resources (people, time, money, and technology) needed to conduct the self-assessment. Although the type and amount of resources you will need to undertake the assessment will not be known until you begin, management’s commitment to making the necessary resources available is indicated. Institutional self-assessments require more time from internal staff than externally conducted assessments do and typically involve more of the people on staff as well. This must be both understood and accepted. The assessment can have long-term benefits in terms of ownership and pace of implementation of change, but these will not be clear at the outset.
• Vision and strategy readiness – This means the organization has a sense of where it is going and how it should get there or has a desire to create a clearer vision.
• People readiness – This means the organization has people on staff who will champion the self-assessment process and be willing to work together through a process that may sometimes be ambiguous and will constantly be changing.
• Systemic readiness – This means the organization has or wants to have systems in place to provide the information needed to complete the data collection and support the self-assessment.

FACTORS THAT CAN AFFECT READINESS

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You must have Acceptance of the process by leaders in the organization A champion Adequate internal resources (time and people) to do the self-assessment A compelling reason for doing the self-assessment	These are mixed blessings Other changes going on at the same time, some of which you cannot control An organization with a history of change Past experience with evaluations (positive or negative)
It’s nice to have Leaders with credibility A clear vision in the organization of where it wants to go Additional resources (financial) to conduct the self-assessment	These can be major barriers Past failures and frustrations with self-assessment Superficial motives Low levels of skills and capabilities Negative incentives for self-assessment

EXERCISE 2. Getting ready

Instructions: This exercise will help you to decide whether you are ready to engage in a self-assessment. Ask a group of managers in your organization to reflect individually on these questions. Then use the list as a tool to collectively discuss the organization’s readiness. There are no clear-cut answers to these questions. Your group will need to reach consensus on whether to proceed with the assessment.

Readiness assessment

1. To what extent do the senior leaders in your organization support the change process? Do staff have confidence in the leaders’ ability to engage in change management?
2. To what extent is any individual (professional or manager) willing to champion the process and capable of doing so?
3. Is the organization facing the need to make strategic decisions and would a self-assessment help in the decision-making?
4. Does the organization have a clear vision of where it wishes to go?
5. Are major changes already going on within the organization that might slow down the process or interfere with it?
6. Does the organization have access to resources to carry out the process?
7. When was the last major organizational change? To what extent was it successful? Did it energize the staff or lower their morale?
8. Do people inside the organization have adequate skills to undertake this process?
9. To what extent are the leaders and staff comfortable with the use of organizational data? To what extent do organizational data exist?
10. Is this a good time for change? Would another time be better? Are there future incentives for change to occur now?
11. What are the positive, negative, neutral, or cultural implications of changing? Are people in your organization supported if they try new things?

Stop or go?

It is impossible to be absolutely sure that your organization is ready for a self-assessment. The readiness diagnosis will be based on your best judgment. The purpose of this diagnosis is not to achieve a definitive answer but to consider the elements that will contribute to a successful assessment process. Conditions change, and factors may lead to a revised stop or go at various stages in the process.

At this stage in the process, some organizations may, for a variety of reasons, decide that they do not want to proceed – because they are not fully ready, or they wish to begin the process at some later date. It is important to recognize this and not engage in the process without support from inside the organization.

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?

A self-assessment is a commitment of time and energy. It should provide you with knowledge of how to improve the performance of your organization. However, it is difficult to estimate how long it should take, as the process depends on many variables: the number of strategic issues you wish to explore, the scope of those issues, the type of data you need and their accessibility, availability of staff to be involved in the process, and the type of report you expect to present. These factors will affect the duration of the process.

The depth of data collection also depends on the quantity of information you need to understand an issue. This may not be obvious at the planning stage. As you begin to collect data on an issue, you may identify the need for more information. The deeper you go, the more you are led to uncover. The process will need to be guided by considerations of time, resources, availability of new data, and the importance of the issue.

One of the most critical elements affecting the scope of a self-assessment is the way your team will have to present its findings. It is quite time-consuming, for example, to produce a highly detailed report that links each finding to numerous data sources. This may or may not be necessary, depending on the audience and its expectations.

Understanding your audience will help you decide on the type of reporting required and the appropriate level of language. If the self-assessment is primarily for internal use, for example, then your report may comprise a set of brief notes, a summary of main lessons, or simply a memo. If, on the other

hand, you have to inform external stakeholders of the results, you will need to discuss with them the way they wish to be informed (see “Communicating the results” in Chapter 3, p. 38). Remember, you can conduct a thoroughly professional but less formal process to support findings. You and your organization will need to weigh how much you will or can invest in the process.

