In today's world it's almost impossible to carve out enough time in a project schedule to perform a comperehensive needs analysis. Many people are forced to perform iterative analysis as they deliver. To help ensure the effectiveness of your learning experience, consider this 5-step rapid needs analysis process when you find time is of the essence:
- Identify the improvement opportunity.
- Identify and clearly state the issue or improvement opportunity, and the desired organizational outcome. It's easy to assume that all the key stakeholders know what the issue or opportunity is, but there can be significant variations in people's viewpoints. Many times stakeholders have general expectations in their heads (such as "our managers need to be more professional") that require you to drill down to specific behaviors. Performance issues or opportunities need to be clearly stated in terms of measurable behaviors, and agreed upon by all the stakeholders.
- Collect the performance data.
- There are a variety of methods available for data collection, including interviews, observation, surveys and other source documents. Select the best methods for the particular organization and situation. Whenever possible, conduct interviews because they enable you to ask follow-up questions and provide richer data. The key is to gather just enough needed data. Gather information from a variety of sources, including managers, supervisors, accomplished performers, and typical performers. Relying solely on the performers themselves can lead to major gaps because people can't easily articulate why they do what they do, and they make assumptions about what they know versus what a newcomer to the job would know.
- Analyze the data.
- Once you have documented the data, look for consistencies and inconsistencies within the findings and avoid jumping to conclusions. Next, identify the performance gaps by comparing what people are doing to what they should be doing.
- Conduct a cause analysis.
- Before you select solutions for closing the performance gap, identify the causes for the gap. Consider whether the cause is due to a lack of skill or knowledge, or if there are motivational or other workplace obstacles to achieving desired performance.
- Recommend the solution.
- Based on the causes for the performance gap, identify appropriate solutions. Keep in mind how the performance issue links back to organizational results and needs to ensure you propose solutions that are both realistic and relevant. You should almost always recommend multiple solutions, because there are usually multiple causes for the performance gap.