When it comes to finding the right 360 for your organization, it’s important to consider a few fundamental choices, one of which is whether you should use an off-the-shelf assessment or go the custom route.

To Customize, or Not to Customize

That is the question. In fact, this is the most common question we hear. And the short answer is, it depends, as both have legitimate advantages and disadvantages.

Let’s quickly touch on a few benefits for off-the-shelf:

• Cost – Set-up costs are typically lower than custom 360 assessments. Always a crowd pleaser!
• Time to market – You can have it tomorrow.
• Tried and true – You’re taking the same exact survey that thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of others have taken. There’s a certain degree of comfort knowing we’re all in this together.

That said, in this article we’re going to focus on the key benefits of customization.

Relevance and Alignment

Every organization is unique, in that it exists within a given industry and has its own mission, culture, values, history, and of course, its own challenges. As such, each company has a core set of competencies and expectations that are deemed essential for success. 

Customized 360 assessments are a highly focused and efficient method for measuring the specific skills that leaders need within their organization. It also has the benefit of cutting out any excess, or “noisy”, content that may be interesting, but not critical. Ultimately, this  allows for a shorter, more concise assessment. The end-result is feedback that is not only insightful, but also focused on what is more meaningful and impactful to each leader. 

And by tailoring the survey content and output within the context of a broader L&D approach, you can implement a cohesive assessment strategy that is not only consistent with corporate values and culture but also syncs within your over-arching talent development program.

Tailored Development Plans

If you look at the truly successful 360 programs (and we’ve seen many) they all have one thing in common: they place a strong focus on what happens after the feedback is delivered. To be more specific, they hold leaders accountable for creating and implementing a development plan.

If you start with a customized assessment that measures skills relevant to your organization, and to your role, then not only will the feedback itself be more relevant, but the development plan will be curated and actionable.  After all, receiving feedback can be interesting and insightful, but if your leaders aren’t effectively making improvements that matter, then you’re not realizing the full potential of your 360 investment.

Improved Participation and Engagement

We often hear that leaders and their teams feel “surveyed to death,” and that going through an assessment can feel like a chore, something to quickly check the box and move on to the more immediate demands of their role. While introducing a variety of assessments and trainings has good intentions, it can result in lower engagement in the process itself.

However, when individuals perceive that the assessment is tailored to their roles and aligns with the organization’s culture and vision, it feels less like a generic chore, and more like something that is part of the overall mission.  They are more likely to take the process seriously, actively engage, and provide honest and thoughtful feedback. This high level of engagement results in a more effective and successful program overall.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Companies tend to evolve over time, especially companies that are experiencing rapid growth or market disruptions. As they grow and adapt, so do their goals, challenges, and strategies. These changes often result in an evolution of the skills required to effectively lead their team to success. In addition to internal change, larger trends outside the corporate walls can impact the actual workplace dynamic itself. Nothing has illustrated this more clearly in recent times than the rapid shift to a more remote workforce. This has required leaders to evolve their approach, which not only impacts which skills are becoming more critical, but also how those skills are applied. 

Customized assessments offer the flexibility to adapt and evolve alongside the organization. As the reality on the ground changes, leadership expectations and skills change as well. As such, the goal isn’t necessarily a customized 360 assessment, but rather one that is customizable, so that it can evolve and remain relevant over time.

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Best of Both Worlds

Look, most medium to large organizations are utilizing 360s to some degree or another. So, this really isn’t a question of should you, or shouldn’t you, but rather how can you leverage this powerful tool most effectively.

As we mentioned earlier, off-the-shelf assessments can serve a valuable role in certain scenarios. But in terms of overall adaptability, efficiency, and long-term utility, customized 360 assessments offer key benefits that are tough to beat.  They provide you with a focused and concise tool that engages its participants and produces results that are more relevant and impactful within the context of your unique environment.

The trick, however, is to accomplish all of this without sacrificing survey validity and reliability. That is achieved by working with a library of validated, research-based, content that is modular at the competency level, while still offering up normative data to benchmark against.  The end result is the best of both worlds assessment, one that measures only what matters most, while producing reliable, accurate data you know you can trust.   

Look, we get it, after years of managing and maintaining your systems, chasing down issues and scrambling just to keep up with the latest trends, you end up spending too much time and money on the tech side of the business, and not enough time and focus on your core business, which is surely where your real expertise and passions lie. And yet, many firms seem stuck in this very scenario. For those who are trying to be both a software company and a leadership development company this article explores 3 reasons why it’s more critical than ever to re-think your firm’s identity.

