Self-assessments › Foundations
Where the questions come from
Six self-assessments, just over 100 statements. This page sets out the basis of the self-assessments openly: what each individual dimension is based on, what I changed in the underlying models – and where I rely on nothing but my own experience.
Preliminary note
What these self-assessments are not
They are not a study and not a maturity model with benchmark values. Above all, they are not an instrument that measures your institution – a four-minute self-assessment cannot do that, and anyone who claims otherwise is selling you something.
What they are: a structured way of asking yourself the questions that get lost in day-to-day business. The structure comes from models that have been in use for decades. The wording of the individual statements comes from what I have actually encountered in banks and financial services providers.
Citing a model is easy. Saying what you changed in it and why is the real information.
That is why each self-assessment shows three things: the five areas it looks at. The model behind it, in one sentence. And the intervention – that is, what I did differently from the original. The source references follow below, so that you can read up on them instead of having to take my word for it.
Where a self-assessment has no model behind it, this is stated explicitly. That applies to two of the six.
The six self-assessments in detail
Basis, intervention, source
Transformation self-assessment
Five areas: Strategy & market position · Structure & steering · Processes & systems · People & capabilities · Leadership & culture
The model
The 7-S model describes an organisation in terms of seven interdependent elements: Strategy, Structure, Systems, Staff, Skills, Style and Shared Values. Its core idea is the title of the article in which it first appeared in 1980 – structure is not organisation. Changing only the organisation chart changes nothing.
What I changed
Seven elements have become five areas. Staff and Skills are combined into “People & capabilities”, Style and Shared Values into “Leadership & culture”. The reason is practical: in a four-minute self-assessment, nobody reliably distinguishes between leadership style and shared values – you end up answering the same question twice anyway.
The second intervention carries more weight: the 7-S model looks inwards. It has no place for the market. That is why the first area here explicitly includes “market position” in its name and asks about performance relative to the peer group. An institution can be excellently organised internally and still have to restructure because the market has moved.
How the result is classified
The rating levels follow the change formula: dissatisfaction with the status quo, a clear vision of the target state and concrete first steps are multiplied and together must exceed the resistance. Multiplied, not added – that is the whole point. If one of the three factors is missing entirely, the product is zero, and then even a brilliant vision of the target state achieves nothing.
On attribution
The formula is often called the “Beckhard-Harris formula” and written as D × V × F > R. That mixes up two versions. It was devised by David Gleicher; Richard Beckhard published it in 1975, explicitly under Gleicher’s name. The familiar four-letter short form comes from Kathleen Dannemiller. It is multiplicative in both versions.
- Waterman, R. H., Peters, T. J. & Phillips, J. R. (1980). Structure is not organization. Business Horizons, 23(3), 14–26. Developed at McKinsey & Company. View source (doi.org)
- Peters, T. J. & Waterman, R. H. (1982). In Search of Excellence. Harper & Row. The version through which the model became known.
- Beckhard, R. (1975). Strategies for large system change. Sloan Management Review, 16(2), 43–55. First publication of the formula, crediting David Gleicher.
- Beckhard, R. & Harris, R. T. (1977). Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change. Addison-Wesley.
- Dannemiller, K. D. & Jacobs, R. W. (1992). Changing the way organizations change: A revolution of common sense. The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 28(4), 480–498. View source (doi.org)
Change self-assessment
Five areas: Awareness · Desire · Knowledge · Ability · Reinforcement
The model
The Prosci® ADKAR® model describes change as a sequence of five states that a person has to pass through: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. The order is not a list but a chain. Anyone who does not see the need develops no desire; anyone without the desire takes in no knowledge.
What I changed
Nothing in the structure – and that is a deliberate decision. When a model is taught and used worldwide in this form, it is more honest towards the reader to adopt it openly than to rename it and pass it off as one’s own.
The intervention lies in the level of application. ADKAR describes a person. The self-assessment asks about an organisation, and specifically in relation to a concrete initiative, not the institution in general. That is the translation this self-assessment provides: five individual states become five questions about whether a team has reached them collectively.