In our experience, some organizations carried out the process in 12 months; others, with a focus on specific issues for internal use only, completed the assessment in 1 month.

Finally, specialized activities in the self-assessment can be delegated to produce certain data. For example, a financial analysis can be completed by your organization’s accounting department, which can generate both the raw data and the graphics required to interpret them. Other elements can be contracted out. There are many options that you can use and control.

BEFORE YOU BEGIN

If your organization decides to engage in a self-assessment, you will have to do a number of things before carrying out the diagnosis. At this stage, you will probably want to

• Identify the users of the end results of the diagnosis;
• Clarify how the users wish to be informed about the results;
• Decide who should lead the self-assessment; and
• Decide how much time and effort will be allocated.

WHO WILL USE THE RESULTS?

The audience for the assessment will influence its scope and the types of result expected. The sooner you identify the final audience, the easier it will be to identify their needs. You will need to consult with the audience throughout the process to obtain a richer set of data:

• Inside the organization – The Board of Directors and senior officials use the results of organizational assessments to support their efforts in strategic management or organizational change. Professionals and staff may use assessment results to improve decisions related to their roles and responsibilities.
• Outside the organization – Funders and other organizational investors use organizational assessments to support internal change (learning)
  
  efforts and to better understand the effects of their investments on the organization. Similarly, client groups and beneficiaries can use the results to better understand their relationship with the organization.

Stakeholders

Stakeholders are individuals or organizations that will be affected in some significant way by the outcome of the self-assessment process or that are affected by the performance of the organization, or both. As shown in Figure 2, most organizations have a wide range of stakeholders, some more influential than others (either because they benefit from the organization, they fund some of its activities, or there are political reasons). Not all stakeholders have the same stake in the organization, and it is important to recognize the level of influence each stakeholder has on your organization. This will guide the data-collection process and allow you to identify the main sources of data.

FIGURE 2. IDENTIFIED STAKEHOLDERS

  SEE TOOL 2 – Stakeholder Assessment

See Tool 2 (stakeholder assessment) in Appendix 1(p.86). This can help you answer significant questions about your organization’s stakeholders: Who are they? What do they want to know?

EXERCISE 3. Mapping the stakeholders

Instructions: Identify the various groups, in order of importance, with a stake or interest in your organization and the outcomes of the self-assessment. Write the names of these groups on Figure 3. The closer they are to the centre of the map, the greater their interest in, or influence on, your organization. When you have finished, complete the checklist for mapping stakeholders.

FIGURE 3. WHO ARE YOUR STAKEHOLDERS?

Checklist for mapping stakeholders

__ Have all primary and secondary stakeholders been identified?

__ Have all potential supporters and opponents of the organization been identified?

__ Have all the other stakeholders that are likely to emerge as a result of the self-assessment been identified?

__ Have stakeholders’ interests been identified?

__ Have stakeholders’ interrelationships been identified?

__ Have the self-assessment goals been reconciled with stakeholders’ needs, interests, and priorities?

__ Has stakeholder participation in the self-assessment been investigated?

WHO SHOULD CONDUCT THE PROCESS?

Part of the planning phase is to determine roles and responsibilities. At this stage, you can form a self-assessment team to guide the process. Self-assessment teams have two major roles: strategic and operational.

In some cases, you will need to have two separate teams; in other cases, one team with two distinct roles. Regardless of the structure, select team members carefully, according to the role to be fulfilled. The strategic role will require people to provide guidelines and directions for the process and will oversee its overall quality. The operational role will require people to be more involved in the data collection, analysis, and reporting. The skills required for these roles are quite different, and several factors will influence your selection of team members: their availability, the complexity of the assessment questions, and the purpose and scope of the self-assessment.

Although the same individuals may play both strategic and operational roles on a self-assessment team, it is important to recognize that certain responsibilities will be more important at some stages of the process and less important at others. The strategic responsibilities are more conceptual; the operational responsibilities, more hands-on.

The size of the self-assessment team will also be important. Enough people should be there to provide a range of views, but not so many that it becomes difficult to make decisions. How decisions will be made and who will make them should be agreed on early in the process and will depend on the types of decision to be made.

