Diagnostic Business Assessment

Identifying and Quantifying Strategic Obstacles

To help its clients understand their most pressing strategic issues both cost-effectively and quickly, GMT has created a unique diagnostic assessment tool that spans the entire client business.

GMT’s diagnostic business assessment uses broad surveys and personal interviews to target the areas for improvement that almost everyone can agree on, as well as to identify the “disconnects” within the organization—areas where senior team members are not communicating effectively with one another, or with lower-level managers.

The questions asked during GMT’s diagnostic assessment process reveal sensitive issues that aren’t often addressed—and commonly have never before been quantified. These issues include the level of innovation fostered by the company, the degree to which employees feel empowered, and the clarity of the strategic direction.

A Forum for Communication—and Improvement
Diverse Clients, Common Obstacles
The Result: A Fact-Based Plan for the Future

A Forum for Communication—and Improvement

Every executive struggles with such difficult cultural questions as how to instill entrepreneurial vigor into the business, or how to improve employee morale. And, of course, executives also must grapple with more practical issues, such as how to launch products more effectively, or how to reduce operating costs.

What these “soft” and “hard” questions have in common is that they can usually be most effectively answered by employees at lower levels of the organization—those people who are closest to work processes, and who have the best understanding of the true cultural environment within the business.

The problem for executives lies in creating a constructive forum for these employees, so that they can communicate their perspectives candidly—and make a meaningful contribution to the strategic direction.

GMT’s diagnostic business assessment creates that forum—and an environment in which employees feel both included and valued.

By collecting candid feedback from across the organization, executives finally have honest, quantifiable answers to such questions as:

	Are we sending a clear and consistent message to our employees?
	What are the internal obstacles to making improvements within the business?
	Do our employees feel a sense of ownership and commitment?
	Is there a gap between our strategy and our daily work processes?
	Are new plans, programs, or products well explained to those who must implement our strategy?

Instead of acting on intuition or conventional wisdom, top executives can respond to the detailed, fact-based findings presented by the GMT team—and make realistic plans for addressing the identified challenges.

Diverse Clients, Common Obstacles

While many GMT assessments have uncovered very client-specific findings—such as an ineffective product development process or a need for improved sales forecasting—GMT has found that there are also a number of common obstacles found in nearly every business.

In dozens of assessments, spanning a wide range of businesses, GMT has found that the most typical growth obstacles include the following:

	The senior team is usually ineffective in communicating its strategy well—or in creating buy-in at lower levels. While most senior executives think that they personally understand the overall strategy, few managers at lower levels think they do. Lack of a clear direction is one of the biggest problems in nearly every company for which GMT has conducted a diagnostic business assessment.
	Strategies are not being enacted on a day-to-day basis. GMT’s diagnostic commonly reveals a wide disparity between the top-level strategy and everyday operating practices. Even if GMT’s assessment finds that the strategy is well defined, it is typically not being achieved at the individual employee level.
	Top executives are focusing on the wrong issues. GMT’s experience has shown that the biggest obstacles to success are usually cultural issues—not the cost-control or work-process improvements on which organizations usually focus. Examples of the top problems revealed during a typical GMT diagnostic are turf protection among departments, low levels of employee empowerment, and sagging morale.

These are exactly the kinds of “invisible” issues that executives most need to understand—but the typical corporate environment does not allow an opportunity to do so. GMT’s diagnostic assessment provides a venue for quantifying and addressing these hidden obstacles to success.

The Result: A Fact-Based Plan for the Future

GMT’s thorough diagnostic assessment process provides clients with a unique foundation for future growth: a list of the most pressing issues confronting the business, as expressed by employees at all levels of the organization.

Based on this broad, candid input, top executives can feel a high degree of confidence as they work to address these quantified obstacles—and to ensure that their strategy for the future can be effectively implemented across functions and at the individual employee level.