I celebrated a financial win for one of my clients yesterday. It was a win that was months in the making. As I considered the path we took to get here, one theme came to mind: big pay-offs don’t just happen in psychometrics. They take vision, smart planning, clear communication, and a team of competent people who are willing to execute that vision with excellence. Let me give you a little background.
Last year my client was challenged with reducing scoring costs for a maturing large-scale portfolio assessment. Anyone who works in psychometrics and with performance-based assessments, particularly those that require human judgment, understands that there are no clearance racks here. It’s plain ol’ expensive to train and employ people to score complex tasks without bias and in a way that is consistent with scoring guidelines. Let’s not mention the price tag that goes along with the systems that support scoring (e.g., software development, master coding, training build). Did I say this is expensive? So, my client and I were tasked with finding creative ways to reduce costs while at least maintaining the quality of the score outcomes. We had to put on our Supergirl capes. Tenet 1 of big pay-offs:
- Do your best to make the client happy without compromising core values.
Responsiveness to client needs, particularly those involving money, is a priority in my consulting business. I reviewed our current processes. I identified the redundancies and inefficiencies that I suspected accounted for a meaningful proportion of the scoring costs. Tenet 2 of big pay-offs:
- Be open to making changes. Your machine is likely not that well-oiled.
You can either be stuck in a place of “no, change doesn’t live here” or you can challenge yourself to think around the corners. After identifying the redundancies, I asked critical questions about their necessity and whether removing them would create unintended consequences. Once I had sufficiently convinced myself that no harm would result by their removal, I added quality control mechanisms to help minimize impact on quality. It’s an art and a dance. Here’s a little secret: I had no idea if these changes were going to result in the major cost reductions my client needed to produce. That did not prevent me from trying, though. I reviewed the plan with my client, we agreed on its merits based on our expertise and professional judgment, and decided to move forward with implementation. Now, here’s the linchpin – Tenet 3 of big-payoffs:
- A great plan is quickly unraveled by poor communication with stakeholders.
We communicated our plan to the project manager who supported it and gave us the green light. We communicated our plan to leaders in our scoring teams, and took the time to clarify and refine it based on their input. (Note – listen to the people who are responsible for carrying out your risky plan.) Finally, we communicated our plan to our scoring teams. Along the way, we built supports to help our teams unlearn the old process and adopt the new plan. It was a little rough in the beginning, but we stuck with it because we knew the plan was good. We had a strong belief that, at the very least, it would improve the quality of our training and scoring outcomes. (Yes, I was hoping that it would pay off in dollars and cents, too.) Tenet 4 of big-payoffs:
- Don’t be so quick to give up when the going gets tough in the beginning.
Quality did improve. And yesterday we learned that we reduced scoring costs by more than $30K. Like I said, big pay-offs don’t just happen; they take smart risks and brave hearts. Cheers to making clients happy!
Measure by Design, a trusted consultancy for measurement, research, and evaluation.