CONFIGURING A TEAM

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An internal self-assessment team

In one case, the executive director drew up a self-assessment team comprising several young professionals and led by the head of training. The team was responsible for all aspects of the self-assessment process. Its work was reviewed by the executive director.

A combination of internal and external team members

In another organization, the self-assessment process was led by a team of two very senior managers, who contracted external consultants to carry out specific aspects of the process, such as data collection and analysis of some issues. The team then integrated these external reports into its own synthesis.

A steering committee to guide the self-assessment process

In a third organization, the senior managers operated as a steering committee responsible for the strategic aspects of the self-assessment. The managers mandated diverse individuals inside the organization to conduct elements of the process.

Creating a team

The following criteria can help in selecting team members likely to commit to the process and see it through:

• Credibility – Someone who is recognized by the main stakeholders and by members of the organization as having the appropriate mix of authority, responsibility, knowledge of the organization, and insight;
• Technical expertise – Someone who understands the self-assessment approach, can share responsibilities for the planning, management, and use of the self-assessment, is knowledgeable of the programs and services the organization offers, understands the organization and its issues, and can analyze data;
• Impartiality – Someone who can balance the perspectives of different people;
• Communication skills – Someone who can communicate the results of the self-assessment in a manner easily understood by all parties;
• Interpersonal skills – Someone who can interact with all parties in a sensitive and effective manner and is able to work on a team; and
• Availability – Someone who is available to conduct the self-assessment and will commit time to working on it.

Who will do what?

Self-assessment is an introspective process. Because the players are involved with the content of the assessment and have some stake in the organization, sensitivities can be strong. A clear definition of the roles and of the process at the outset can help ease tensions. Your organization needs to have a clear process for entering into a self-assessment, for managing the self-assessment, and for dealing with the expected and unexpected. On the other hand, self-assessment is not intended to be a scientific inquiry; rather, it is an organizational-development intervention and must be kept within the context of available resources.

Facilitation skills are important, to ensure voices are heard, to manage differences, and to create opportunities for consensus-building. The experience and knowledge of the team members enrich the self-assessment process. At the beginning, it is important to understand your team members’ levels of skill and knowledge and what they need or want to learn. This information will help you make decisions about how the work of the team should be allocated.

What does your team have? What does your team need?

Some team members will have a deeper understanding of the organization and its issues; others will be able to provide comparative data from their experience in other organizations; and some will be more skilled in the self-assessment process. All of these skills and knowledge will be useful to the self-assessment.

Self-assessment is a learning process for all members. The team members you bring together are unlikely to have all the necessary skills for the self-assessment process. You will need to decide what skills or characteristics are most important, using the checklist below.

CHECKLIST FOR SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE SELF-ASSESSMENT TEAM

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__ YES __ NO Does the team have sufficient skills and knowledge about assessment techniques (how to conduct an interview, how to prioritize questions, where to look for data, how to analyze data, etc.)?

__ YES __ NO Does the team have sufficient skills and knowledge about the functioning of the organization?

__ YES __ NO Does the team have sufficient skills and knowledge about stakeholders’ needs and the environment in which the organization operates?

__ YES __ NO Do team members have the time to devote to the self-assessment, in addition to that needed for their normal work?

__ YES __ NO Do team members have the facilitation skills required to conduct a self-assessment?

Are there any other roles or responsibilities?

In addition to the roles of the self-assessment team itself, the roles and responsibilities of other organizational members may need to be clarified. The Board of Directors, for example, may be required to participate in data collection or follow-up.

One should also consider the roles of external stakeholders – for example, external funders who support or partially support the self-assessment; and external professional consultants who may have been contracted to support part or all of the process.

The earlier the roles and responsibilities of these other players are defined, the easier it will be to proceed. To be effective, the process must be transparent, participatory, and empowering; above all, it must be a joint

learning process. You may need to be creative about using local and external resources. You may want to consider outside resources to save time or to handle very sensitive issues.

HANDLING SENSITIVE ISSUES

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Taking advantage of influential team members

In one organization, the executive director’s role was voluntarily minimal during the self-assessment process. However, he did play a crucial role, ensuring that important stakeholders would provide needed data: he was quite influential and respected in his region, and he personally called stakeholders and encouraged them to respond to the questionnaire sent by the operational team. Needless to say, the response rate increased!

Gaining historical perspective

In one organization, in addition to the operational team and the management members, the self-assessment involved a former executive director (the founder of the centre), who was able to provide an historical perspective on many of the issues. This individual’s role was invaluable.

