Recording Your Needs Assessment Data

Based on the discussion of the Organizational Elements Model (OEM), in order to identify needs at each level, please complete Table 7.1 with examples that apply to your personal and/or professional life (your choice of which one).

Table 7.1. A table for recording needs (gaps in results) for each of the Organizational Elements.

Not everything called a “needs assessment” is really useful, and some are possibly harmful. Just about anything gets called a “need assessment.” Most of the time, it is really a “wants assessment” because it is processes and solutions that are desired. As an example of the confusion, a popular method in the literature (and indeed popular in practice as well) is a “training needs assessment.” If you believe the writings of Deming⁷ and Juran⁸ and if you do training needs assessment, you will be wrong 80 or 90 percent of the time.

Why? Each of these noted professionals note that 80 or 90 percent of all breakdowns are not individual performance (Micro/Products) breakdowns but system (Macro or Mega) breakdowns. So if you only fix something—no matter how well or how cleverly—at the individual performance level (through such interventions as training, performance technology, job aids, electronic performance supports), then you will only be right a very small percentage of the time. You can spend a lot of time, effort, and money at the Micro/Product level and if the breakdowns are above, then you have wasted many resources and probably frustrated the people involved.

Three bonuses for using “need” as a noun. There is a 3-for-1 sale for using “need” as the gap in results between current results and consequences and desired results and consequences:

1.   The What Should Be criteria serve as your measurable objectives—your performance criteria—for specifying where you are headed and how to tell when you have arrived. Successful performance design and development requires that we state our objectives in measurable performance terms, ideally on an Interval or Ratio Scale. Defining “need” in this way yields such objectives, and they are based on actual performance.

2.   The gaps between current results (What Is) and desired/required results (What Should Be) provide the basis for sensible, sensitive, and justifiable evaluation. That is a positive bonus, for that comes with using “need” as a noun.

Usually we get told “we don’t have the time and or resources for evaluation,” and this answers that invalid objection to doing evaluations. (Interesting how some people don’t have the time or resources to do an evaluation but have to come up with them when an intervention or program fails.)

By using “need” as a gap in results, one only has to plot the extent to which performance results have migrated from the previous What Is for results to the What Should Be for results. The extent to which the gap in results has been reduced or eliminated is the evaluation—evaluation based on performance data.

3.   Using need as a noun allows you to justify where you are headed, why you want to get there, and what are the payoffs for doing so. It provides an almost bullet-proof rationale for any proposed work or activities. Let’s see.

Getting an edge when writing proposals. Most proposals get turned down because they “cost too much,” “there is not enough time,” or “there are not enough resources.” This negative decision may be made if one only proposed based on the cost to meet the needs—the costs to close the gaps in results.

Now, based on the third bonus for defining “need” as a noun, when you collect solid data on the gaps (best at the Mega, Macro, and Micro levels), you may price out (a) the costs to meet the needs and (b) the costs to ignore the needs. This is a major difference with conventional approaches to proposing programs, projects, or activities.

If you provide the decision maker with both the costs to meet the needs as well as the costs to ignore the needs (think about the costs for not having safe oil tankers, for not having non-roll-over cars, for not having safe food or medicines), the decision maker becomes accountable for not meeting the needs if he or she decides not to go ahead with meeting the needs you have specified based on valid data.

When estimates of costs-consequences based on Mega and needs assessment as defined here have been accomplished, there is a solid base for making decisions.⁹ Applications have varied from industry to state government, including the Florida Division of Blind Services, Refinor (Argentina), State of Ohio Workforce Development, Sonora Institute of Technology, to name a few.¹⁰

Needs at the Mega level—an incomplete example. Using the example of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans (with hypothetical numbers), let’s explore needs as gaps in results. Here is a partial table to show needs as gaps in results:

For each element at the Mega level, there are gaps in results identified. These all are related to Mega results and consequences. Not practical or real world? Just put yourself in the shoes of those impacted by storms and see if these gaps in results should not be closed. Can we achieve closure for all? We ethically have to see how close we can get in the future.

To ensure that you link all three levels of planning and results in your Mega Thinking and Planning, use the job aid in Figure 7.3.