An Initial Assessment is a high-impact, two-day engagement where we listen to different groups of people and play back our observations along with recommendations.
There are three parts to the playback:
- General observations and themes
- Immediate recommendations you can tackle for yourself
- Strategic recommendations that we can help with
This puts you in control. You decide where to go from here, either on your own, with us, or a combination of both.
Structure
The assessment comprises ten 45-minute interviews over two days, with six on the first day and four on the second day, ideally in person. Then we review our notes and play back our findings, either to yourself or to a wider audience if you prefer.
This is an informal exercise: the interviews are organic rather than formal and structured, and any playback is anonymized. While the playback itself is structured, there will not be a formal report as such.
Preparation
What we learn will depend entirely on the people we meet! It is up to you whether to go broad or deep. The participants do not need to prepare anything in advance, just come along with an open mind and ready to share some opinions. The main preparation is around scheduling people to be available across the two days.
The interviews can be 1-1 or with small groups. One thing to be aware of is power dynamics, so for instance we do not recommend having someone in the same session as their immediate manager.
Sometimes it isn’t possible to get all the people lined up so it can go into a third day, but this doesn’t happen very often.