Page 198 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

Assessing Your Organization’s Health 183

consolidation mean in industries as diverse as airlines, communications, phar-
maceuticals, and banking? What will increased international cooperation and
joint ventures mean in industries such as manufacturing, advertising, and con-
struction? What will the increased emphasis on licensing and concerns about
copyright and patent infringement mean in pharmaceuticals, electronic prod-
ucts, computers and toys, and the apparel industries? What will be the effect
of technology on companies that are stretching the capabilities of their pres-
ent hardware and software? How often will you need to replace the technol-
ogy base of your business, organization, or function? What does a cheaper
currency mean for a service industry? How can service companies do busi-
ness abroad?

FINDINGS, CONCLUSIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The steering committee ultimately receives findings, conclusions, and recom-
mendations from each task force and consolidates this input into its overall
conclusions and recommendations.
The steering committee should start to develop preliminary findings. First,
the steering committee should review the task force reports for adequacy and
completeness. Was the analysis thorough?
Did it address the right questions? Was data collection adequate? Were the
proper people interviewed? Was consultation with outside experts appropri-
ate and sufficient? Were adequate documents examined? Were the customers,
clients, and other outsiders interviewed significant to the work?
There are other common problems involved in the development of find-
ings, conclusions, and recommendations. Review for issues such as the fol-
lowing: Do the findings seem reasonable? Balanced? Without bias? Do the
findings and conclusions match your perception and the information you have
collected in many private discussions and interviews? Do the findings reflect
all data sources? Whenever possible, findings should be represented in objec-
tive and quantitative terms, in terms of percentage or proportions of those
interviewed and using deadlines or milestones described in documents.
Individual comments are significant primarily as they illustrate a percep-
tion or observation made by a significant percentage of those interviewed, or
a significant percentage of documents analyzed. But individual comments that
are unrepresentative of the group consensus are not balanced and sometimes
unfair. Be careful, however, not to discard individual comments indiscrimi-