Your business management system: know your business drivers

This is the third in my series of blogs describing an effective strategic planning process and business management system. The business planning tool the Business Lifesystem® is an innovative strategic and operational planning model. It simplifies and streamlines the strategic planning process and business management system for complex organisations.

You can find our series of blogs on how to write a strategic plan that seriously improves your business performance here;

1. Strategic planning process: how to meet business challenges head on

2. The best of the business planning tools: The Business Lifesystem®

3. Your business management system: know your business drivers

4. Business planning: the important things you didn’t know

5. Your risk management process: is it the right one?

6. Strategic planning: how to ensure delivery of your planned strategy

Both an effective strategic planning process and business management system

Part of an effective strategic planning exercise is to develop an in-depth understanding of the nature and circumstances of specific challenges faced by your organisation. This is in order to identify the key obstacles that need to be overcome in order to address them.

Considering the nature of your external business drivers and internal value drivers is a first step to effective strategic planning.

The Business Lifesystem® is a business planning tool designed to both simplify and illuminate the strategic planning process of complex organisations.

External Business Drivers are threats and opportunities in the external environment (i.e. external to the organisation) that could have either a positive or negative impact on the business.

Organisations often use tools such as PEST, STEEP and PESTEL analyses (Political, Economic, Sociological, Technological, Environmental and Legal) in order to identify these threats and opportunities.

As these external dynamics are the single most important factors that can impact the business, a more thorough assessment is recommended referred to in the Business Lifesystem® as PERSPECTIVE.

External Business Drivers (PERSPECTIVE)

Politics

Economics

Regulation

Social

People

Ecology

Competition

Technology

Innovation

Vogue

Ethics

Internal Value Drivers (CHOICES)

Internal Value Drivers are the perceived strengths and weaknesses within the organisation and are what constitutes the culture within the business.

An assessment of this capability or inability can be undertaken across multiple aspects of the business - referred to in the Business Lifesystem® as CHOICES.

Corporation - Leadership, strategy, Governance, Finance

Harmony - Collaboration, Customer focus, Partnershop working, Communications

Openness - Transparent, Accountable, Fair and Honest, Adaptable

Innovation - Creativity, continuous Improvement, Proactive, Technology

Capability - People, Process, Assests, Responsive

Environment - Environmentally friendly, Economical, Sustainable, Charitable

Success - Reputation, Differentiation, Brand strength, Evaluation

This diagram demonstrates the relationship between a SWOT analysis, capability assessment (CHOICES) and environment assessment (PERSPECTIVE). Our internal Strengths and Weaknesses can be identified from our capability assessment and our Opportunities and Threats from an assessment of our environment.

Now we have considered the nature of your external business drivers and internal value drivers we can use these determine our Business Objectives and Business Outcomes.

Next steps

Our next blog offers more detail on how the Business Lifesystem® applies the concepts of business objectives and business outcomes to the strategic planning cycle.

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