One: Checkers is now Chess

While terms like “hosting” and “in the cloud” are used in nearly all aspects of business technology today, they simply didn’t exist back when many assessment companies were looking to move assessments online. This was near the end of the golden era of paper surveys and Scantron machines; it was a time when Software as a Service (SaaS) or even Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) just weren’t a thing. So, when assessments began migrating away from paper and towards the web, assessment companies (at least those who wanted to survive) took the logical step of building out their own platforms. These weren’t companies carefully weighing the options of build vs. outsource; there was only one option. If you wanted to move to the web, then you needed to find a way to build your own platform, manage your own servers, hire software developers, etc. And even when outsourcing options initially did become available, they were cost prohibitive. Simply put, the landscape has changed and there are options that exist today that just didn’t exist when L&D and assessment firms were transitioning their business to the web.

Think about it, if today’s options existed during that pivotal time, would these assessment companies still have made the costly decision to hire IT teams and developers just to build something entirely from scratch and then pay to manage it themselves? Would you have made the same decision? Probably not. Many organizations are now taking a good hard look in the mirror to determine what type of company they want to be. Are we a content company? A training or coaching company? Or a technology company? Don’t get caught playing in the wrong space; one that doesn’t cater to your strengths. Chess or Checkers? It’s an important distinction.

Two: Keeping up with the Joneses

For years, the act of taking out a pencil and manually completing a paper survey was just how it was done; it was accepted as the standard. Until it wasn’t. As soon as an easier, faster and cheaper option became available, (i.e. clicking through a survey online) paper surveys quickly became antiquated. There came a point in time where proposing paper surveys was a sales pitch killer and not having an online option meant losing to your competitors. This same evolution is happening again, but this time with the online User Experience itself. Just as paper surveys became obsolete so too have previous generations of technology and web design. UI and UX trends are evolving at such a rate, that presenting an even slightly outdated system becomes a highly visible blemish to what otherwise might be an excellent assessment solution.

As technology becomes more advanced and more integrated in all aspects of our lives, user expectations are higher than ever. Keeping ahead of the curve is no longer a nice-to-have, it’s a requirement – at least if you want to remain relevant and competitive. However, doing so requires immense financial investment. It also requires time, focus, and advanced technological expertise. If you’re not going “all in” on your 360 feedback software, then you risk falling behind and from there, it’s a slow march towards irrelevance. Like the evolutionary leap from paper to online, we’re now in an era where not having tools like interactive dashboards, talent analytics, or fully automated integrations is becoming an albatross. And this is not to mention the ever-increasing security and data privacy hoops you must jump through (don’t worry, we cover that in a separate blog).

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This e-book uncovers the thinking, tools, resources, and guidance that can help organizations get more results from their managers while spending less of their L&D budgets.

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Three: Migration Anxiety

Over the years, we’ve heard from several leaders in our industry who maintain their own platform, while also fully understanding the benefits of a hosting provider. They can clearly see that outsourcing would be cheaper and yield better outcomes, and they understand the massive time and resource drain involved in maintaining their current system. They can visualize the end-state of freeing up resources and having pure focus on their core business, all while saving money and getting a better user experience. These are folks who know where to go, they just aren’t quite sure how to get there. After all, the idea of forklifting an entire ecosystem of surveys, scoring, normative data, report templates, etc. can seem daunting. And we’ve found that most make assumptions about what that might cost and what else might they lose in the migration. We’re often asked, will I have to adopt a generic report, will I be able to keep my branding, my norms, my historical data, my methodology? We answer those questions in three words: Fully Customized Hosting. The goal is to leverage the technology, the security and performance that a hosting solution provides, but while keeping all the elements of your existing and proprietary content that makes you, “you.”

In closing, the core question here is about identity. Are you a technology company or are you an L&D company? While doing both may have worked in the past, it just doesn’t cut it in today’s environment. The tech game has fundamentally changed, the stakes of not keeping up have never been higher, and migrating isn’t as daunting (or expensive) as you may think. The bottom line: The costs of outsourcing has dropped over the years, while the cost of maintaining the status quo are growing every day.

However, finding the right rating scale can not only impact the reliability of your survey, it can also impact the overall user experience. A poorly designed rating scale has the potential to derail what might otherwise be a high-quality assessment. This article explores 360 degree feedback rating scales and the research-driven recommendations for using a frequency based, 7-point Likert scale.

