Prepare

Planning Your Self-Assessment Process

Investing enough time in preparation before embarking on performance improvement will help ensure the organisation improves its performance. It will also help participants take part effectively and feel able to repeat the process.
You need to:

  • Plan your approach to self-assessment carefully – so you can select the most appropriate tools for a complete process that meets the organisation’s needs
  • Ensure all participants clearly understand the whole process from start to finish so everyone is fully involved and able to contribute to the process
  • Embed a process of ‘continuous performance improvement’ into theorganisation, so it becomes part of the daily management of the organisationC3Perform tools are very flexible and have been designed to enable an organisation to adopt an approach that meets its specific needs.

Your choice of which C3Perform tools to use will depend on a number of factors including:

  • Time available
  • Access to external facilitation
  • Your organisational culture
  • Level of detail needed from the self- assessment
  • Which members of your organisation need to be involved in the process
  • Recent history including any challenges and sensitive issues
  • The organisation’s size and maturity of management systemsPerformance improvement is not an extra job to do, it is about realising your goals more effectively and should be incorporated into the day-to-day working practice of decision makers within your organisation.

TIPS FOR PLANNING YOUR PROCESS

To help you consider the full range of key issues involved in selecting the right tools and planning your process see the TIPs below:

• Select group participants - the process must have management support so the key decision maker at executive level should be involved in the process at all stages.

• The richest evidence and most successful improvement plans - result from working in participative groups that include paid staff, volunteers and customers.

• Select the size of the performance improvement group carefully – for some organisations the process will be more successful with larger groups, for others dealing with sensitive issues or complexities, smaller groups may be better.

• Identify a Performance Improvement Champion to lead the process - this person should have authority to manage and implement the process and the right characteristics to carry the work through to completion.

• Plan the process to match your needs - the process should be relevant to the organisation’s way of doing things and realistic. Plan how much time you wantto take. Resist the temptation to go into too much detail during self-assessmentto ensure that you develop an Action plan for performance improvement that fitsthe capacity and scope of theorganisation.

• Prepare participants - ensure participants understand the process – train participants in the key features of the Excellence Model and its 9 criteria - consider using C3 Quick Perform and the case studies as a training tool.

• Clarify language such as ‘customers’, ‘products’ and ‘services’ to ensure all participants assess the same elements during Self Assessment – and to make sure they understand and sign up to the process.

• Set deadlines for the self-assessment and action planning processes to gain commitment from the start and ensure the work is completed on time.