General Framework

Introduction

This article introduces the GRI general framework. The framework was initially developed in accordance with academic standards to address the specific question of how personality measures used by executives can improve organizational performance. The question was subsequently expanded to include other assessment techniques, users, and uses.

The broad applicability of the framework and the unique qualities of the adaptive profiles being measured have opened new avenues for research on leadership and organizational development, as well as on other related topics, such as improving the development of managerial skills or developing new standards for comparing assessment techniques.

Throughout its three phases, the framework's development continued to adhere to academic standards, with the intention that it be tested and used by parties other than GRI and adapted to new, specific projects. GRI’s framework is thus fully disclosed on this website, including its research methodology, model development, coding, hypothesis formulation, testing, and validation, as well as the variables and indicators used. The coding mechanisms used in the project during the discovery and testing phases are shared to facilitate replication.

The GRI framework is regularly used to monitor the deployment of GRI tools and techniques in organizations, to better capture the numerous variables at play, potential applications, and learning in the field.

After presenting the framework, the article discusses its development and offers a critique of the challenges ahead.

Framework Design

The general framework is represented below. It includes nine independent variables on the use of assessment techniques (in blue), regrouped into two subsets: practical uses in organizational development, leadership, coaching, recruitment, and clinical settings, and abstract uses in self- and social-awareness, learning, language, and signs that span all practical uses.

The framework includes four antecedent variables (in yellow): the assessment technique, the user, the environment in which the method is used, and the publisher and consultant.

The dependent variables (in green) include three variables. Strategic performance is measured by the gap between the strategic intent for organizational performance and its realization. Social performance measures how people adapt and engage at the group level by interacting with others. Economic performance includes typical KPIs and KRIs that may, for instance, be of a production or financial nature. Strategic and Social performances are contingent upon how individual performance is measured with the adaptive profiles.

The red arrows from dependent to antecedent variables indicate that learning from the framework deepens and refines the antecedent variables. The framework applies to testing any assessment technique, including parallel techniques, and to all types of users, not only to the GRI survey and executives, as was the case in phase 1 of the project. Please see the footnotes for more details, including on each component of the framework.

Framework’s Development

The first framework was built from 2002 to 2006, with a thesis demonstrating the positive relationship between leaders' and managers' use of personality assessments and organizational performance. Assessment techniques in the early 2000s were continually evolving. Software packages were providing increasingly powerful capabilities for data analysis and statistical computation. The development of the framework followed social research academic standards, notably those of Miles and Huberman, Wacheux and Eisenhardt.

A large-scale exploration field comprised 1,116 participants from 501 companies whom Frederic Lucas-Conwell met between 1995 and 2006. The organizations were from diverse industries, countries, and sizes. It allowed the collection of information on the uses of assessment techniques, their users, and their effects.

The framework began to be tested in a small test field comprising two organizations. The research process followed the attached diagram on the right. The arrows represent the interactions between the large and small fields.

The observations from the large field were from primary sources: direct observations of companies and their people, and secondary sources: testimony from publishing companies, consultants, journalists, and various documents collected. The interaction between the large and small fields happened once the first framework was built. Observations from the small field and between the two case studies stimulated new observations in the large field, and vice versa, while moving back and forth between the large and small fields after the testing phase began.

The framework was built , and successfully tested on case studies of the small testing field. The concepts, assessment techniques, and theories supporting the frameworks in psychology, sociology, social interactionism, organizational behavior, leadership, and semiotics (the analysis and philosophy of signs) have been documented.

The first framework laid the foundation for the second phase, which lasted from 2006 to 2012. Personality research has firmly confirmed the universality and nature of the factors employed. The Internet enabled unprecedented levels of data collection, usage, and analysis. Although observations were saturated after the first framework was created, the rise of coaching, advancements in well-being, and the use of typology assessments created new opportunities for observation. After 2005, major exploration areas became increasingly focused on the U.S., particularly the Bay Area.

The new framework from phase 2 included assessment techniques such as parallel techniques, rather than relying solely on personality assessments, as in the first phase. The inclusion of new techniques allowed broader analysis and comparison of assessment techniques. As identified in the first phase, assessment techniques both compete with and complement one another.

In 2012, the GRI (Growth Resources Institute) was launched, offering a new platform for quality assessment, marking the start of the third phase. The GRI survey was developed by removing important limitations identified in personality assessment techniques during phases 1 and 2. With the advent of AI and the increasing number of assessment techniques that can be quickly developed, we were prompted to publish more on the origins of the adaptive profiles and methods derived from using GRI’s framework. The publication has helped to demonstrate how assessment techniques differ, how their differences are reflected in their use, and what different impacts users with different roles could expect from them.

