While one can review and assess elements of experience amd skills, I was not aware of anything that purported to assess judgement. This caught my attention and brought me into contact with "The Judgement Index".
The Judgement Index, or JI, is new to the UK and built upon the Hartman Value Profile which looks at assessing how a candidate views and values the world, themselves and their place in it and how this can affect their reactions and decisions. Although wrapped in a mathematical wrapper fundamentally this comes from the world of philisophy rather than psychometrics. Hartman worked on this since the 1940's and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize before he died in the 1970's. His work has been continued by one of his students.
The JI is being developed with the American team and promoted by a company based on the south coast; I soon had a meeting arranged.
The meeting was fascinating in showing how JI is being used to assess the likely success of officer cadets at Sandhurst, to profile alpha project managers, to identify construction site workers who present the greatest accident risk, to profile "best of breed" performers in order to isolate the critical factors and create development plans and hiring filters to build successful teams, to find leaders in a number of fields from sport to business, and much more.
One thing that sets it apart from many other tests is that it is situational and not fixed. Situational means that an assessment reflects the multitude of stimulii we all face, eg someone who has a sick partner will almost certainly view the world differently from someone who has just become a parent, some who is comfortable in the work role and with their employer will have a different take on life from someone facing the threat of redundancy. I have seen the JI identify these things and allow them to be understood and where appropriate addressed.
Very quickly they offered to let me take the test, a "Try for yourself" approach. The input seemed unduly simple, just putting two lists of 18 statements into an order that made sense to me. Compared with the pages and pages of endless and often seemingly repetitive questions required for Meyers Briggs (MBTI) or similar tests this was dead easy and quick to complete.
What stunned me was the breadth of insight and accuracy that came out of it when presented to me. As an analytic and a rational I wanted to understand how it worked, how the input drove the output. While I was offered a number of papers and opportunities to discuss mathematics behind it all, I have now come to the conclusion that I do not need to know after all. I say this as I have now seen upwards of a dozen people take the test and get feedback and everyone has been surprised by the accuracy of their assessment and no one, in my hearing, has rejected any aspect. This is building my confidence that it works, no matter how it does it.
I am not qualified to nor intending to try and explain this further, but instead I commend it to the reader to consider if and how an insight into the judgement of yourself, your team and potential recruits could be used.
- How could it help addressing performance issues identifying problems and creating remedial plans?
- How useful to isolate and screen for the critical factors found in top performers in a role?
- How useful to have insight into judgement and values as an aid to intervieiwng and hiring key players?
I will say I have no vested or financial interest, just a feeling that there is something of value to be found in the JI and I am fascinated to see how it can be used successfully. I am also happy to discuss my thoughts and experience to date if that will be of any help.
Nicely put Ian. The work Rob is doing is certainly interesting, and like you, though I'm not qualified to explain it, it's interesting and provides useful insight. I hope it works well for Rob and his associates.
ReplyDeleteCheers - Doug