The
term “front-end analysis” was coined by Joe Harless in 1970. Harless believed
that in many of the projects he had worked on, analysis would have been more
effective at the front rather than at the end. In other words, Harless thought
it would be helpful to fully understand the problem before developing the
solution.
As its name suggests, front-end analysis takes place at the beginning of the design process and helps to determine and identify the main problem.
Harless created a list of 13 questions that should be asked before determining interventions for organizational problems.
AN OUNCE OF (GOOD) ASSESSMENT IS WORTH A POUND OF ANALYSIS AND A TON OF
CURE
Roger Kaufman
A number of years ago, Joe Harless in
his brilliant An Ounce of Analysis is
Worth a Pound of Cure [i]
set the stage for encouraging serious people not pick a solution, or cure,
before knowing the problem.
While it is
usual to address presenting symptoms with a “fix” before documenting—assessing
the validity, importance, value and worth of the overall problem---this turns
out to be both ineffective and inefficient.
Not only should you know where you are going and how to tell when you
have arrived (measurable objectives), it
is critical to first make sure that where you are going is where you should
go.
Validating where you are headed and
justifying why is the major role of a valid needs assessment. A lot of time and money has been wasted on
fixing the wrong problem and that can be avoided.
And some of the tools, such as problem
analysis, or ADDIE[ii],
that are in our conventional arsenal might encourage us to assume that the
problem at hand is what the we should resolve…and not just a symptom of an
underlying problem.
In our ASTD book Needs Assessment for Organizational Success[iii]
we take the insight even further.
Analysis—the process of breaking something down into its parts and
showing the relationships among the parts== is important and useful ONLY if you
know you are dealing with the actual problem…not just a symptom or even what
people think is the real problem.
In the
cold war, President Reagan said “trust but verify” and that is useful in
today’s professional performance improvement world. We best justify our problem
before moving forward to the pound of analysis and a ton of cure. Of course, the ‘heavy lifting’ in any
organization is in the analysis and cure but before expending our time and
talent, let’s do the assessment first.
In their writings, both Deming
and Juran noted that 80-90% of all performance problems are not about
individual performance but breakdowns at higher levels: the organization itself
and in our shared society, No matter how
efficiently and effectively the crew of the Titanic re-arranged the deck
chairs, what was require was not steam into an iceberg.
No matter how well trained the crew and how
well they worked together to meet passenger expectations the direction in which
the ship was headed was the most important factor,
One could analyze the performance
of individual and groups of crew members, they could analyze team behavior and
they could have set up massive training and human resource development programs
and all would have been futile. So even
a ton of analysis and then a pound of cure ,would not make the mission
successful. And there is where assessment comes in.
Ingrid Guerra-Lopez and I make
the argument, and supply the concepts and tools for that vital—even
critical—ounce of assessment. Good assessment.
By defining a “need” as a gap in results, and by assessing those gaps in
results at three aligned levels: (1)
societal/external clients, (2) organizational, and then (3) individual and
small groups we can determine if the organization is heading in the correct and
most practical direction. And if they are not, valid information can be
provided to change direction. That is the most useful type of needs assessment.
The justification for determining
if the problem to be assessed and then cured is based on prioritizing the needs
at each of the three levels on the basis of the costs to meet the needs (close
the gaps in results) and compared to the costs of ignoring them. By doing this ‘ounce of assessment’ before
doing the pound of analysis and a ton of cure we can better assure that all we
do in analysis and cure/development will be successful.
Doing so is practical, ethical,
and will lead to measurable success.
Roger Kaufman
END NOTES
[i] Harless, J. An Ounce of Analysis is Worth a
Pound of Cure. Newnan, GA: Harless Performance Guild, 1975)
[ii] Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation,
evaluation (ADDIE)
[iii] Kaufman, R, & Guerra-Lopez, I. (2013) Needs
Assessment for Organizational Success, Alexandria, Va. ASTD Press
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