A second addition, from my own time at General Electric: the equation Q × A = E. The effectiveness of an initiative is the product of the quality of the solution and its acceptance. Here, too, a product rather than a sum – a technically brilliant solution with acceptance close to zero does not have a small effect, it has none at all.
Two clarifications
On the trademark: ADKAR is a registered trademark of Prosci. I refer to the published model. I am neither certified nor commissioned by Prosci, and the self-assessment is not a Prosci product.
On the GE source: I know the Change Acceleration Process from applying it, not from the literature. It is an internal General Electric programme; there is no foundational work on it that I could point you to. Anyone wishing to verify its origin will find only secondary accounts – you should know that before deciding how much weight to give this reference.
- Hiatt, J. M. (2006). ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and our Community. Prosci Learning Center Publications.
- Change Acceleration Process (CAP), General Electric – internal programme associated with Work-Out and management training at Crotonville. No primary publication.
- Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading Change. Harvard Business School Press. Reference point for urgency as the first step.
Project self-assessment
Five areas: Governance & decision-making · Objective, scope & benefits · Deadlines, resources & capacity · Risk & transparency · Stakeholders & embedding
The model
Two standards stand side by side here. In its eighth edition, the PMBOK Guide of the Project Management Institute describes seven performance domains of project management. ISO 21502 is the international guidance on the subject; it is shorter, more uncompromising and, at one point, requires something that the PMBOK leaves more open.
What I changed
Seven performance domains have become five areas – again because nobody keeps seven categories cleanly apart in a four-minute self-assessment.
The real intervention is a different one: benefits have been moved to the front. In both standards they are one topic among many. In my experience, everything else hinges on them. An initiative in which deadlines and budget are measured, but nobody is personally accountable for the promised benefits, will, if in doubt, deliver something on time that nobody needs. This is exactly where ISO 21502 is clearer than the PMBOK: it requires a benefits owner.
And there is one area that is not named this way in either standard: the question of what is still running six months after handover. Standards end with project closure. Organisations do not.
- Project Management Institute (2025). A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK Guide) – Eighth Edition and The Standard for Project Management. PMI.
- International Organization for Standardization (2020). ISO 21502:2020 Project, programme and portfolio management – Guidance on project management. ISO. View source (iso.org)
- Supplementary: International Organization for Standardization (2021). ISO 21500:2021 Project, programme and portfolio management – Context and concepts. ISO. The terminology standard of the family; the earlier ISO 21500:2012 has been withdrawn and its guidance content has been carried over into 21502. View source (iso.org)
- DMAIC cycle from Six Sigma – for its origin, see the sales/SFE self-assessment.
Sales/SFE self-assessment
Five areas: Customer knowledge · Sales force · Steering · Leadership · Processes
Where this self-assessment comes from
This is the self-assessment without a textbook. “Sales force effectiveness” is not a model with an author and a year, but a field of work – and I would be misleading you if I wrote an author’s name here.
The five areas and the twenty statements come from my own practice: from building and steering sales organisations at GE Money Bank and Santander Consumer Bank, and from my work in Austrian institutions. Specifically, from rolling out 19 sales force effectiveness instruments across 36 locations – in other words, from the difference between what an instrument promises and what is still being used in a branch after twelve months.
The structure behind it
What gives this self-assessment its order is the DMAIC cycle from Six Sigma: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. The statements therefore systematically ask about measurability rather than intentions – whether you know your lead times in figures, not whether you think they are good. I learned Six Sigma at General Electric; that way of thinking shapes this self-assessment more than any sales literature.
A sales organisation that does not know its leading indicators is steering by the rear-view mirror.
- Six Sigma: developed at Motorola from 1986 (principally Bill Smith), spread worldwide by General Electric from 1995.
- DMAIC: Define – Measure – Analyze – Improve – Control, the cycle for improving existing processes.
- The content basis of the twenty statements is my own professional practice, not a publication.
Decision-making self-assessment
Five areas: Dissent · Information flow · Alternatives · Outside view · Review
The model – or more precisely: the four models
This self-assessment has no single template. It combines four lines of research, each of which carries one dimension.
Dissent comes from Irving L. Janis. His concept of groupthink describes how the pursuit of unanimity displaces the sober examination of alternatives – not out of stupidity, but out of cohesion.
