A well-performed organizational assessment provides leaders with vital information for improving their organization's operating effectiveness. It also sets the stage for better alignment of a critical resource - the people in the organization - with the organization's current and future strategic directions. Students can expect that this practical, application-oriented course will give them an overview of the primary principles, processes, and practices used to discover an organization's key attributes and opportunities. Students will master the material through use of cases and assignments based in the real world, with an emphasis on immediately applying their learning to real-life situations. Specific topics include (but are not limited to): assessment and analysis planning; typical areas of inquiry and data gathering methods (such as interviews, focus groups, surveys, among others); quantitative and qualitative data analysis; various data reporting formats; and different ways to present results. Critical considerations for each stage of an assessment will be discussed, such as sponsorship; stakeholder analysis; and the benefits and drawbacks of using internal employees versus external consultants. Upon successful completion of this course, students are expected to have mastered the assessment and analysis material in a manner that will allow them to immediately applying their learning to real-life situations. They will also be expected to have acquired the requisite knowledge to help them distinguish between the different kinds of sample interventions that might follow their analysis.