19 search results for “Critical success factors”
- Joint working success factors
There are many different models for joint working: partnership, alliance, collaboration and so on. The group can be formal and governed by a legal contract or informally managed with loose, verbal agreement. However it is constituted, it is likely to have come together because of a belief that the group… - Trouble ahead: the warning signs
In the introduction to her book, Business Nightmares, Rachel Elnaugh (2008), the dragon from Dragon’s Den whose Red Letter Days business very publicly went into administration, says that, despite the title, she intended the book to be positive. She set out to illuminate some of the struggles that can happen… - Bright Spots
The concept behind bright spots is that often big problems are most easily solved by a series of small solutions; there is seldom one big solution. The approach is based on the work that Jerry Sternin, of Save the Children, did in Vietnam to improve infant nutrition. He found that… - Business model generation canvas - visioning
Business Model Generation[1] is a relatively new approach but it has already been widely applied across a range of sectors and features in Susan Royce’s recent report on business models in the visual arts. Ultimately, the intention of the approach is to create value and replace outmoded models. It is based… - Being a company director
A company director has responsibility for running the business. A limited company must have at least one director. For some time the responsibilities of directors were determined by case law. As of The Companies Act 2006, the requirements of directors were set out formally and you are expected to act… - PESTLE
PESTLE analysis is a mechanism for scanning the external environment, or big picture, in which the organisation operates. It has grown in popularity over the last ten years and goes under a variety of acronyms – PEST, STEP, STEEP, STEEPLE, PESTEL. Alongside a SWOT (also included in this stage of… - Evaluating your business
Self-evaluation is a holistic process, during which you consider all elements of your enterprise’s activities and operations. It involves you in collecting data and reaching conclusions on its strengths and weaknesses. It is designed to encourage you to collect evidence to inform your planning decisions. This self-evaluation framework aims to… - The quick business health check
If you are working on your own, or there are only a few of you, it is often a challenge to step back and review what you have achieved and where your business is going. There are, however, many successful business owners who would stress how important it is to… - SWOT
The original goal of this humble tool was to identify why corporate planning failed. The origin of SWOT analysis is credited to Albert Humphrey, who researched 1,100 companies from 1960 to 1969. The resulting tool he used was called SOFT analysis based on: what is good in the present is… - Six Thinking Hats®
Edward de Bono is credited as the inventor of the concept of lateral thinking, which is the ability to solve problems by taking indirect or creative approaches. He has produced a wide variety of publications on creative thinking and Six Thinking Hats® is one of his best-known tools. It is… - Capacity for change
There is little point in having bright ideas about the future if your business or enterprise is not in a position to act on them. This tool has been developed from a number of big ideas in the organisational development field. It includes thinking from the likes of Henry Mintzberg,… - Collaboration maturity model
Collaboration or joint working has been increasingly in the spotlight in all sectors. With the economic downturn forcing a drive towards efficiency and performance improvement, collaboration is likely to come to the fore even more. Some public funders may even expect it of their clients. It is covered in this… - MoSCoW prioritisation
The MoSCoW technique is credited to Dai Clegg of Oracle Consulting and is a simple approach to determining priorities in time-limited projects. When you are working on projects, you need to be able to establish your priorities and levels of risk as the work proceeds. This approach also helps keep… - Outcomes focused
In an online article, Richard Piper describes being at an event and asking the participants to play a word association game. He asked 50 people to write down the first thing that came into their heads. When he said the word ‘outcomes’, 48 out of the 50 wrote down something… - Assessing your collaboration
Inter-organisational or collaborative working has become increasingly important and working within such a group can be both rewarding and challenging. Understanding how well the collaboration is working is a key part of ensuring you achieve more collectively than you could have individually. - Transformational and transactional change
This tool provides a model of organisational performance and change that looks at how businesses are influenced by and respond to changes in their external environments. External changes impact on what Burke and Litwin (1992) have referred to as the transformational organisational factors: mission, strategy, leadership and culture. In turn… - Levels of joint working
Inter-organisational working, collaboration, partnership … Call it what you will, the drivers for businesses coming together to deliver activities are growing. However, in building a joint working initiative the participants do not always consider the nature of the group they are building. This is important in shaping the success factors… - Portfolio analysis – where do you make your money?
This tool offers two approaches to portfolio analysis. Portfolio analysis means looking at your mix of programming and/or products and/or services and the money they make for you, or not! The first approach was created by the Boston Consulting Group (often known as the BCG or Boston Matrix). It suggests… - Fundraising readiness check
Key to any successful fundraising campaign, whether for a large project or capital development, is preparedness. Much of the work should happen in advance so that by the point that it becomes a ‘public’ campaign all of the groundwork is done and a large proportion of the funds is already…
