Professional Assessment : rethinking evaluation
Complexity and uncertainty are leading us to reconsider how we understand human potential. Regarding professional assessment, we need to go beyond assessing suitability for a role or demonstrated mastery of existing competencies. Professional potential must now be understood as the ability to draw on existing knowledge and experience in new ways, in order to develop responses to unprecedented challenges as they arise.
Through assessment, we need to be able to identify this potential, while considering the person as a professional rather than simply as a candidate. Through dialogue, we observe how professionals put challenges into perspective, combine their capabilities with agility and mobilise resources effectively. The assessment itself can become the starting point for a deeper reflection: the potential we are looking for will not depend solely on the individual. It will also depend significantly on the dynamics developed within the organisation.
Changes in the workplace are challenging our assessment practices
Our evolving realities invite new perspectives on assessment
Today, we need to assess potential for a reality that does not yet exist
Let’s consider the example of an Operation Director : She joins a major industrial site to lead an organisational transformation. The assessment confirms her suitability for the role, her management competencies and her understanding of the challenges involved.
A few months later, a strategic decision changes everything. The role remains the same. The situation she must respond to does not.
The planned acquisition of a second site is postponed. New production activities must now be integrated into the existing site within six months, without interrupting operations. The Director must rapidly reorganise activities, mobilise the necessary competencies and resources, build a new team and anticipate the strategic, operational and human implications.
When suitability is no longer enough, potential takes over
In environments where situations evolve rapidly and decisions sometimes have to be made despite limited information and resources, competencies alone can no longer predict the success of a professional collaboration. The focus shifts : potential represents the ability to develop a response when mastery alone is no longer sufficient.
Let’s go back to our Operation Director : During recruitment, we assessed her ability to manage the operations of an industrial site and lead the planned transformation. What now becomes decisive is her ability to draw on her existing knowledge and experience in new ways, as the situation for which she was recruited no longer quite exists.
How will this Operation Director move from know-how to “knowing what to do” 1 ?
Taking ownership of the organisation’s challenges
Accepting a project, a strategy or to an organisation’s stated values does not yet tell us how someone will commit to them. Taking ownership goes further. It involves broadening one’s perspective to identify less obvious challenges, taking a responsible position and considering the implications of one’s decisions and actions. Taking ownership brings responsibility: making the challenge sufficiently one’s own to be able to act and make decisions responsibly.
In our example, the Operation Director must go beyond simply understanding the project initially presented to her. She needs to take ownership of a new objective, assess its implications and mobilise resources in different ways. She will need to broaden her perspective to connect her decisions with the organisation’s wider objectives, demonstrating a clear-eyed sense of commitment.
The assessment will explore the connections this director is able to make between strategic challenges, the organisation of production and human dynamics. We will observe how she balances production continuity, team development and risk management. Despite the pressure within her own area of responsibility, will she also consider the wider impact of these changes across the organisation ?
From assessing a candidate to professional dialogue
Assessment is still often characterised by a separation of roles : one assesses, the other is assessed.
An open exchange between professionals provides insights that simply looking for the “right answer” would not reveal. Without compromising the necessary rigour and objectivity, dialogue changes the relationship between the participants. The professional is no longer simply a candidate whose compliance with predefined criteria is being assessed. They become an active participant in the assessment process, questioning the situation as much as they question themselves.
In the case of our Operation Director, we will observe how she shares her assumptions, whether she is able to question them, put forward proposals while listening to others, and, when appropriate, dare to challenge the initial strategy itself.
The assessment focuses as much on the content of the responses as on how they are developed and shared. Dialogue allows us to observe how professionals put challenges into perspective, assess their own capabilities and identify the resources they can draw upon. A senior executive knows how to assess both the challenges of a situation and their own ability to respond to them. They also know how to use resources judiciously: determining when, to what extent and in what ways to mobilise them, in light of the organisation’s needs and the challenges ahead.
When we genuinely begin to think together, assessment becomes a collaborative process. The assessment of risks and opportunities goes beyond predefined criteria, providing a richer and more accurate understanding of potential. The decision is no longer based on a snapshot of the present. It becomes part of an evolving process, looking ahead to realities that will themselves continue to change.
Assessment can become a first experience of the professional relationship to be built
The way participants ask questions, challenge different perspectives, listen and develop responses together already offers an insight into how they might contribute and collaborate. Assessment thus becomes a way of anticipating the potential for a constructive working relationship between the organisation and the professional. It can also provide the starting point for genuinely co-creating a journey of integration and professional development.
- The expression “knowing what to do” refers to Guy Le Boterf, De la compétence à la navigation professionnelle, Éditions d’Organisation, 1997. Here, it provides a basis for further reflection on the potential to respond to complex and unprecedented situations.
Going further
This co-creation between the professional’s potential and that of the organisation can turn suitability into potential, and ownership into commitment. Future success will therefore also depend on the conditions the organisation creates to enable professionals to engage with its challenges. In rapidly changing working environments, what potential do we really need, and when does it need to be available ?
We will explore these questions in future reflections.
Your turn : 5 questions before your next assessment
Identify a role for which you will soon be recruiting or developing a manager.
1. What aspects of this role might no longer be quite the same in 12 to 18 months ?
Consider the external environment, strategy, projects, organisational structure, technologies, teams, working relationships, resources, …
2. What unprecedented situations might this manager have to face ?
Imagine : a resource becomes unavailable, a priority changes, two constraints become contradictory, a decision has to be made with incomplete information …
3. In these situations, what will they need to “know what to do” – rather than simply know how to do ?
What existing knowledge and experience will they need to combine, adapt or use differently ? What will depend on how they confront adversity and make decisions under constraints ? Will they need to invent or create entirely new responses?
4. What would you want to observe in the way they develop their response ?
What do they question ? What connections do they make ? How do they weigh competing priorities ? How do they deal with what they do not know ? What implications do they anticipate ?
5. Will our organisation genuinely give them the means to act in this way ?
What scope for decision-making, information, resources, opportunities for collaboration or learning will actually be available to them ?
One final question :
Does your current assessment practice allow you to observe all of this ?
Would you like to develop your assessment practices ?
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