But It Was Such A Good Plan!

#assessments #eqfit #strategicinsights #vitalsigns Dec 11, 2023

This is the time of year when everyone is working on their plans for the new year. Long hours of reviewing numbers, tracking sales and customer data, reviewing operations. All of these are a part of the planning process. This data is then used to create the best plan for the year to come. GREAT! You have done your due diligence and have created a strategic masterpiece. One question. What is the chance that the plan and its goals will be achieved?

Have you ever had a good strategic/operational plan that fails? Why? Maybe the plan was unrealistic but more likely, the people executing the plan were not prepared and equipped to achieve the goals. This is the challenge with strategic and operational plans. They depend on people to be successful.

A Focus on People

When you go to your doctor to do your annual physical, what does your doctor do? They check your vital signs. Why? Because that gives them the empirical data they need to gauge your current health and vitality. If they find something that is not as it should be, they take corrective action to restore and enhance your health.

Would you be comfortable with your doctor just taking a look at you and then prescribing some new medication without doing the necessary testing? Certainly not! That is anecdotal information that is not based on science but on opinion.

Vital Signs for the Workplace

Organizations and leaders have struggled to find ways to measure the health and vitality of their people, teams, and the entire organization. Climate surveys are used frequently, and they provide some good insight. The problem is they do not identify the root causes of gap areas, nor do they provide a “prescriptive” solution.

Most decisions in organizations are based on getting the best data available then making the best decision possible. The one area where this falls short consistently is the human element. The Vital Signs assessments provide a data-driven approach to making the best decisions and having consistent confidence in making those decisions.

The search for a set of tools that will provide actionable data that is highly validated and predictive brings to light the Vital Signs assessments from Six Seconds. This assessment suite has more than 15 years of validation and has proven to be impactful and practical tools to enhance the effectiveness for leaders, teams, and organizations.

Leadership Vital Signs 360 – this 360 assessment combines predictive analytics with science to capture a true picture of leadership impact.
Team Vital Signs – provides insight into team dynamics that directly impact team performance.
Organizational Vital Signs – surpasses the normal climate survey to provide actionable data and a clear path forward to enhance organizational health and vitality, including engagement, cultural insights, and alignment to organizational goals.

Organizational Health and Vitality

What is organizational health and vitality? It is a multi-dimensional measure of critical success factors and outcomes. Agility, energy, engagement, motivation, collaboration, and performance are some of the characteristics of a healthy and vital organization. In his book The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni makes a bold but accurate statement: "Organizational health trumps everything else in business."

Data-driven Solutions

Data is used in organizations all the time to inform decision making, planning, and problem solving efforts. People are the most important asset any organization has but getting good data related to people in the workplace appears to be a challenge for most organizations.

Organizations spend countless hours reviewing data in areas of revenue generation, finance, operations, and administration. Then they use this data to create strategic plans and set goals. This is time and effort well spent. Here is a question to ask:

How do you know that your people are prepared, equipped, and engaged to achieve your goals?

Story

Several years ago I started working with a client in manufacturing. The owner is a highly intelligent individual who's entire working career has focused on engineering and then owning his own manufacturing company. He has surrounded himself with other very intelligent people. I asked to see their strategic plan for people. Crickets. Then I asked to see their leadership development plan. Crickets. Then I simply asked what they knew about their leaders. The answers focused on education, technical skills, and experience. Not a bad start. But that is where the insight ended. This explained a lot about what was happening in that organization. Here were some of the challenges:

Pockets of toxicity
Loyalty not based in trust so favoritism was prevalent
An us versus them mentality
High turnover
Lack of alignment to goals
Blame fixing was rampant
Low employee engagement

If you look closely at all of these challenges, they revolve around people issues. I have a good friend whose favorite quote is, "It's always a people problem!" And he would be right.

We came up with a game plan to overcome these challenges. It starts with assessments. Why? Let me share a secret I have been using for more than 35 years. If you create common ground with people where they can better understand themselves and others, it is a good start to removing many of the challenges in the workplace (and at home). The way you do that is to take away the focus on each other and shift that focus to a shared experience that enhances self-awareness and discovery. Basically, create an objective focus so people can move past the bias and patterns built up around others.

This began a journey for the people in that organization. Through the assessment feedback sessions, they started to see themselves in new ways. They began to understand their behavior and the behavior of others. They realized that everyone is not the same and if someone is different, it does not mean they are malicious or trying to sabotage them. They started to see the value in people working together with different strengths. New insight into their team fostered growth and higher engagement and productivity.

Fast forward two years with this client and we enhance the assessment process for leaders and teams with the Vital Signs assessments from Six Seconds. We now had clear and actionable data to make better decisions. Leaders became more confident and more effective. They had their own development pathway. They had deeper insight into their team and how to best help their team succeed.

The Choice

The reason most organizations do not have a well-defined plan for their people is because they don’t have the data they need. Good validated data is critical to making the best decisions and taking the right action steps.

Here is the dilemma...senior leaders make a choice as to how much they will invest in their people. In my experience, they lean toward investing very little. Why?

They have had a "shotgun" approach in the past to developing and growing their people and have seen little to no ROI.
They simply don't know where to start.
Unlike most investment decisions they make, they don't have the data they need to feel comfortable making investments in people.
They know it is important, but there is so much noise they can't identify the best path forward.

There is a simple but profoundly effective method to ensure that investing in people has the desired ROI:

Assess - get good validated and actionable data that provides clear direction on next steps.
Equip - use the assessment data to create the success pathway (growth, development, up-skilling) for each individual, leader, and team.
Align - track progress and ensure that growth and development are in alignment with team and organizational goals.

It All Starts With Good Data and Insight

In a world where data is ever increasing, organizations have the opportunity to get the people insights they need. It never comes from just one assessment! Don't be fooled by some consultant telling you their personality assessment is the magic bullet...it is not. Words like predictive and culture are often used to promote assessment sales, and they are very effective in these promotions. The problem is these assessments have low predictability factors, especially in the ever increasing and complex workplace.

When it comes to getting deep insight into leaders, teams, and the entire organization, the Vital Signs assessments are designed and validated to work together. These tools will identify if your people are prepared, equipped, agile, focused, and engaged to meet the goals. If they are not, you will have actionable data to equip them to achieve and reach the success and satisfaction everyone desires.