Alternatives comes from Gary Klein and his premortem: before the decision, you assume that the initiative has already failed and collect the reasons in hindsight. Its effect rests on presenting failure as certain – people come up with considerably more about a certain event than about a possible one.
Information flow comes from Chris Argyris. His defensive routines are patterns of behaviour that protect individuals and organisations from embarrassment – and in doing so block precisely the information from which they would learn.
Outside view comes from Daniel Kahneman and Dan Lovallo: the distinction between the inside view of one’s own initiative and the outside view of a class of comparable initiatives. Anyone who only looks inwards will reliably plan too optimistically.
What I changed
The combination itself is the intervention. Placing four independent findings side by side and turning them into five testable conditions is not simply adopting a model.
And a shift in the subject: the self-assessment does not measure you. It measures the conditions under which you decide. That is deliberate – the four works cited are all about clever people making poor decisions under poor conditions. The fifth dimension, review, is my addition: none of the four models asks whether an organisation takes another look at its own decisions later on.
Two points of precision
The word “groupthink” does not come from Janis but from William H. Whyte (Fortune, 1952). Janis developed and studied the concept behind it.
Percentages circulate about how much the premortem improves the hit rate. I do not cite them because they cannot be traced back to the underlying study.
- Janis, I. L. (1972). Victims of Groupthink. Houghton Mifflin. Second edition 1982 under the title Groupthink; Janis first used the term in Psychology Today, November 1971.
- Klein, G. (2007). Performing a project premortem. Harvard Business Review, 85(9), 18–19. View source (hbr.org)
- Mitchell, D. J., Russo, J. E. & Pennington, N. (1989). Back to the future: Temporal perspective in the explanation of events. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 2(1), 25–38. The groundwork for the method. View source (doi.org)
- Argyris, C. (1985). Strategy, Change and Defensive Routines. Pitman. And Argyris, C. (1990). Overcoming Organizational Defenses. Allyn & Bacon.
- Kahneman, D. & Lovallo, D. (1993). Timid choices and bold forecasts: A cognitive perspective on risk taking. Management Science, 39(1), 17–31. View source (doi.org) Practitioner version: Lovallo, D. & Kahneman, D. (2003). Delusions of success: How optimism undermines executives’ decisions. Harvard Business Review, 81(7), 56–63.
Mandate self-assessment
Seven statements · no dimensions · no diagnostic level
The basis
None. The mandate self-assessment has no model behind it, and it would be dishonest to attribute one to it.
It is my selection grid. Seven statements on whether working together makes sense for you and me right now: whether the issue is big enough, whether someone is authorised to decide, whether the timing is right. The same questions I ask myself in the first conversation anyway – except that you can now answer them yourself beforehand.
That is why there is no maturity level and no percentage here, but a recommendation. And sometimes the most honest answer is: not yet.
A selection grid that never leads to a no is a sales form.
Why this page exists at all
There are plenty of self-assessments. Most of them name no basis, because that raises the uncomfortable follow-up question: if the model comes from someone else – what is your contribution?
My answer is given above in the paragraphs “What I changed”. The models are public; anyone can read up on them. The difference lies in the interventions: which areas were merged, which was moved to the front, which was added – and on the basis of what experience. That can be verified and can therefore be discussed.
You would send back a rating without a derivation in the lending business. The same should apply to a self-assessment.
A second reason: you should be able to put the self-assessments into perspective. A result from twenty self-ratings is a reason for a conversation, not a finding. If you know what the questions are based on and where I rely on nothing but my own experience, you can decide for yourself how much weight to give the result.
Also part of this:
And if you see one of these foundations differently?
Then I would like to hear it. Disagreement with a model is the best way into a conversation about the substance behind it – and in 30 minutes we can establish whether it is worth continuing the discussion.
Note: the models and standards mentioned are the works of their respective authors; they are named as source references and imply no connection with the persons, organisations or rights holders mentioned. The self-assessments provide general information and do not replace an examination of the individual case. The image in the header was created with the help of AI; for details, see AI in client mandates. The legal information (in German) applies.