Assessment For Action Planning & Accountable Follow-Through

• InTheZone, Inc Approach to Customized Assessment
• Accountable "Really Do It!" Follow Through
• Assessment of Areas Critical To Individual, Team, and Organizational Success
• Unique Winner's Way AAAssessments
• InTheZone, Inc Approach to Customized Assessment

Educated Choices from an ever-growing menu. Leadership scales, "360-degree" assessments, culture climate surveys, indicators that determine your type--the market is full of assessment tools from surveys and tests to focus group formats. As a licensed psychologist, I leverage decades of experience with assessment tools and interview processes to work with you to determine the tools that fit your strategic goals. We assess your developmental needs and choose psychometrically reliable and valid measures to gather data that help clarify the direction of our work together. ITZ Assessment processes are based on client goals and needs. We bring extensive expertise, as behavioral scientists, regarding assessment tools to generate buy-in to recommendations based on valid data and client focused goals.

Accountable Customized Assessment to Foster Development, NOT One-Size-Fits-All Assessment For Its Own Sake. Assessment in and of itself is of limited value. At best, it provides lots of colorful bar charts and pie graphs. At worst, it labels people and organizations, leaving them with no clear direction or plan to make the changes that would improve performance and move them toward their desired destination.

At their most absurd, I have witnessed the overuse of assessment tools, applying one-size-fits-all assessments that are not related to the individual, team, or organizational challenges at hand. And I have even seen large-scale 360-degree assessment administered on-line that have produced beautiful 50-page reports with each participant's name emblazoned on the cover--but the recipient had never participated in the survey nor had the people who allegedly rated him or her.

From my years of experience and training in assessment and testing and over a decade of teaching assessment, diagnosis, and action planning at Dartmouth Medical School , I know that assessment and testing is only as good as the purpose for which it is intended. Furthermore, I have seen that the best assessment or diagnostic process is only as good as the recommended action plan that is generated. And the feedback process is critical for engaging hearts and minds to generate buy-in and for enlisting the physical energy and commitment for making the changes indicated in the plan. Building in accountable follow-through adds the critical piece for ensuring that you and others "Really Do It!" --turn strategic goals and plans indicated by the initial and ongoing assessment into strategic actions.

What works for you, not just what makes money for us. Licensed Psychologists have access to far more than the tools available through distributors who receive commissions from "licensed distributors" who sell their wares. As a licensed psychologist, I have access to state-of-the-art assessment tools that are not available to non-psychologists as well as to the tools available through channels of licensed distributors. I also have the expertise based on years of education and real-world experience to know that all instruments are not created equal when it comes to providing information that is valid and reliable. I can help you choose and customize, when appropriate, specific assessment tools and assessment interview processes for your particular setting.

Strategic choices of assessment methods will decrease the cost in money and time of assessment and feedback processes.


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• Accountable "Really Do It!" Follow Through


Actionable Assessment That You Can Put To Work. We approach assessment by answering YES to the following questions:

• Appropriate --does it efficiently and cost-effectively meets client needs?

• Accurate --does it measures what it proposes in a reliable manner?

• Action-oriented --Are assessment tools and processes used for developing action plans?

• Accountable follow-through --Do feedback and action plans utilize specific means, measures, and check-in processes to ensure accountable and accurate follow-through and opportunities for constructive corrective feedback?

ITZ's action-oriented, goal-directed reports and verbal feedback will provide a roadmap that describes your starting point, the desired destination, methods to get there, and checkpoints along the way to answer the age-old question of 'are we there yet?'. You will understand the significance of your color charts and have a game plan for changing them in desired directions to build individual, team and organizational performance and pride in doing so.

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• Assessment of Areas Critical To Individual, Team, and Organizational Success


Assessing Individual and Organizational Effectiveness and Enjoyment To Build Attitudes, Mindsets, Focus, and Energy of Winner's Way Systems

ITZ can provide assessment of the following factors that have been linked to individual, team and organizational productivity, ownership, and success including profitability and winning scores:

Leadership-- mindsets and behaviors across the organization

Team culture
Team membership mindsets and behaviors
Team effectiveness and Team work
Relationships within the organization and without--with customers, clients, and other external stakeholders

Communication
Effectiveness--Do people listen so others talk and so they really hear what is said? Do people talk in a way that others want to listen?
Styles and adaptability

Mission, Vision, Strategic Goals & Plans, and Core Values--In Action
Alignment of the behaviors, mindsets and communications of individuals and teams with the Mission, Vision, Values and Strategic Plans of the organization

Motivation
Intensity of inner drive and the factors that move people to action
Emotional Intelligence

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• Unique Winner's Way AAAssessments


Unique Winner's Way AAAssessments for Individuals, Teams, Organizations.

In addition, ITZ provides unique and innovative assessments of the 3 critical elements that empower people to authentically connect to a variety of situations and people.

Engagement has been correlated by Gallup researchers and others with significant improvements in workplace performance including productivity, profitability, and efficiency and with enhanced cultures where ownership is up and turnover is down (See Resources and www.gallup.com ).

With Winner's Way AAAssessments, you will get a reading on and a strategic plan to develop "the 3 A's" of The Winner's Way for the individuals and teams who build your organization's strength and resilience. The assessment and developmental plan will empower people to engage with a variety of challenges and people including colleagues, customers, clients, vendors, managers and supervisees. Engagement and flexibility will enable people to manage the stress of competition and to develop the resilience to stay at the front of competitive packs for the long run.


Attention --wide-angle or microscopic, internal or external, people or things.

• What is the primary lens that determines your reality and is relied on during stress?

• What focus drives you to distraction and detachment?

• How can you shift this lens flexibly to connect with a variety of situations and people and to see the world through a variety of perspectives, including the view of colleagues, customers, clients, and competitors


Activation --fast-forward to steady, from the top of individual and organization's heads to the tips of toes and frontlines.

• Identify activation speed and situations for which it is a good fit and those in which your typical style is a poor fit that leads to agitated outbursts or apathetic checking out.

• Identify the areas that individuals, teams, and organizations carry activation and its early warning signs to enable implementation of customized strategies for ramping it up or turning it down to engage with a variety of people and challenges.

Attitudes --attitudes as drivers that move you to action or hinder you.

• Action, accuracy, acknowledgement, affiliation--identify the drivers that move you to action and drive you to distraction.

• Attitudes as 'assumptive beliefs'-- determine the assumptive beliefs that hinder and those that enable turning visions, goals, and plans into strategic actions.

• Determine the attitudes you want to pack and those that you want to ditch to move yourself to action, including introducing health-building habits that will keep individuals, teams and organizations in it for the long run.

All Together Now --"The 3 A's" are intertwined in a systems relationship that resembles an upside-down-U .

When activation is high, attention narrows and attitudes become cast in stone creating that 'stress makes you stupid' sensation that knocks you out of "the Zone." At very low levels of activation, attention widens and the mind is so open that you may wonder if you have an attention deficit problem. Use this tool to:

• Determine where you usually ride on the curve.

• Identify and chart the curves of the situations and people that are a good fit and those that require more effort for you to join in.
Develop personalized individual, team and organization-wide strategies for tuning in and turning all "3 A's" around and methods to use any one to alter the other two for those days when merely breathing isn't enough...

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