Team Assessments Done Right

After having worked for several years purely on the technical design and development side, I was suddenly asked to step in on a completely unique requirement. A major client was highly concerned about the state of affairs in his team. The client had completely relied on an external consultancy to form their data science team from scratch and with the hand holding from the consultants now in a distant past, the head of the analytics / data science team wondered if the team was up for the roadmap that was put forth in front of them.

A lot of thoughts raised in my mind about how I would go about conducting an overall assessment of the team. Until now, I had worked in a setting where the client was the king. But this time, the client wanted him and his people to be put on the spot. He wanted himself and his team to be challenged. It was a breath of fresh air but also a situation that needed solving. Here is how I spent endless hours formulating the strategy which worked really well at the end of the day.

Business First

A lot of people think data science is like UI programming OR database management. A standard set of fundamentals suffice even if specific technologies and tools vary. Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to data science. Anyone who has worked on a data science project would know that a data science project about computer vision is way different from a project on structured data. And so on. In the end, there is no ideal data science team but a data science team that is best prepared to take on the challenges of the specific business.

In my case, the business demanded a lot of visual analysis, ability to peer inside the model (and not just be contended with simple predictions). Let's just say that the problems relevant to the business required a unique combination of skills in order to solve them effectively. It is worth mentioning that something very critical for my client was that every single data science team member needed a collection of soft skills and ability to learn the business domain, which perhaps was not so critical in other settings I had witnessed.

Which is why I insist that if a data science team must be assessed, the conversation must begin with the business leadership. If there is no alignment between the goals of the leadership and the thought process of the rather technical team, the chances of the return over investment (ROI) being good is rather low.

Uniform Assessment Matrix and Manual Assessment

A critical decision I made was to come up with identical dimensions across which to assess every single team member. And to use the same set of measurements and question set to calculate the measures. I was tempted to make my job easy by leveraging an online testing tool, auto computing scores and calling it a day. But I personally have witnessed the disadvantages of using numbers for every single thing. People often underestimate the importance of the personal touch.

So, I decided I would evaluate the whole team across the same dimensions, using a similar bar and that I would test everyone individually through in-person interviews. This allowed me to discover much more in terms of individual characteristics, their newness to the organization, any specific challenges they were experiencing and more.

An open question of course was - different team members come with different experience points and freshness to the team - how do we fairy separate a 1 from a 5 on a scale of 5? My approach was simple. I was not there to eliminate people using scores. I was there for more constructive reasons - to tell each individual what they had neglected all along and to create a path for them. And to tell the leadership where to leverage whose strengths for most impact.

The Interviews

Each interview was conducted on a video call. All interviews were wrapped in a day or two. Questions were kept consistent though not the same. All interviews had the following major themes / sections.

• Let me get to know you. (The personal touch.)

• Let me assure you that this for your own good. (We are not out for your employment. We are here for your empowerment.)

• Let me now ask you some questions.

• Is there anything I could anonymously ask the leadership to change to enable you to perform your jobs more effectively? (I am a neutral party, if I find your predicament deserving of being reported, I will.)

The Final Report

"I don't hire good people and tell them what to do. I hire good people so that they can tell me what I should do." True to this, my final report lay the bare truth as I saw it. Could I be wrong? Had I misjudged something? Well, dialog will help discovery. But it is better to present the raw truth as-is and discuss rather than be silent and risk important facts being ignored. My final report had it all.

• Who was most valuable in what way and why?

• What should be the individual advice for every team member?

• What is the common advice for all?

• What can business leadership do to make life easier for their hires?

• How effective are current hiring processes?

A Most Gratifying Aftermath

Fate didn't allow me to cross paths with my client for quite some time. But the same fate ensured we crossed path almost a year or more later. Memory is a tricky thing. Few names seemed most familiar. And indeed, when I consulted the names of the raw reports and data from last year, I knew I had crossed paths with these specific people. But my goodness - were these the same people? The confidence with which they spoke, the initiatives they currently owned and the competence with which they described their work were in complete disagreement with where they stood when I first spoke to them almost a year ago.

What happened? Of course, growth happened! But how did it happen? Well, as with real problems in life, there is never one single explanation. I would credit the leadership for using the assessment results to encourage instead of filtering. I would credit the team members for taking all feedback most positively and working hard on it. And with humility, I would say I played a role.

I think all pieces fell in place beautifully as far as these team members were concerned. The leadership sent a strong signal that they cared about the growth and situation of their current team. I managed to assure the team that all was being done with best intentions and gave individualized and human feedback. The team managed to see a chance to grow and grew!

Looking forward to being part of more success stories like these!