3 Questions to Assess Your New Organization

This is part 2 of our summer transition series.  Our last post discussed how to craft a transition plan for transitioning into a new job.  Now that you have a transition plan, you will benefit from conducting an assessment of your new organization.  An assessment will give you a feel for how things are running and where you can help.  This post covers how to assess your new organization with 3 simple questions that can fit on a 3 x 5 card that you can carry around in your pocket.

Assess Your Organization for Improved Understanding

Gaining a better understanding of your organization falls under Phase 1 of your 90 Day Transition Plan, which should occur in your first 30 days of joining your new organization. You can, of course, ask any number of questions to folks in your organization to gain a better understanding, but these three questions are meant to be a conversation starter. Asking these three questions consistently of the various departments in your organization can help you identify trends and anomalies in your organization.  Responses from multiple individuals from multiple departments can guide you on where you should initially focus your efforts.  These questions help you identify your organization’s strengths, weaknesses, and provide you focus areas as a leader.  The three questions are:

1. What does this organization do exceptionally well?
2. In what areas does this organization need to improve?
3. If you were me, where would you focus your efforts initially?

What do we do well?

This question drives at determining the strengths of the organization.  Strengths are a key piece to the puzzle of your organization. Strengths should not only be identified and understood but built upon as return on investment is typically high. While individuals may give varying answers on your organization’s strengths based on perspective, you will likely find strong and accurate trends from the group.

Where do we need to improve?

This question gets after the organization’s weaknesses.  Weaknesses are also key to understanding trouble areas that you may need to give attention to early in your new job.  While you can assume some risk in some areas of weaknesses, you will need to use judgment on which areas need attention in the near term versus which areas can wait.  Evaluating weaknesses against your organization’s mission and purpose is a good starting point.

What should I focus on first?

One can look at this question and sense that the one asking the question is either clueless or incompetent. However, the value of this question is that it drives after a greater question of “How can I help your department?” or “What is your greatest need?”.  It provides the people in your departments with a chance to provide input.  Gaining input from your team allows your people to be heard and provide their opinions.  This question, consequently, provides you with free advice on where to look first. You will likely find trends from this question as well.  While the trends may not always be in a specific area, such as “we need improved talking points to deliver our message”, you can definitely find trends in broader topics, such as “we need to improve in our internal and external communication.”

Benefits of Assessing Your Organization

Assessing your organization is key to helping you understand your new organization and how you fit within it.  An assessment helps you understand the operating environment, key relationships, and strengths and weaknesses.  You can learn what challenges the organization faces and conversely what opportunities lie ahead.  Once you have a firm understanding of the organization, you’ll be ready to start making a positive impact.  All of this can be done by using three simple questions consistently while learning and gaining an understanding of your new job and organization.

Question: What questions help you assess your organization?