Insights Gained from the Framework

Working with the framework has yielded new insights into the concepts, assessment techniques, and methods researched at GRI. The topics include the following:

Defining Social and Strategic Performance

The framework enabled the identification of what social performance can stand for within organizations and its operationalization through adaptive profiles. Adaptive profiles not only capture naturally expressed social behaviors but also environmental adaptation and whether or not one is engaged. Those characteristics not only measure how effective people are but also how efficient they are from an emotional standpoint. Additionally, the profiles represent the social behaviors expected at the job and group levels, thereby formalizing management's strategic intent, with nuances and comparisons that are not possible without a symbolic feature such as the adaptive profile. Social and strategic performance should be analyzed alongside other key dimensions of production, revenue, and financial performance, as captured by KPIs and KRIs.

Clarifying the Nature of Social Behavior

The framework has allowed us to clarify the nature of social behavior, including its variability, intensity, adaptive, and engagement qualities. The specific assessment techniques used to measure social behavior require further clarification beyond the general concept of personality. Social behavior is one aspect of personality that is measured using many techniques available today. A qualitative approach is necessary to analyze the concept of personality and to understand how certain aspects are relevant to organizational, recruitment, and management purposes, as well as the various methods used to assess, represent, and apply these aspects.

Benchmarking Assessment Techniques

Standards were established early in clinical psychology for use by experts, including psychiatrists, clinicians, career counselors, recruiters, and executive search consultants. Since the 1990s, coaches have adopted these techniques. Focusing on users clarified the conditions under which these techniques effectively improve performance, including at strategic levels and when used by end users rather than intermediaries. The framework has helped us identify the characteristics of the techniques that influence their use and usefulness for different users.

Highlighting the Significance of Symbolic Features

The framework provides evidence of the critical importance of the symbolic and linguistic aspects of metrics produced by assessment techniques. The symbolic elements can summarize measurements for use in decision-making and communication. The way measurements are taken and represented can either facilitate or hinder their use, including for strategic purposes at the organizational level. The more synthetic, concrete, work-related, and aligned with the organization's needs the measurement and its symbolic representation are, the more utility they can be expected to offer to a variety of users.

Refining the GRI Survey and Adaptive Profiles

Continually challenging the framework on real cases of small and large organizations, removing limiting factors identified through competing concepts and techniques, and keeping the focus on raising individual and organizational performance, has enabled us to refine the GRI survey, the adaptive profile, and other tools and techniques used at the job, team, and organizational levels.

Re-learning about People and Their Organization

Unlike working with trait and typology models, learning with a factor-based model and the adaptive profiles is counterintuitive. But that’s what makes it ultimately more beneficial. Because of the sensitive nature and scope of the adaptive profiles, a deconstruction and reconstruction of meaning is at play. The factor model uncovers previously unobserved characteristics, albeit ones that can be managed positively, that invite relearning about people and their organization.

The framework has enabled us to delve into learning and using the adaptive profiles for this purpose, in the same way that a language is learned: by working on real case studies, those of the participants. Much like learning a new sport or cooking, relearning about people requires practice, not just reading.

Opening New Perspectives

Adapting the Framework for Research

The general framework provides a basis for research on specific topics that employ adaptive profiles to analyze social behavior and performance and aim to clarify users' roles.

The framework helps ensure greater thoroughness in elaborating on general and specific questions and in constructing the model to be tested, including its hypotheses, variables, indicators, and anticipated conclusions. Interview guides and synthesis need to be adapted too.

Such specific frameworks have been developed to date for analyzing the performance of sports teams and boards of directors.

Removing Barriers

The most significant barrier to the use and study of new assessment techniques is the belief that only experts can use them. This belief has been rooted in the use of whatever technique has been employed since the beginning of time. Techniques such as astrology, tarot readings, and crystal balls have been used in the same way for centuries; they have worked in some respects for some applications, but hardly so in organizations. The fact that some techniques work, at least in telling stories and creating connections, led us to use the term "mediating effects" to describe the phenomenon.

In these situations, the quality of the assessment technique is of little importance relative to the story being built around it. It occurs similarly with tools based on types used in coaching, as well as with others based on traits for recruitment. Statistics have helped improve measurement quality, but they are still often part of the story that exploits the medium effect, regardless of the quality of the technique.

Users need not be experts for use in organizations; they can be trained to use the tools, with the understanding that the tools were designed for that purpose. This opens up new possibilities for studying the impact of using such techniques on performance.

Qualitative Analyses

The framework has deepened understanding of the variables at play in the use of assessment techniques and has fostered a more qualitative approach, rather than blindly relying on statistical reports. It has brought into focus the most frequently used parallel techniques and compared them with others, not only in terms of their intrinsic qualities but also of their upfront qualities, results, theories, and documentation. The framework also underscores the roles of users and their learning, as well as those of the environment and of publishers and consultants.

When properly designed, assessment techniques become necessary to address essential, costly human challenges in organizations, beyond subjective and intuitive limitations that adversely affect performance. Only when users become aware of those limitations can they adopt new ones. The new technique and knowledge can gradually become part of a company’s culture and be realized to their full potential.