Why Use Frequency vs. Quality Based Scales
360 Assessments used for leadership development will tend to embed the quality (how well someone does something) in the question item and then ask the frequency. For example, the item “Makes goals clear” contains the quality aspect, while the rating scale asks how often the person exhibits this behavior. If you word the question differently, you can make it neutral and then ask the quality (for example, goal setting– how well does this person do this?). In this scenario, it’s more reliable and efficient to ask someone a question that is easier for them to answer – an observation about frequency vs. a judgment of quality. Judgments generally require more thought, have more error, and therefore don’t predict as reliably. They also take more time to answer, which is something we are always trying to minimize. Check out this blog for more info on that topic!

Why Use 7-Point as Opposed to a 5-Point Scale?
There are many variations of rating scale, but for 360s, the 5 or 7-point tend to be the most common. However, our research shows that there are 7 distinct levels of behavioral differences that most raters can easily detect when answering questions on assessments. Originally this was done with a q‐sort method, and it was found that 5 levels of differentiation was not sufficient.

A rating scale should capitalize on the number of distinctions that most people can naturally make (don’t provide too few rating points), and avoiding suggestions of distinctions that cannot be consistently made (providing too many rating points).

The following example illustrates how the 7-point scale is derived from 3 opposing scenarios with a neutral middle option. Using as an example a manager who confronts employee conflict: There are managers who:

• Never step in and those who Always step in
• Almost Never step in and those who Almost Always step in
• Sometimes step in and those who Often step in
• And finally, there is a group between Sometimes and Often.

This can be supported by asking respondents to identify managers who define each of these 7 scale points. We have found that the 5-point scale ignored the distinction raters made between extremely high and moderate levels. Therefore, using a 5-point scale would reduce descriptive power of the assessment and sacrifice insight of activity that raters can clearly differentiate.

In Summary
While rating scales may not be the most exciting of topics, they are a critical component in the overall success of your assessment. They play an important factor, not only in your assessment’s reliability and validity but also in how easy and intuitive it is for raters to complete. Thanks for reading and happy surveying!

This modern day trend has developed into Survey Fatigue, a very real challenge that if not addressed, can be the Achilles heel in your 360 feedback program. Survey Fatigue results in a lack of engagement in the 360 process, where leaders simply go through the motions, rolling their eyes, clicking through a survey, reviewing a report, throwing it in a drawer, and then simply returning to what they were doing (and how they were doing it). Once this happens it’s hard to recover and your investment in 360s is at risk.

Unfortunately, some organizations see this lack of ROI and decide not to invest in 360 feedback at all. They incorrectly link the lack of ROI to the very concept of a 360 itself; that somehow 360s aren’t effective, when in many cases they simply failed to keep people engaged in the process.

Here’s the thing – if done correctly 360s are still one of the most cost effective methods for developing better leaders. And we already know that higher performing managers drive better performance, attract top talent and reduce turnover. So a critical question for anyone investing in a 360 degree feedback program is this: How do you make sure your leaders are fully engaged with their 360?

While there are a variety of considerations that will impact the success of your 360, there are two areas of particular importance. We have found that the survey content and the feedback report to be where most companies are unknowingly losing their audience.

• Start with the 360 feedback assessment. This is where survey quality and content relevance is absolutely critical. To avoid “fatigue” you need to present raters with a succinct set of well-crafted questions that are easy to understand, easy to answer, and which are relevant to the person being rated. Accomplishing that requires psychometric expertise and an ability to customize content. The goal is a highly focused assessment, measuring only those concepts that are relevant to a given level of leadership, and which achieves reliability with maximum efficiency.
• The 360 feedback report is another place where you’re likely losing your audience. Unfortunately, too many 360 solutions treat the report as an afterthought. Reports must be carefully and intentionally designed to capture a leader’s attention while presenting them with actionable data. In today’s world of apps, dashboards and instant data, users simply don’t have the patience to thumb through a dry 60 page static PDF. The future is in web-based reporting with a dashboard format that allows users to interact with their results. Look for reports that give users the ability to turn on and off different views, isolate rater groups and drill down into the details. These self-driven, data rich environments help keep managers engaged with their results.

Despite the research proven efficacy of 360s, investing in, and rolling out an assessment solution is not without risk. And there’s more at stake than dollars and ROI; a failed 360 only increases general survey fatigue and erodes trust in other survey initiatives you’re running. Our advice? Don’t cut corners. Seek out expertise, even if that means paying more than a software only solution. Remember, you get what you pay for and that never changes.

Just think that only one decade ago we had to pay for, and manage 4 separate devices to do what one device does today. And while our thinking on electronics has changed, many companies’ approach to global 360 programs have not. Just like juggling multiple electronic devices, global organizations often pay for and manage various 360 programs with different vendors, each with their own platform, branding and concept model. This approach creates a number of problems, not the least of which is the inability to implement a cohesive and scalable Talent Development strategy.

