One of the reasons evaluations fail is because the evaluator does not take stock of resources.

It is vital that you examine resources when evaluating before you plunge into any handling, and resources belongs just above handling on the evaluation form.

Resources sometimes turn out not what they seemed, so when I say "examine resources" I mean look into them searchingly. Were you ever sure that you had $50.00 in the bank and $20.00 in a teapot only to find on closer examination that you were overdrawn at the bank and the teapot contained an IOU whose signature you couldn't read?

Sometimes you think you have resources you don't have even when there is total agreement on every hand that you have resources. Take for instance clerk X. It is "common knowledge" that he has been around "Department 5" for years and is a "good clerk." So you make him head of the department without going down and inspecting his area. What will happen to your evaluation and "Department 511 if that undone inspection would have revealed unfiled backlogs 10 feet high, lost supplies and equipment and an office mainly used for plotting mutinies. This may be an extreme case but some shadow of it lies behind most failed evaluations. The evaluator just didn't examine his resources and thought he had what he didn't have.

There is one type of program you can always predict will fail, it begins "Hire a __________ or "Recruit a __________ " When sending a mission out on such orders you know you won't hear from them for 6 months because the program has said, in effect, "acquire nonexisting resources."

If you do an evaluation on almost any subject and omit an examination of resources and the resources section, your evaluation may lay an ostrich egg. "Appoint Joe Blow, who is a trained Personnel Officer," may trip over the fact that he left the company 5 months ago and has not been heard from since. The eval will bug at this point. That is because the evaluator didn't examine resources.

You sometimes have to gear down your bright idea and handling from "Buy Wall Street" to "Set up a peanut vender stand on Bleaker Street." But the point is your evaluation will succeed where otherwise it will fail.

Almost all evaluations actually have the overall goal of preserving or acquiring resources. So don't omit an examination of the resources you do have to work with and their accurate and exact character from your evals.