1. overview

After being a loose association of independent consultants for three decades, Polarity Management Associates set out to create a business model that could put PM consulting principles in action across a vastly broader client base.

Consulting has always been a face-time format, and despite the groundbreaking principles founded at PMA and the rave reviews for its application across a wide range of business and public sectors, quantifiable metrics of success were impossible to capture.

How can PMA actually measure the current stresses in a client organization? How can they reveal to their clients the path to sustainable success? How can they definitively prove the effectiveness and value of the Polarity principles? And how can they capture the magic of Polarity Consulting in a tool that can be taught to an exponentially larger consulting network?

It took 3 years to craft the answer: the revolutionary Polarity Management Assessment Process.

Note: this project drew on intense collaboration and commitment of a couple dozen people from disparate places, but my most important ally and collaborator by far was my design partner Christina DeMarco. Without her tremendous insight, critical thinking, design and production skills, and her unflappable patience and professionalism, I am quite sure we would never have gotten this project across the finish line. Thank you, Christina!

2. setting up the assessment

This is the workhorse half of the program, with which a PMAP Certified Consultant introduces his or her client to the Polarity Management methodology, gathers input from key stakeholders, draws from the extensive library of Polarity Maps, builds a client-specific set of key Polarities, and generates a survey ready to publish to the client organization.

5. the admin panel

The other half of the PMAP gives consultants a workshop of tools for managing their Polarity Assessments and other PM-related resources. We made it easy to set up a new client, customize key maps, define demographics, industry sectors, and key stakeholders, and store client contacts. But most importantly we empowered consultants to manage every stage of development for their client assessments, from first contact to live surveys to mining the results. And because of the fundamentally ongoing nature of polarities, we designed a panel for ongoing Action Steps and Early Warnings. PMAP Certified Consultants now have amazing leverage in helping their clients achieve, and then maintain, peak performance.

3. conducting the assessment

With all the data collected and the assessment generated, it’s time for the client audience to take the assessment — giving individualized feedback on the key Polarities at tension within the organization.

4. evaluating the results

The PMAP Certified Consultant and the key stakeholders can instantly review the survey data, presented in a brand-new Polarity-centric visual format, with never-before-available metrics and incredible drill-down detail and countless variations in slicing the data and demographics.