So why do companies do this? Why not go the way of the iPod and consolidate to a single unified solution? The reason is simple – rolling out a global 360 program can be very challenging. The good news, however, is that these challenges can be boiled down into 3 topics. And, organizations that can address these 3 challenges can consolidate their programs, save costs and offer their organization a more efficient, more scalable 360 program that has a consistent impact across the globe.

• Translations – many organizations list this as the main reason why they feel that they have to manage multiple 360 vendors, which are often regionally located. The key here is to find a 360 platform that not only supports global languages, but gives you the administrative tools to control all language settings at the project level, including invitations, survey instructions and feedback reports. Better still, are platforms that allow users to select their desired language in real time.
• Compliance – The legal risks of complying with a multitude of regional privacy laws is worth noting, but the solution is easier than you may think. In short – leave the compliance up to 360 vendor. In order to do this, you must partner with a 360 expert that has global experience and the necessary certifications for each region. In particular, you should look for vendors that are certified in the EU and Swiss Privacy Shield program and who have experience working with in-country Work Councils.
• Logistics – This is where many 360 software solutions fall short and where it pays to do extra research in finding the right 360 feedback partner for your global program. In addition to finding a platform that gives you multiple levels of control (by region, by project, etc.) you will also want to find a partner that offers a fully managed solution, allowing you to lean heavily on your 360 degree feedback partner to handle the day-to-day administration.

Things may change quickly but one thing is certain – consolidating your various 360 offerings into a unified, consistent solution will provide real and tangible benefits. And, doing so is easier than you may think; if you can find the right partner. You’ll need a solution that has the technology, the compliance and the logistics under control, but perhaps most important of all – you’ll want to team with a reliable partner that has the global experience and expertise to consult and guide you along the way, even if that means giving up your iPod.

If you’ve seen Office Space, then you’re familiar with Bill Lumbergh, the smarmy, overbearing manager and his passive-aggressive approach to assigning tasks (“Yeeeeaaaaahhhh…I’m going to need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow.”). His managerial tactics are nauseating at best, and destructive at worst. Aside from getting us to laugh, this character serves as an excellent cautionary tale for leaders. However, the moral of that tale is not what you might think.

Sure, Lumbergh was the ultimate example of the self-serving micro-manager and we’re all well advised to avoid those traits; but who hasn’t already heard that advice? Simply saying, don’t be a micro-manager is about as helpful as the motivational poster hanging above my desk, (and equally stale.)

More fundamental, and the thing that truly ailed this anti-hero was the lack of self-awareness. In other words, Lumbergh didn’t realize he was being a “Lumbergh.” Which begs the question: Are You Self-Aware?

Yeeeaaaahhhh…I’m going to need to go ahead and say, no.

Reality Check
OK – so it’s unlikely you are the extreme caricature that is Lumbergh, (suspenders anyone?), but the lack of self-awareness that he suffered from is arguably the most common challenge facing our leaders in the modern workplace. Why? Because, by all accounts, high-performing leaders are flexible, they are smart and they are entirely capable of improving their weaknesses while leveraging their strengths. The problem is, most leaders don’t know what those are; they don’t know what should be improved and what should be leveraged. They don’t see in themselves what others see daily, and are likely talking about at the water cooler.

We’d all like to think that our direct reports, peers and managers would voluntarily offer up open and candid feedback. This sounds great in theory, but in reality, candid feedback and the valuable awareness that comes with it simply doesn’t happen by itself.

Hearing is the Hardest Part
The good news is that there are several sound methods for gathering valid feedback, 360 assessments being the most common. In fact, once you decide to do it correctly, getting the feedback is actually fairly easy. Truly hearing that feedback? Not so much. I like to think of it this way: Receiving feedback is like standing in front of a mirror and realizing you need to shed some pounds. Truly hearing that feedback is going for a run. Three times a week. Every week. Forever.

Becoming self-aware and then taking action requires not only an openness and willingness to change, but also a commitment to change. It requires accountability with your team in which you honor their feedback by acting on it. It requires regular follow up and reassessing to monitor improvement. And in some cases, it may actually require you admitting to yourself, “I’m kinda being a Lumbergh here.”

And this was Lumbergh’s true flaw. He just didn’t know. So the moral of the story: It’s actually ok to be a Lumbergh, so long as you get the feedback from others, are willing to hear that feedback and most importantly, you must be willing and committed to change. Otherwise, it’s just a matter of time until the two Bob’s are sitting in your conference room.