Tickle Me Softly

The MAT has a fancier name for this: Perceived Need. When the computer creates a process balance sheet (you DO know how much your poor processes are costing you, right?) we use Perceived Need as a primary input.
From an actionable standpoint, I'm almost of the opinion you could throw out the rest of the assessment and just use Perceived Need as a driver for change. The rest of the areas, really, are in a supporting role to this.
This is where the MAT differs from anything else you've probably seen. When I was in California working, I was in a situation where I had to train thousands of developers on a fairly complicated system. Where to start? I had no clue.
They already had a bunch of training initiatives in place, running from "brown bags" to more formal environment. At the time, my wife and I were considering home schooling our kids (no, we are not right-wing religious nuts. We simply think public schools are dysfunctional)
As part of that process, we started reading up on this idea of "unlearning" It basically means instead of giving the kids a formal curriculum that you let them follow their interests. Kids are smart little critters, and they love to learn. Let them pursue the things they are interested in, and you'll be surprised how much they will pick up.
It sounds kind of whack, and I was skeptical. But the kid was only five, so I thought we could try it for a while and see how it did. After a few months I was very impressed: turns out when you are studying bugs, dinosaurs, stamps or whatnot, that you actually pick up reading, math, grammar, etc. Of course we combine that with workbooks to make sure we don't miss the bases, but the general idea is let the kid learn what he's interested in.
Could this work in a large organization? The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that there was no other way it could work Sure. You could train, plan, give tests, etc from the ivory tower. But on the ground, the troops are only going to give a hoot about the things that need fixing. And while they fixed those things, who knew how much more they could learn?