Traits of Useful Recommendations
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Much of the content
of this topic came from this book:  |
© Copyright Carter McNamara,
MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.
The following guidelines will be useful when, for example, sharing results
of an evaluation of an organization or specific function with an organization.
Focus on the most important recommendations. You don’t need to address
every issue that you found. Pick the most important or critical 5-7 issues.
Don’t overwhelm your others with too many recommendations to try understand
and approve. If those 5-7 critical issues are successfully addressed early on,
then they’ll likely take care of the other issues, as well.
For each issue, have one overall recommendation and then perhaps associate
any lower-level recommendations. You might even leave the lower-level recommendations
for the discussion later on about how to implement the recommendations.
Be sure that your recommendations will suit the culture and mission of the
organization. For example, don’t recommend that all employees be taught
coaching, based exclusively on questioning, if their culture is totally averse
to questions. Don’t strongly recommend that the organization expand its
markets around the country, if the organization has branded itself as a locally-owned
business.
Be sure the organization has the resources to do the recommendations. They
should already have – or be able to quickly get – sufficient resources
to follow the recommendations, for example, sufficient funding, expertise and
facilities.
Focus recommendations on what the organization should do, not so much
on how to do it. A good way to stick to that difference is to talk
about goals, rather than recommendations. Goals are described as results, not
as methods to achieve those results.
Focus recommendations on both the business and the people side of the organization.
For example, you would not recommend only that “people must get along
better with each other” or that “people must feel more satisfaction
in their jobs.” Instead, you would also recommend more clarity of the
team’s purpose, goals and roles.
Prioritize your recommendations, for example, urgent versus desired or short-term
versus long-term.
Learn More in the Library’s Blogs Related to Organizational Performance
In addition to the articles on this current page, also see the following blogs
that have posts related to organizations. Scan down the blog’s page to see various
posts. Also see the section “Recent Blog Posts” in the sidebar of
the blog or click on “next” near the bottom of a post in the blog.
The blog also links to numerous free related resources.
Library’s
Consulting and Organizational Development Blog
Library’s
Human Resources Blog
Library’s
Leadership Blog
Library’s
Project Management Blog
Library’s
Supervision Blog
For the Category of Organizational Development:
To round out your knowledge of this Library topic, you may
want to review some related topics, available from the link below.
Each of the related topics includes free, online resources.
Also, scan the Recommended Books listed below. They have been
selected for their relevance and highly practical nature.