PEOPLE - CASE Scaling Readiness Diagnostic Assessment

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Human capital is one of the most important resources to power scale. How ready is your team?

Complete the six questions below and receive a customized report with your responses, potential areas of focus, and resources.

LEADERSHIP: Does current leadership inspire and motivate? Does current leadership set a clear vision, culture, and path to scale?

BEGINNING: Leadership does not inspire nor lead the enterprise effectively. LOW PROGRESS: Leadership understands the business strategy and attempts to motivate and attract good people. MEDIUM PROGRESS: Leadership is passionate about our strategy and is working to attract and develop great staff. HIGH PROGRESS: Leadership is passionate and inspiring, sets a clear vision, prioritizes culture and leads by example. Leadership also evolves its role over time to adapt to changing needs as we scale.

EVOLVING ROLES: Do you have the right people in the right roles today? As you scale, how can you best differentiate roles to meet evolving scaling needs? How will you assess gaps and hire for the future?

BEGINNING: We do not have all the human resources and technical capability needed to be fully operational. We hire as cash allows, or without overall planning. LOW PROGRESS: We have some of the right people in place now and a general sense of the skills we need to add, but are not sure those with the new skills are accessible for us in our location, salary level, or impact area. MEDIUM PROGRESS: We effectively assess gaps and are actively and strategically hiring the staff we need to fill differentiated roles, or engaging partners and/or volunteers as needed. HIGH PROGRESS: We effectively assess gaps and have built the internal capacity to hire and partner effectively for the future, including recruiting and hiring local and diverse talent. We are also effectively exiting staff when our work evolves beyond their skills.

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE: Have you built appropriate employee engagement and culture to support a high-performing team over time? Does your culture promote inclusion and equity?

BEGINNING: We haven't put much thought into culture and would have a hard time defining it. LOW PROGRESS: Our culture is defined by the personal style of our founder or founding team. MEDIUM PROGRESS: Our culture is set from the top and then built upon by employees. We do have values and "ways of working" that represent our culture, but these are shared and refined primarily in ad hoc ways. Our culture has room for improvement in terms of inclusion and empowering all employees. HIGH PROGRESS: Our culture is strong, aligned with our mission, and embraces learning. We have built internal systems to engage employees in our culture and decision-making, and we codify our values in hiring and evaluation processes. We are diverse and inclusive and empower all voices to be heard and drive decisions.

TRAINING & RETENTION: Do you have a system that supports continued improvement of your staff and rewards and retains your best talent?

BEGINNING: There are no training systems in place or ways to regularly reward high-performing individuals. LOW PROGRESS: Managers provide ad hoc feedback and development to employees, but there is no structured process for creating development plans and training to upskill. MEDIUM PROGRESS: Regular feedback processes are in place, and training resources (internal or external) are available. Incentives are clearly communicated and granted to high-performing individuals. HIGH PROGRESS: Development of staff is a requirement against which senior staff are evaluated. Multi-faceted (formal, informal, experiential) training programs are in place. Monetary and non-monetary incentives are structured and transparently applied across the organization.

PERFORMANCE: How clear are your goals for the future--both to you and to your stakeholders? What processes do you use to set and reflect on your goals?

BEGINNING: We are more concerned about day-to-day survival than with setting future goals. LOW PROGRESS: We set high level goals once a year internally, but we don't do a great job referencing them in between. MEDIUM PROGRESS: We do a good job of setting high level goals and organizing around them, but we haven't yet established good practices around reflecting on and evaluating progress. HIGH PROGRESS: We have robust goal setting and performance review processes that engage key internal and external stakeholders in setting our high level and sub goals, which we refine regularly, and organize our operations around.

GOVERNANCE: Do you have a governance structure in place that brings in outside perspective and expertise, and offers checks and balances on leadership?

BEGINNING: We do not have a governance structure in place. LOW PROGRESS: We have an informal advisory board. MEDIUM PROGRESS: We have a formal advisory board that is actively involved in oversight and includes external, independent members that bring additional skills and resources to help us scale. Our board has some diverse perspectives but is working on increasing diversity. HIGH PROGRESS: We have a strong governance structure in place, with an independent board including strong industry experience and the skills that are critical to help us accelerate our path to scale. Our Board is diverse and holds us accountable to our clients by having client representation or rigorous processes for including client voice.