“Interdependent people combine their efforts with the efforts of others to achieve their greatest success.”
Steven Covey
The success of an organization never rests on the shoulders of one person. If it did, things would fall apart at the first mistake. In reality, it’s the strengths and hard work of many people that produces the greatest success.
Achievement is typically a team effort.
As a leader, it’s essential to keep in mind the value of your team. The various strengths and perspectives found amongst your group, when well utilized and optimized, will lead to more significant achievements than any one person could accomplish on their own.
However, this presumes a few fundamental principles:
- Your team is motivated to work towards a common goal.
- Each member knows and uses their strengths for the betterment of the group.
- The culture of your organization fosters collaboration and innovation.
Without these elements in place, it’s going to be difficult to make substantial progress. Periodically, it’s necessary to take a step back and evaluate how your organization is functioning as a unit and whether or not you see the results you’d envisioned.
Now is the time strategic assessments come into play. Think of them as litmus tests for company culture. Assessments will let you know if your team is balanced and working productively, or if something is out of line and needs adjusting.
Assessments can help measure critical metrics and attributes that impact your team’s overall success. They provide an objective lens and results to prompt further learning and discussion.
Assessing Company Culture
When assessing the culture of your organization, you need to consider the behavior and performance of individual team players and the group as a whole. However, you cannot evaluate company culture without also considering the feelings and opinions your team members have surrounding their expectations and performance.
For example, do your team members feel equipped to accomplish their assigned tasks and responsibilities, and if not, why? Are they motivated and engaged in their work? Do they feel supported and encouraged by their coworkers and leaders?
The Organizational Culture Inventory is one diagnostic tool designed to help you evaluate the strength of your company culture and identify any areas that could use improvement. This straightforward and easy to use survey provides the information and data you need to begin improving your organization’s culture.
Assessing Organizational Effectiveness
You know you have a great team, and for now, you have the resources you need to implement your projects.
However, you’ve experienced uneven results and periods where you feel your organization could be working more effectively. Do you wonder if you are working to your full capacity? If you will reach your goals and achieve results?
Now might be the time to conduct an organizational assessment.
Organizational assessments can provide valuable insights regarding:
- The strength of your organizational leadership
- The effectiveness of your team’s collaboration
- Your use of company resources (including time, financial, and personnel resources)
- Key target areas for improvement
Assessments provide a snapshot of your current situation (what’s going well and opportunities for improvement) and they offer a launching point for strategic planning, development conversations, and organizational growth.
The CCAT is an assessment tool designed specifically to help non-profits evaluate and improve their overall effectiveness. This assessment targets four key areas that affect an organization’s overall capacity (tccGROUP):
- Leadership: Ability to make decisions and provide direction
- Management: Ability to effectively use resources
- Adaptive: Ability to assess and respond to change
- Technical: Ability to implement key organizational and programmatic functions
Without effectively addressing each of these four areas, an organization will not be working to full capacity.
This assessment tool provides insights regarding your organizational strengths and areas of growth. You can also learn how your organization compares with over 6,000 other non-profits that have also implemented the CCAT.
It’s worth investing time and resources into conducting organizational assessments, like the CCAT, because taking a strategic look at your organizational landscape enables you to make plans and decisions that maximize your organizational strengths, address areas of weakness, effectively utilize time and resources, and set you on the road for continued growth and success.
In order to continue growing and making progress as an organization, periodically assessing the effectiveness of your structures and routines, leadership, and task force is essential.
As you prepare to implement strategic assessment within your organization, take some time as a team to review different assessments, such as the CCAT. Begin the conversation! It can be helpful to collaboratively discuss the pro’s and con’s of each tool as you choose which assessments are a good fit for your organizational goals.
Are you ready to grow your people, teams, and organization in 2020? Do you wonder where to start?
Join me as I host organizational and assessment experts at the FREE online Assess for Success: Grow and Retain Top Talent in Nonprofit Organizations virtual summit. Mark your calendars for March 4-6, 2020 and CLICK HERE to save your spot!
