Sponsored

3 steps to pressure-test your business priorities

The road that leads to improvement of the functional performance of your business is a challenging but rewarding one.
The road that leads to improvement of the functional performance of your business is a challenging but rewarding one.
Image: Alexandre Buisse
By
We may earn a commission from links on this page.

Today’s economic environment has changed in two major ways: change is constant and data is everywhere. As a result, making decisions around when, where, and how to adjust strategic priorities is more challenging than ever.

It’s hard to keep up—even the best-designed strategic plans don’t stay relevant for long. And although restructuring the function is a popular approach, it isn’t making much of a difference. A few examples from the C-suite highlight the trend: 81% of Finance and HR functions are undergoing or have recently undergone a redesign, but only 60% of those organizations achieve their anticipated performance results within a year of implementation.

Maturity models—diagnostics that gauge a client’s maturity in a number of departmental areas—offer a successful solution here, because they can help organizations assess performance and improve effectiveness. But CEB’s diagnostic goes one step further: drawing on data about its members’ best practices, CEB built a diagnostic that is able to measure an organization’s level of development by function, as well as the importance of that function to its business.

Image for article titled 3 steps to pressure-test your business priorities

 

CEB’s Activity Priority Index (API) measures the maturity and importance of each critical management activity for each function. These scores are then combined into a single API score, providing a measurement for assessing the gap between maturity and importance, and identifying the highest priority areas for improvement. Thanks to this focus on the priority of the function, CEB’s model provides a clear path to that function’s maturity, as well as tools and resources to help organizations arrive at those goals.

This is how the diagnostic works, in three steps:

  1. Assesses your function’s maturity: CEB’s maturity diagnostics measure the performance of the function across a broad set of management practices using peer-based standards.
  2. Prioritizes your improvement efforts: The API’s single measure identifies the critical gaps in maturity and determines the improvements an organization should be prioritizing.
  3. Establishes an action plan: A pathway to maturity shows participants where they currently stand, and the steps they need to take to realize both short-term and long-term success.
Image for article titled 3 steps to pressure-test your business priorities

Traditional maturity assessments tend towards a “one size fits all” approach, focusing on the short-term, and lack concrete, forward guidance. CEB’s diagnostic measures maturity over 244 key management activities across 8 different functional areas, clarifying critical maturity gaps and identifying a long-term path for improvement.

To get a more in-depth perspective about how CEB’s diagnostics distinguish themselves from other vendor’s tools, download our white-paper below.

This article was written by CEB and not by the Quartz editorial staff.