“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel ”
results and insights
scaling
In measuring both the importance and demonstration of the behaviours that make up the eleven Business Acumen Gauge capabilities a five point Likert scale has been adopted. This scale was the preferred measure for its simplicity and familiarity with most respondents.
We first look to understand the importance of each capability to your organisation.
part A - Importance of each capability
The Business Acumen Gauge is not a 'one size fits all' diagnostic tool. The importance of each capability is defined by your senior leaders. This is a critical catalyst for role clarity discussion as it provides a window into misalignment between what the participant believes is important in their role and what their direct managers believe.
“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all”
Once we understand the importance of each capability we now need to know how frequently the participant demonstrates these behaviours both through their own eyes and the eyes of their direct managers, peers and direct reports.
Part B - The demonstration of each capability
Knowing the degree to which a leader demonstrates commercially relevant behaviour is where we can hone in on the tactical changes that will increase an individual's effectiveness in their role.
Aggregating the importance vs demonstration of each capability
The first results outcome is an aggregate of the importance of each capability vs it's demonstration in the opinion of all respondents (managers, peers, self and direct reports). This gives the participant a snapshot where they are spending their energy versus where it is considered important to spend their energy.
results and insights
Useful insights might include identifying a participant is:
- Engaging in behaviours deemed irrelevant to their role (i.e. developing talent)
- Role requires behaviours that are not being demonstrated by a participant (i.e. financial literacy)
- Participants are performing their role in alignment with the expectations of other stakeholders (i.e. systems and processes)
importance of each capability to the participants role
Once a participant understands at an aggregated level the importance of each capability to their role, it's crucial to drill down a level to understand the perceptions of each key stakeholder group.
Results and Insights
This matrix allows question such as:
- What does my manager think is important?
- Where do we align/mis-align?
- Do my direct reports see my role in the same way senior management does?
- Am I placing importance on behaviours no one else cares about?
These insights can change the way someone is working and provides quick, tactical and immediately useful feedback.
Exploring the behaviors demonstrated in each capability
Once a participant has explore the importance of each capability as perceived by self and others and they have explored individual stakeholder perceptions in more detail, it's time to drill down to their personal demonstration of each capability.
Using the aggregated data participants can move to the areas of the report dealing with capabilities they need to develop. Once exploring a particular capability the participant can then identify what behaviours they need to adopt to improve their Business Acumen in that area.
These sample Mindset capabilities demonstrate how, using the Business Acumen Gauge, a participant can get a clear picture of what they need to do differently come Monday morning.