Organizational Assessment Guidebook (Ebook)

This Guidebook (157 pages in pdf format) contains guides for for ten types of organizational assessment and planning tasks:

• Functional review. Assess the scope of activities carried out, responsibilities, and organizational capabilities required.

• Organization capability assessment. Identify key organization capabilities, assess core competencies, tools and technologies, compare with common/best practices, and determine “as is” and “to be” capabilities required in the way ahead.

• Organization risk profiling. Identify risks faced by the organization, mitigation measures in place to address these risks, and actions required to address the gaps.

• Delivery model option assessment. Review how well the current delivery model is working and identify and assess alternative delivery model options.

• Organization design. Assess the existing organizational structure, consider service delivery/structural options, and select the optimal organizational structure.

• Best practice benchmarking. Compare service delivery and management practices with other jurisdictions nationally or internationally—“are we doing the right things compared to common/best practice?” 

• Strategic and business planning.  Identify external trends and their implications, assess the current situation and decide on strategic priorities and projects in the way ahead.

• Baseline assessment/ spending review. Take a snapshot of current activities and resources supporting a function or program and assess  resources required in the way ahead.

• Organization performance measurement.  Measure performance in terms of results achieved, quality, service, stakeholder relationships, client demand/workload, efficiency, and people/workplace health.

• Implementation planning. Plan and implement improvement initiatives as part of the organization’s change management. 

The guides were developed for the public sector recognizing the unique nature of government service delivery and that management methodologies used commonly in a private sector context are not always suitable to the objectives of public service organizations.

Each of the ten guides follows a similar structure:

• Objectives—the objectives of the assessment, the reason for the assessment, the overall rationale and the expected benefits.

• Approach—overall steps or phases, major themes, key assumptions, project organization.

• Challenges—common issues that may arise, key considerations, barriers or impediments to implementation, sensitivities or perceptions that may be of concern, risks of failure.

• Guiding principles—overall principles or guidelines that should guide the assessment, planning and implementation. This may also include key messages.

• Key elements—a checklist of the key aspects of the analysis, items to be assessed and questions to be addressed as part of the assessment.

• Work plan—key tasks or steps to be carried out, typical sequencing, how the information required to conduct the assessment is collected, and methodologies that may be used.

• Deliverables—summary of the key outputs of the assessment.

You can acquire the Organizational Assessment Guidebook on Public Management Toolkits.