Stage One: Where are you now?
This stage encourages you to take a really good look at where your creative business is now.
Planning effectively involves being brutally honest about your strengths and weaknesses. This stage will guide you through self-evaluation and help you to understand and assess your business model. After using these tools, you'll be ready to think about the future with exactly the right knowledge under your belt.
The Tools
- Evaluating the Business
Tools for assessing your current position -
Evaluating your business
A comprehensive framework for reviewing all aspects of your business -
The quick business health check
A short questionnaire for sole traders and small organisations to assess their business -
SWOT
A simple tool to analyse strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats -
PESTLE
An approach to reviewing your external environment in depth
- Business model analysis
Looking at where your money comes from and how you spend it -
Understanding your financial model
Assessing the underlying financial model for the business -
Activity Model - understanding your portfolio
Assessing your portfolio of activity -
Business model generation canvas – reviewing where you are
A one page map of the overall business model -
How healthy is your fundraising?
This tool provides you with a mechanism for assessing the attractiveness and appropriateness of your fundraising activities -
Fundraising Dashboard
A one page map of your fundraising mix
- Governance
Tools for looking at different governance issues from being a company director to running a registered charity -
Good Governance Questionnaire
A questionnaire for those businesses with a governing body -
Four facets of governance
A tool for those businesses with a governing body to assess their style -
One size fits all? The governance lifecycle
An approach to assessing types of governance at different points in an organisation’s lifecycle -
Being a company director
Considering the responsibilities of being the Director of a business -
Choosing the right business form
A tool to support you in analysing your business’ purpose and the type of business that suggests
- Thinking the Unthinkable
Helping you spot warning signs and understand what happens when a business is in trouble -
Recovering your business
An approach to considering what happens when things start going wrong -
Trouble ahead: the warning signs
A checklist for spotting the warning signs that there may be troubles ahead -
Brutal Questions
A tool for the brave! Confront the brutal questions associated with your business
