Assessments have four principal functions: They analyze how an organization really works, they (often through shock) help motivate it toward positive change, their procedures establish precedents that help organizations begin to transform themselves even before the assessment is finished, and they educate organizations by exposing them to best practices worldwide.
These four functions are of course not independent, nor do they always work the same way. Different assessment experiences can affect companies in different ways. Less mature organizations should prepare for the shock that accompanies realizing you aren’t as good as you thought you were. They will be in for a strenuous educational procedure. On the other end of the scale, highly mature organizations (many of which will have already undergone previous assessments) usually experience assessments as moments of concentration and careful self-analysis. But one never knows. No two assessments are quite the same in their impact or in their outcomes.
Example: During a follow-on assessment, two groups within Organization A reacted very differently to the assessment experience. One group had long been with the organization and had been through several previous assessments. They had once responded defensively to questions and judgments, but they had also seen the progress that the first assessments enabled (in scheduling, the quality of their products, and customer satisfaction) and a corresponding improvement in their own work situations. During the current assessment, therefore, they were eager to assist the assessment team and take on new suggestions, even probing ones. A second group, however, which had recently been merged into the organization, had never experienced an assessment and did what first-time assessees usually docover their weaknesses and put the best possible face on everything. They tried to keep knowledgeable people from being interviewed, and they bridled when the draft findings suggested that the organization still had work to do to achieve the maturity level it expected. (Certain managers so feared the results that they found excuses not to attend the draft findings meeting.) Finally, senior managers associated with the first group stepped in. They did their best to explain to the newcomers that their reaction was counterproductive, and they also urged the Lead Assessor to make the final findings as clear and objective as possibletelling him, "Don’t hold anything back." Both groups survived, but the first group experienced a very different assessment than the second.
An assessment’s success, moreover, depends as much on the understanding and skill of the assessors as on the methods they employ. Analyzing a company depends on knowing enough about technical and managerial attitudes to ask the right questions at the right times while building confidence in the assessment process and in the future of the organization. Motivating an organization toward improvement means emphasizing the positive effects of change. Educating an organization involves knowing the internal and often unspoken logic of process improvement methodologies and the international best practices out of which they grew.