EXERCISE 4. Building the team

Instructions: This exercise can help you think about the best combination of people to bring into your team. Consider the questions and then complete a grid like the one shown here.

1. In your organization, who will be on the team?

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2. What value will they add to the team?

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3. What roles are foreseen for them in the process?

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO MANAGE THE PROCESS?

A self-assessment team brings together people for a short time. It is important for the team members to discuss the process and set rules for how they will operate.

QUESTIONS TO ASK ABOUT THE MANAGEMENT OF THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS

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Item	Questions to ask
Surface discussion	How will the team get beneath surface issues in discussions, particularly on sensitive issues?
Competition vs collaboration	How can the team promote a climate in which the members support rather than undercut each other?
Protection of confidentiality	How can the team see to it that all the information is made available to all team members and that confidentiality is maintained?
Freedom of expression	To what extent should team members be free to express feelings and opinions during the self-assessment process?
Wise use of resources	How will the team maximize the use of individual members and the combined resources of all the members?
Win–win conflict resolution	To what extent will the team confront emotional or intellectual conflicts? On what bases will conflicts be addressed?

WHAT ISSUES MAY ARISE AT PREPLANNING?

In a self-assessment, the goal is to present the positive aspects of the organization, as well as the problems that may have been unknown or unclear or that have not been addressed or talked about. The self-assessment process takes for granted a spirit of openness and a willingness to divulge vulnerabilities and to acknowledge and examine organizational strengths and weaknesses.

However, self-assessment is not necessarily a notion accepted in all cultures, and group discussion of the issues may be uncomfortable for people in some cultures or organizations. Fear of the unknown can create tension and sometimes resistance.

In our experiences with self-assessment with a variety of organizations, we found several recurring concerns or obstacles:

• Fear of change;
• Fear of the purposes for which the results are to be used;
• Difficulty securing senior-level participation and input;
• Procrastination, which is often due to a lack of clarity about roles and responsibilities;
• Lack of appropriate skill sets;
• Conflicts (difficulty understanding one another, conflicting work habits, conflicts among people who do not otherwise work together, conflicts in time allocation);
• Conflicts between project cycles and the organizational-assessment cycle; and
• Lack of communication, resulting in a distorted image of the project.

Although these problems have no simple solutions, it is important to consider how they could affect the self-assessment process. The team will need to manage conflict using an approach appropriate to the organization. Conflicts can often be prevented by holding regular dialogue sessions and by taking advantage of opportunities to engage people in the process, both formally and informally.

DEALING WITH CONFLICT

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Acknowledging resistance

At one organization, a member of the self-assessment team had had a difficult experience in the past with an external self-assessment consultant. Because of that experience, the member initially showed a great deal of resistance to the process this time. The new consultant had to acknowledge and deal with this resistance before the self-assessment could actually move forward.

Clarifying required skill set

One institution had many researchers skilled in their own areas of research but less skilled in self-assessment. Although data collection, analysis, and communication of results are important in both research activities and self-assessment, they differ in important ways: in scope, design of instruments, and expectations of reliability. Until these differences were clarified, the self-assessment team faced a group of researchers who were very uncomfortable with being made responsible for the data-collection and data-analysis segments of the self-assessment. A consultant facilitated this process of clarification.

Resolving time conflicts

In one organization, the self-assessment was undertaken officially, and everyone was informed. In practice, however, the staff members responsible for the self-assessment did not have enough time to both conduct the assessment and continue their normal professional activities. Ultimately, the team asked management to resolve this issue.

HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN ANYTHING?

If you answer “no” to any of the questions below, review this chapter and complete the steps you need to get to “yes,” before continuing with planning a self-assessment in Chapter 2.

REVIEW QUESTIONS

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__ YES __ NO Are you clear about why your organization is going to conduct a self-assessment?

__ YES __ NO Are you satisfied that your organization is ready to engage in a self-assessment process?

__ YES __ NO Is your organization prepared to commit the appropriate financial and human resources to carry out the process?

__ YES __ NO Are you clear about who the main audience is for the results of this process?

__ YES __ NO Do you understand their expectations?

__ YES __ NO Have you identified a team well suited to carrying out the self-assessment?

__ YES __ NO Do you have a sense of the scope of the process you intend to undertake?

__ YES __ NO Are the resources for this process adequate for collecting data with the level of credibility you wish to attain?

Document(s) 4 of 13