At the end of an assessment, after interviewing is finished, the assessment team must (1) consolidate its provisional observations and (2) present them to an assembly of the organization in a draft (or preliminary) findings meeting, which asks the organization to verify the accuracy of the findings; the team must then (3) consolidate the confirmed information into a series of KPA/PA ratings and determine a global maturity level rating for the organization being assessed and (4) organize a final findings meeting that presents the verified conclusions and their associated ratings within the larger picture of the organization’s working processes.
The draft findings meeting (or meetings) are crucial. They test whether the team has understood how the organization works.
After responses recorded in the draft findings meetings are considered and followed up, the preparation of ratings immediately follows.
Ratings are constructed out of the accumulated information of many previous stages of agreed upon consolidation and ought to be only the last step in a long process of objective and consensus-driven determinations. Often, though, the preparation of ratings presents a moment of conflict. After the assessment team assigns a final rating, it is too late to reverse the consequences. At this stage, especially in immature organizations that may have been required to undertake an assessment against management wishes, short-sighted managers may try to influence the internal team members or in other ways prevent the team from assigning a lower-than-expected maturity rating. Some assessments reach a crisis at this stage, and a few come off the rails. Interference may come in the form of a quarrelsome draft findings meeting, sudden disagreement with established statements of weaknesses during the team’s own final ratings meeting, or last-ditch complaints at or just before the final findings meeting.
To any reasonable senior manager, it will be clear that forcing an assessment team to produce an artificially favorable rating can only harm the organization in the long run. Assessments should produce a shock that forces an organization to look into the assessment "mirror" and recognize the state of its current procedures before it can improve. This shock is the start of making the organization stronger, not weaker.
At the final findings meeting, held on the last day of the assessment, the team makes a full presentation to the assessment sponsorthe president or managing directorof the organization being assessedwho from this point on must play a pivotal role in motivating the organization to implement a post-assessment improvement plan. It is paramount that the tenor of this meeting encourages rather than discourages improvement.
At the end of the final findings meeting, the assessment sponsor "owns" the final assessment results and assumes responsibility for organizing follow-up improvement activities.