Need for Assessment

We are all engaged in number of activities with an intention to achieve our objectives and to sustain them. We desire to be successful and work hard for the same How can we say that we are performing well? We feel what we did is correct. We decided and designed the system according to our best knowledge and experience in order to achieve our objectives. However, unless we verify, we cannot have confidence.

Whatever may be the activity and actions taken, unless it is assessed, we can not say whether the action was fruitful or not. The assessment needs to be done against the objectives and to determine the extent to which it was achieved. There is no second opinion about this and we need assessments. It is needed to ensure that we are on the correct path. The Quality Management Systems, therefore, insist on periodic assessment.

Self Assessment and External Assessment

We can get our activities assessed by any one, either by self, from the people with in our organization or from outsiders. This is known as "Auditing" in Quality Management Systems. The audits can be internal or external. The Internal audits are done by the people within the organization, but from different sections, where as external audits are done by experts from outside.

No matter who the auditor is, the auditee will have some anxiety and tension at the time of audit. It is normal that one will try his level best to avoid non conformities being identified in his work area. Therefore he might try to hide some files and activities on which he has no confidence or feels is not correct or incomplete. This happens even in the internal audits, although the auditors are own people and acquainted, because they are from different section. No one wants a second person to point his lapses in systems. Therefore, internal audits cannot be called as self assessment in true sense. For self assessment, people within the section are preferred. It is best if the person performing does the assessment of own activities.

Self assessment is done by people from inside an organization in order to understand the real gaps in systems or the level of preparedness for facing an external assessment. This can be done for the individuals also to assess his/her preparedness for taking up an activity or to analyse the reasons for success or failure In case of self assessment, there is no fear of a second or third person raising nonconformity against us, but we ourselves will be ascertaining our performance There will be no hiding. The assessment will be impartial when there is an intention of improving self importance will be given to the values we respect and the goal we would like to achieve. We need to satisfy ourselves that what we are doing is correct. Self Assessment is therefore strongly recommended.

Five Golden Questions

To become a winner we should always be competitive and performing. Whatever may be the activity being managed, we need to understand the basic purpose for which we are working, how we can achieve, what results are expected and how likely we are to fare in the competitive environment.

People sometimes copy procedures from others because those were doing well or had some reputation. By this one cannot guarantee the results as it is not clear whether that procedure is appropriate for the culture, technology, infrastructure, environment and the expectations of the customers.

A number of Quality Management Systems are developed with an intention of making the company / person stronger and competitive. Each system has its own policy and methodology. The promoters of those systems claim their systems as the best. The implementers, when study different systems are in a fix, as all seem good, and how to integrate them is not clear. There is a need for a simple concept, that can help every one. It should help in self assessment, so that one can understand the reality and work on it. The following five basic questions named as Golden Questions, if answered promptly, can help in achieving the targets. These questions are developed considering the PDCA concepts developed by Dr.Edward Deming, Approach, Deployment and Result concepts adopted in Malcolm Baldrige Cnteria and the Benchmarking concepts together.