The three initial creators of the content of the site are qualified to use a wide range of the behavioural and personality diagnostics available on the market, and between us have over 50 years experience in doing so - as coaches and consultants to some very interesting sporting, military and business customers in a number of countries. The group of people involved in the creation of the site, questionnaires and further aspects of the site expanded and the experience base widened further.
There is no one reason why we started Evaluation Store.com but a combination of the following:
There are hundreds of available diagnostics and questionnaires on-line and on paper. However, we could not locate sites which gave the breadth of behavioural work, personal learning assistance, understanding other people, developing teams and considering organisational culture. We thought we would add value to the business and private community by creating one site which comprises all of these disparate elements.
Many of the existing diagnostics appear to overcomplicate issues and structures which has the consequence that individuals cannot use them without the assistance of expensive coaches trained in that particular diagnostic. We wholeheartedly support and endorse the use of coaches - but for them to add value to the individual, not merely to translate an output from a diagnostic.
Many of the existing diagnostics have paper based scorecards which appear to cost more than a mere scorecard should. Rather than see people having to continue paying £10 or $20 we thought we'd provide the basic scorecard and results for free. We expect that this may make us unpopular with many of the old established paper based systems who are earning nice sums of income from these pieces of paper - but for the consumer you can now get instantly, for free, something you previously had to order and pay for. Ethically that has to be the right thing to do - provide the customer with a cheaper service.
Paper based questionnaires probably still have a place in business - but few have put in the investment to give high quality on-line systems. In the 21st Century we thought that should be widely available - so we made it so!
We particularly liked the idea that a team could simultaneously fill in a questionnaire - and instantly get the output for use in a team session - no delay, no cumbersome manual analysis - just type in the answers and get the results.
We were also keen to provide a system where the strength of opinion could be gauged. The behavioural systems often work on a 1,2,3,4 basis for choices of responses to questions. What if someone was equally strongly inclined to 2 of the choices and never chose the others? - Evaluation Store's SPECTRUM™ diagnostic allows that to a greater extent than any other system we are aware of globally.
Many of the diagnostics, particularly in the behavioural and personality profile areas, compete seeking to persuade us of their superiority over the others. As we are qualified in several of them, we can say from an impartial position that many are good (we would not have clocked up 50 years of usage if we did not think them useful). However, we do not see one as particularly superior to any others. If one customer is accustomed to 'diagnostic A' we'll use that, the next day we may be using 'diagnostic B' with a customer who is accustomed to that. We do not necessarily seek to replace the big players - the Myers Briggs, Strengths Deployment Inventory (SDI), DISC, Firo-B or others - we merely add a free of charge basic diagnostic and a cheap on-line report to the many offerings in the market.
Most of the available behaviour or personality diagnostics are drawn from the work of Carl Jung and others soon after him. In order to ensure that Evaluation store, and SPECTRUM™ in particular, did not follow the route taken by any existing diagnostic we went back to consider some texts which predated the 20th century popular diagnostics as well as research which has added subsequent value - we have therefore started from a position simultaneously BEFORE and AFTER all of the diagnostics we have used in our careers. In many ways we were a little disappointed at how some had merely replicated the work of others in a way which would be a modern copyright infringement. We created Evaluation Store from 'scratch' to ensure that we did not make the infringements many of the existing, well used models appear to have done.
Why did we add the coaching aspects - find a coach? Some of us were registered as coaches on existing on-line sites. None of them matched their promises with results. A challenge from UK marketing expert Caroline Cash was "IF YOU'RE NOT SATISFIED WITH SOMETHING - CREATE YOUR OWN!" - so we did.
So ... mavericks who want to break up the cosy 'easy money' culture of some overcomplicated diagnostics, clarifiers who want to simplify what is overcomplicated, pioneers who want to break new ground in evaluations. consumer champions who want to provide for free what others pay for and for a very low fee what others charge high fees for, ethical business people who want to devise material without merely replicating or adapting what others have done; and also determined dreamers who have an idea and refuse to listen to those who say it cannot be done.