An Authentic Assessment of the current situation addresses the question, “What’s so?” By obtaining a high-level overview of the current state and the critical issues that you are facing you develop a common baseline to support future discussions.
Companies have engaged Strategic Momentum for this assessment because they:
- Are looking to expand their business and wanted to get an outside-in perspective to create the starting point
- Want to verify their current strategic direction
- Need an unbiased and honest look at the current state of affairs with their team, customers and prospects
- Need to innovate
To be as comprehensive as possible, this assessment step must have an internal and an external focus. Internally, interviews need to be conducted with the executive team, operating managers and other key personnel. Externally, interviews need to be conducted with a sample of customers, lost customers/prospects, competitors and analysts.
Our ERM Process includes The Breakthrough Assessment Process™ to assess the following:
- Build and maintain alignment and commitment when identifying the breakthrough project
- Create outside-in perspective through external assessment
- Understand current position through internal assessment
- Identify critical issues that might prevent achieving the performance breakthrough
- Commit to an action plan to get the breakthrough project started
Note that there is significant overlap between the breakthrough assessment and the initial discovery process, because sometimes it is relevant to start with a breakthrough assessment prior to going into a full discovery.