Tracking Assessments

As an employee, it is important for you to know what is going on in the organization, especially within your sphere of work. As a result you must personally consider each of the four targets.

Monitor Relevant Indicators: CG4¹

Use existing systems, or devise your own, so that you can monitor your own activities and relevant influences, even in regard to matters not currently on the radar of management. Getting rapid (private) feedback that is directly relevant to your work will allow you to correct an emerging problem rapidly or to take other action that prevents or resolves the problem.

Pre-empt criticism by bringing an issue to the attention of management early, before management brings it to your attention later.

Cultural Values: 

If you are in a neglected pragmatic culture, crises will get far more attention than analyses of figures. Nevertheless, most organizations will have some relevant indicators, and they may make them available. In any case, you should consider what figures you can organize via your own initiative.

Appraise Yourself & Others: CG4²

Be realistic about your own actual performance, including relevant factors that constrained you or made work easier for you. Over time you should reflect on how you work and compare it to the way others work.

Think about both the type and level of work that you can do now. Also imagine the type of work (and its level) that you might be able to do in the future. 

Also appraise the performance of your superiors and co-workers, noting both their strengths and their limitations. Being realistic about yourself, and about them, will allow you to handle interactions and joint work sensibly.

Cultural Values:  

The structuralist ethos, commonly found in large corporations, is properly focused on these appraisals. However, you need an organization with rationalist values if your training is to be enabled; and imaginist values if your personal development is to be taken seriously.

Study Evaluations of Outcomes: CG4³

An employee, like you, can only ever make a very partial assessment of organizational benefit.  So focus on yourself and the part you played (if any).

Note how major projects are handled and evaluated, and get hold of the results. They could be relevant to how you fit in the organization. You may be encouraged to move within the organization, or look for a more suitable post elsewhere.

Cultural Values:  

The structuralist ethos, as usual, provides the basics. However, an empiricist ethos is needed for extensive monitoring and systematic investigations. Evaluation of major change projects requires a systemicist perspective.

Press to Join Reviews of Missions CG4⁴

It is important to know how senior management views the importance and future of your section, and possibly your specific area of work.

So, although you may not be successful, press firmly for participation in mission reviews if your role/post is affected. When outcomes of these reviews are circulated, read them and consider how you are affected by them.  If you are relatively junior in the organization, then find the union or staff organization that represents your interests.

Cultural Values:  

Missions often seem to be vacuous, get only lip service, and end up as placards on the wall. However, properly formulated missions A mission should comprise social values (PH6-L5) indicating its worth in the community, and principal objects (PH6-L4) that reveal its distinctiveness and competencies. are essential and can be developed or clarified at any time, irrespective of the sophistication of the management culture.

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► Continue to the inquiry aspects of assessment.

Originally posted: 20-Oct-2011