The Assessio Performance Framework – Overview and Core Concepts

1. Why Performance Is Hard to Define

Matching the right people with the right jobs requires more than good assessments — it requires clarity on what to look for.
Most organizations hold implicit knowledge about what drives success in their context, yet that knowledge is rarely formalized or shared consistently. As a result, decisions about hiring, promotion, or development risk being based on incomplete or biased information.

Big-data resources such as O*NET contain valuable information about behaviors linked to different jobs, but these insights are often viewed as too generic. The Assessio Performance Framework bridges this gap by providing a structure that translates validated behavioral research into job-relevant, organization-specific insights

2. The Core Principle: Flexibility and Versatility

In modern organizations, flexibility and versatility are central to performance.
Work environments change rapidly; employees must handle paradoxical demands — balancing long-term and short-term goals, individual accountability and teamwork, stability and innovation. Research shows that both under- and overuse of otherwise positive behaviors can hinder results.

The framework therefore focuses on behavioral balance: recognizing that effective performance means demonstrating the right behavior at the right level, in the right context.

3. The Four Performance Domains

Assessio’s framework identifies four universal performance domains, each representing a critical aspect of behavior at work. Every job requires all four domains to some extent, though specific roles may emphasize some more than others.

Domain	Focus	Typical behaviors	Organizational effects
Strategic	Future orientation, innovation, adaptability	Focuses long-term, seizes opportunities, drives change, supports creativity	Learning, innovation, adaptability, long-term growth
Operative	Structure, execution, process discipline	Plans and coordinates, manages resources, ensures quality and efficiency	Alignment, short-term delivery, quality, compliance
Driving	Influence, ambition, accountability	Takes charge, makes decisions, sets high targets, challenges others	Direction, results, performance focus
Enabling	Collaboration, empowerment, trust	Delegates, involves others, supports and coaches	Engagement, cohesion, psychological safety

These domains create a behavioral map of how people approach work — both what they focus on and how they engage with others

4. Balancing Contradictory Demands

Each domain contains behaviors that may support or oppose another.
High performance requires balance:

Strategic ↔ Operative – Long-term vision vs. short-term delivery
Driving ↔ Enabling – Direction and control vs. inclusion and empowerment

Assessio’s models (including Leadership Feedback, Assessio Lenses, and Lens Maker) help users understand these balances. For example, a team may need more enabling leadership to strengthen collaboration, while another may require driving leadership to clarify direction and accountability.

5. Connection to Organizational Strategy and Culture

Each domain also links to specific strategic orientations and cultural effects:

Strategy	Cultural emphasis	Dominant domain
Service Strategy – Collaboration & customer focus	“Doing things together”	Enabling
Brand Strategy – Visibility & speed	“Quickly getting things done”	Driving
Quality/Innovation Strategy – Continuous improvement & creativity	“Being first with new solutions”	Strategic
Price Strategy – Efficiency & process control	“Doing things right, at the lowest cost”	Opreative

This alignment allows organizations to connect culture, behavior, and performance outcomes — for example, improving innovation by emphasizing strategic and enabling competencies

6. From Framework to Application

The framework underpins several key Assessio platform components:

Profile/Lenses – Standard and customized profiles that align job roles with the framework’s competencies.
Score Transformations – Advanced weighting logic that translates raw MAP and Matrigma scores into competency and lens match scores
Leadership Feedback – A tool translating the four domains into team-based feedback to track leadership effectiveness and flexibility over time
Competency-based Interviews – Structured question guides aligned with framework competencies, ensuring consistent evaluation.

7. Scientific Foundation

The Assessio Performance Framework draws upon:

The Competing Values Framework (Kaiser & Overfield, 2010)
Versatile Leadership theory (Hersey & Blanchard, 1993)
Research on learning agility and behavioral flexibility (Lombardo & Eichinger, 2014)
Organizational performance models linking leadership behavior to culture and results (Hogan, Kaiser & Hartnell 2011)

8. Summary Assessio performance framework

Goal: Define what drives performance and translate behavioral science into actionable, platform-ready insights
Structure: Four performance domains balancing long-term vs. short-term and people vs. task orientation
Use in platform: Basis for lenses, scoring, assessments, leadership feedback, and interview guides
Outcome: A unified framework enabling data-driven, unbiased, and strategically aligned people decisions