Here’s a thought: AEC principals can learn a lot about business improvement and effective firm management from television crime shows. Sound crazy?
My wife Megan loves these shows – the police ‘procedurals.’ Most use a familiar structure – a victim in the opening frames, arrival of the lead investigator, and the obligatory question: “all right, what do we got here?” Queue the music, run the title shot, and cut. A perfect set up of context, background, and preliminary hypothesis. It’s fast paced, exciting, and entertaining – and nicely packaged up before the first commercials.
Don’t you wish your business was this straightforward and simple?
Frankly, I think it is. And the first step to solving the crime is identifying the crime – or in the firm the issue, challenge, or problem(s) at hand.
AEC professionals are talented problem solvers, and usually want to jump right in to fix the obvious ones. Too often this means shortchanging – or skipping completely – a more comprehensive and objective preliminary analysis. Stephen Covey argued (in Seven Habits) against this approach – managers overly preoccupied with their machetes, hard at the clearing of thick underbrush. Instead he suggested that a leader should climb up to the top of the highest nearby tree, take a look around, and yell back down “wrong jungle.”
Would your organization benefit from a more thorough investigation and analysis – of what’s going on (and what isn’t) in the firm today? Key issues, challenges, and problems facing the team? And positives – opportunities for internal improvement or external growth? Isn’t it time to ask some new and different – and tough – questions, about the business, clients, staff – or yourself?
Conducting an organizational assessment is the first step to answers. Assessments are performed in a variety of contexts, including 1) the initial phase of a larger, enterprise-scale project like strategic business planning, 2) the front end of a more focused engagement, such as departmental restructuring, or 3) as a standalone initiative promoting ongoing, sustainable improvement (e.g. an ‘annual physical’ for the firm).
Of course not all investigative assessments are created (or executed) equally. Here are the four most important attributes of successful assessments:
1) Objective – There’s no point in gaming this work for a predetermined outcome. Instead managers must set aside preconceptions, pet projects, and prejudices. The lead assessor should be free to work, think, and speak truth to power (almost always implies an outsider).
2) Candid –The truth does sometimes hurt, but it always helps with change. Soft balling or sugar coating the feedback rarely does as much – and often confuses the message and meaning. Authenticity, sincerity, confidence, and confidentiality – all help to promote candor. Interviews and surveys should focus not on who but what – and on teasing out major issues and themes in the feedback, rather than specific details.
3) Comprehensive – Good assessments always start with a wide angle (not telephoto) lens. This provides for perspective and context – the ‘right jungle’ – without preventing later prioritization and focus. The comprehensive assessment employs a variety of tools for data collection and analysis, and gathers that data from a variety of sources. Staff, teams, managers, leaders, owners, clients, and partners – all provide valuable perspective and insights, gathered through individual interviews, group discussions, or online surveys. Financial analysis, operational benchmarking, and market research round out the assessment scope. And each thread of data, each individual perspective, is a potentially important piece of the forensic puzzle – and the assessor’s journey to the ‘truth’ of the firm.
4) Actionable – In business, study without action is deflating and demoralizing. Technical professionals (mistaking precision for accuracy) tend towards over analysis – particularly in unfamiliar areas such as market research. Others struggle with making decisions at all – ostensibly to avoid costly mistakes. But business judgments are almost always imperfect, and mistakes of omission can be as costly as mistakes of commission. Moreover, stakeholders who invest in organizational assessment and related initiatives naturally expect action – and results – and quickly lose faith when expectations (and promises) are not met. Successful assessments happen with a purpose, and effective leaders use these assessments to make things happen.
I’m regularly asked whether an outside facilitator is really necessary for conducting these assessments. The short answer is yes – most firms simply can’t do this work well alone. Indeed many companies (and a number of my clients) have substantive ongoing employee surveys, strong client feedback processes, and/or internal operational benchmarking and management. These processes help firm managers and leaders to achieve more. But other issues – leadership alignment, team dynamics, strategic change – are quite difficult to properly see and address from an “inside seat.” And of course the real magic is not usually in seeing the emperor’ lack of clothing, but in saying it – in a way that supports a positive outcome. An effective outside assessor-facilitator is a very good investment – short money – for the success-oriented firm.
So, let me suggest then that it’s time (if you’re not already) to get ‘on the case’ at your firm. An objective, candid, comprehensive, and actionable organization assessment now will position your firm for a quicker and stronger rebound in the recovery ahead. And, no matter how well things are going, you know you still have work to do (a dead body in the lobby?) to address the most important issues and opportunities in your organization today.
Your starting question is simple this: “All right, what do we got here?”
But hurry up – first commercials start in two minutes.
John
