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Brief

Assessments Tool

By Mark Abbott and Jeffrey Walker
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Introduction

The classic saying "You can’t manage what you can’t measure" rings especially true for organizations aspiring to grow in today’s competitive business landscape. Simplify the hard work associated with building a great company with Ninety’s Assessments tool, designed by our leadership and company-building experts to help teams unlock hidden opportunities and identify your biggest opportunities for growth.

Improvement starts with insight. Use our new Assessments tool to gauge your organization’s current proficiencies, identify gaps or areas for improvement, and strengthen organizational culture. Then leverage these insights to make strategic, well-informed decisions and steer your organization toward becoming a Stage Five company.

The Assessments tool offers three assessments to help organizations upgrade their business operating system (BOS) and track progress along the way:

Tablets containing elements of Ninety's Assessments UI
  1. Baseline Assessment: Designed to be taken when a company has started to adopt Ninety to measure your Org Fitness, BOS Readiness, and Coach Readiness.
  2. Org Fitness Review: Designed to be taken by companies once per quarter after they have taken the Baseline Assessment to gauge progress toward strengthening each of the 9 Core Competencies.
  3. Org Assessment: Designed to be taken by companies Running on EOS™ 2–4 times per year (we recommend quarterly) to gauge your mastery of the Six Key Components® of the Entrepreneurial Operating System®.

Tool Overview

Many companies struggle to uncover obstacles in their environment that may hold them back from achieving their full potential. One way to overcome this challenge is by employing organizational assessments. With a well-defined strategy for assessment distribution, questions that generate insightful responses, and a systematic method for analyzing and acting on data, your Senior Leadership Team (SLT) can collect insights from your Ideal Stakeholders to power organizational growth and improvement.

Ninety’s Assessments tool provides teams with a seamless, easy-to-manage way to collect those insights — directly through the platform you're already using to run quarterly meetings, discuss Issues, monitor Scorecards, and so much more

Our integrated tool will initially enable you to take advantage of our expanding array of organizational assessments, select how long they run, and decide which teams to involve.

For example, Ninety’s Baseline Assessment features 33 multiple-choice questions that help determine how strong a team is in each of the 9 Core Competencies — Vision, Customer, Goals, People, Structure, Data, Meetings, Process, and Enterprise Value. The assessment also offers a BOS Readiness Score that measures your receptivity to upgrading your BOS while presenting insights into when to hire a BOS coach.

Our long-term goal is to provide you and your colleagues with the ability to create custom assessments tailored to your specific business needs.

Context

According to consulting firm McKinsey, by 2025, the integration of smart workflows and data utilization in every aspect of work will be as standard as corporate finance. Data is not just a resource — it's vital for insightful decision-making, analyzing past actions, informing present priorities, and forecasting future performance. 

Assessments serve as a fundamental tool for systematically collecting perspectives from internal stakeholders who align with the company's Core Values and objectives, helping leaders foster a culture of trust and open communication.

These perspectives are critical in revealing areas of opportunity and allowing teams to track progress against important key performance indicators (KPIs).

For companies new to upgrading their BOS, change can feel overwhelming, and many give up before they’ve had a chance to see the benefits. Assessments are a critical initial step in BOS implementation, providing essential benchmarks for a company's readiness, identifying areas for improvement, and giving you and your colleagues the clarity to measure progress.

A user taking the 9 core competencies assessment within Ninety

Core Disciplines of Assessments

  • 1. Insight drives you forward. To build great organizations, leaders need to leverage the insights and collective experiences of team members (and other Ideal Stakeholders) through assessments. Ninety’s Assessments tool is launching with a set of carefully designed assessments that leverage insights from team members to gauge the organization’s current proficiencies, identify gaps or areas for improvement, and strengthen organizational culture: the Baseline Assessment, the Org Fitness Review, and the Org Assessment.

  • 2. Discover hidden insights. The parts of the data “iceberg” that are hidden from sight are often responsible for the majority of organizational challenges. Assessments are a great way for companies to gather insights about performance, benchmarks, and level of trust. Many tools focus on collecting generalized feedback like “improve communication,” which isn’t actionable. In contrast, the Assessments tool focuses on targeted questions that directly align with strategic business goals and KPIs, providing a clear path forward.

  • 3. Start with the Baseline Assessment. As its name indicates, this assessment helps your organization establish a baseline as you begin your journey through the Stages of Development. Through carefully designed questions focused on the 9 Core Competencies, the Baseline Assessment helps your team identify current strengths and pinpoint areas needing improvement. After establishing this baseline, track your team’s progress by routinely taking the Baseline Assessment’s follow-up assessment, the Org Fitness Review.

  • 4. Empower decision-making with actionable insights. Understanding your team’s perspectives and experiences is just the beginning. Our assessments provide targeted recommendations, enabling leaders to make choices that propel the organization forward. Whether it’s refining processes, enhancing team dynamics, or adjusting strategic directions, our tool is designed to transform assessment data into a powerful catalyst for positive change and growth.

Hopefully Helpful Hints

  • Facilitate transparency. Ninety users with SLT permissions can see the status of each assigned assessment (completed, in progress, or not completed). Assessments can be completed asynchronously, encouraging team members to share honest responses and helping you uncover insights that might not surface in a more public setting.
  • Schedule regular reviews. Incorporate the Org Fitness Review into your quarterly planning process. This regular cadence ensures that tracking improvements and identifying areas for growth become integral parts of your team’s culture and operations.

  • Act on input. Ensure that teams know that their perspective is valuable by taking actionable steps based on their input. Prioritize changes or improvements that have a broad impact or address critical issues highlighted in the assessment results.

  • Celebrate the wins. Share assessment results with your team, highlighting improvements and acknowledging the areas where efforts are still needed. Recognizing progress encourages continued engagement and contributions.

Takeaway

Building a high-trust culture is essential for organizational success. Ninety’s Assessments tool is pivotal to this effort. Whether you’re a team member, coach, or senior leader, assessments by Ninety are a great way to start collecting data that you can use to make decisions that improve your operations and culture and help your entire organization focus, align, and thrive.

What’s next? Visit the 90u Library or try Ninety today.
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