Assessments: The Agendashift™ Unbenchmarking Service

A different kind of assessment with unique, machine-assisted analysis. This is not the lazy consultant's way of telling you that you're not using their favourite practices; neither is it “everyone else is better than you” (they aren't) or “you're doing it wrong” (we're not here to judge). It's there to help you find a way forward from where you are now, wherever that happens to be.

When and why to unbenchmark

  • You’re embarking on a journey of Lean-Agile transformation and you want a better understanding of the landscape you’ll be navigating
  • Your improvement efforts are stalling and it’s time to agree priorities afresh
  • As input to your corporate culture exercise, team retrospective, departmental meeting, or offsite
  • Anytime you need to reorient, re-baseline, take stock, and re-energise
  • When it’s time to take a regular checkpoint
  • As a low-commitment step before taking an Agendashift workshop or engaging an Agendashift partner

How it works

  • We set up for you an online survey with the full 42-prompt Agendashift delivery assessment
  • You distribute it internally for your staff to complete by the agreed deadline
  • We report back to you:
    • The overall distribution of your scores
    • Stronger and weaker categories and prompts, as measured in absolute terms (without reference to other data)
    • Categories and prompts whose aggregate scores are above or below the expected profile given the correlations we have observed
    • Areas of agreement and disagreement, reinforcing the more obvious findings and creating opportunities for story-gathering where the picture is more mixed
    • The complete set of aggregate results for all categories and prompts (twice over in fact – one set for prioritisation purposes, another for planning)

If you’re a veteran of one of our workshops or you have read the Agendashift book (chapters 2 and 3 in particular), you’ll recognise this reporting structure. It reflects how we typically organise a survey debrief and the mapping exercises that follow.

Unbenchmarking

The new and exciting bit is the identification of data points above or below the expected profile, ie scores that differ from what might be expected given your survey's overall shape and the correlations between scores we observe elsewhere. We’ve used machine learning techniques on our growing dataset to create a model of survey results to which yours can be fitted; the deviations above and below the best-fit model identify what’s particular to you. Instead of a crude index or vanity metric that’s meaningless in the context of an open-ended journey of transformation, we give you detailed insights you can actually work with.

Should you decide to repeat the exercise at some later date, any significant changes to your profile will cause new areas of interest to be highlighted. Just as you’d expect!

In this real example, the three prompts whose scores lie furthest below the expected profile clearly have something in common:

As illustrated here, the biggest opportunities can hide in unexpected places, away from where absolute scores are obviously weak. Unbenchmarking highlights these potential action items for you automatically.

What happens next is of course up to you. However, the process of turning prioritised prompts into an agreed plan of actionable outcomes appropriate to your unique context is something we are well practised at facilitating; no matter wherever you are located, we should be able to find you some valuable support.

Online and offline, the unbenchmarking report

Online, the unbenchmarking report is presented as a simple single page app (SPA). It's facilitator-friendly, taking you through survey results in the same tried-and-tested sequence that we use in our workshops. You can even page through it with your clicker! For offline purposes, it prints nicely to A4 and US Letter page sizes.

Pricing

The Agendashift unbenchmarking service is priced at £75 (about €82 or $98) per survey plus £1 per person over 10 people surveyed, with survey sizes specified in advance.

Several discounts are available:

  • We make generous allowances for charitable, non-profit, educational, and government organisations
  • If you’re based outside the major economies we can make PPP adjustments
  • For large exercises involving multiple teams or departments, you may find it helpful to receive both separate and combined results; pricing will depend on complexity but multiple surveys will in general attract discounts.
  • Similarly, repeat exercises (eg quarterly) will be discounted

The Agendashift delivery assessment is already included as prework for our transformation strategy and practitioner’s workshops. Where workshops follow unbenchmarking we’ll adjust workshop pricing appropriately. You won’t pay twice!

Finally, you should consider engaging one of our partners, professionals well qualified to support you in your journey of transformation.

Get in touch now to arrange your unbenchmarking exercise:

Arrange an unbenchmarking exercise


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About us

Agendashift™ is brought to you by Agendashift Ltd (formerly Positive Incline Ltd), UK-based specialists in leadership, engagement, strategy, and change. Founder Mike Burrows came to prominence in the Lean-Agile community as the originator of Kanban’s values model, out of which came his first book, Kanban from the Inside (2014). His more recent books Agendashift (2nd edition 2021) and Right to Left (2019, audiobook 2020) bring a resolutely needs-based and outcome-oriented perspective to change, transformation, and the Lean-Agile landscape as a whole, contributing meanwhile a number of popular tools, games, and other resources. He works as a consultant, facilitator, and trainer, and as a keynote speaker at events public and private around the world.


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