Organisational Assessments: a useful alternative to evaluations

Many think tanks face the need to undertake organisational assessments -much better than an evaluation. This site offers very useful advice into how to go about it: Reflect & Learn | Learning together about Organizational Assessment.

The purpose of Reflect & Learn (R&L) is to help organizations improve their performance by using Organizational Assessment (OA).  Organizational assessment (OA) is a tool that supports an organization in its quest to learn more about itself. The process of reflection in OA is based on providing an organizational diagnosis that allows organizational stakeholders to learn from experiences and results, in order to facilitate decision-making and foster more strategic vision, more effective programs, stronger governance, etc.  Organizational assessment can be part of a process of change and capacity building.

It offers a series of self-assessment tools as well as detail on key frameworks:

• Universalia Institutional and Organizational Assesment Model (IOA Model)
• A Causal Model of Organizational Performance & Change (Burke & Litwin Model)
• The Seven-S Model
• The Marvin Weisbord Six-Box Model (Weisbord’s Model)
• Open Systems Model