Three steps to set up your assessment and design process for success

Once an organization decides to complete an assessment and design, it’s important to understand the process involved.

If your organization is still in the process of making that decision, please see Transform your finance function with assessment and design for more details.

Each organization is unique, so no assessment is the same — which means there’s no cookie-cutter checklist to follow.

However, there are some general rules of the road that can guide the assessment in a direction that will help yield successful results.

Creating the right environment

Creating the right environment is key to successful change management within an organization. Internally, this can include the following steps:

• Create an environment where team members feel valued and trusted, so they share insights into current processes and potential ideas for improvement.
• Over communicate about why this approach is being taken.
• Help employees understand the process isn’t intended to be a criticism, but rather an opportunity to discover room for improvement and increased efficiency which could boost job morale overall.

Providing clear rules of engagement

From the beginning, the objective party’s assessment approach should establish clear rules of engagement including the following:

• Open and honest discussion
• No retaliation against team members who speak their mind
• Acceptance of new ideas and identification of inefficiencies at a team-member level
• Appreciation and validation of team members

When the right environment is created and the team trusts the process, the results will be more candid, forthright, and thorough. The team has a chance to feel heard and validated, especially if they see the results of these conversations executed within the organization.