The big idea

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 encourage you to constantly monitor your performance and find appropriate mechanisms for development. Something that may prove essential in the current turbulent and unpredictable external environment.

You should not think of the framework as prescriptive but rather as a tool to encourage a spirit of enquiry.

Purpose

To self-evaluate, you will need to be clear about what you are setting out to achieve. In other words, what success looks like. This should be well defined in your current business plan through appropriate objectives and targets. With this clarity, you should be better equipped to take appropriate risks and to communicate your values to all your stakeholders.

The steps in the self-evaluation process are:
• Agreeing the scope: this requires you to identify which areas of the organisation you wish to consider as part of your self-evaluation and how you will measure success
• Defining the evidence: is about being clear on what you need to collect to assess how well you are doing against your measures of success
• Collecting the evidence: is gathering data, both qualitative and quantitative
• Analysing: is honest assessment of your achievements in the light of the evidence
• Reaching conclusions: is about taking and communicating your honest assessment of achievements and using your conclusions to inform your business planning process

The Tool

The self-evaluation framework consists of a set of prompt questions to help you understand your business in terms of its:
• Motivation
• External environment
• Performance and delivery
• Organisational capacity and capability
This tool will probably take some time to complete and can be used on an ongoing basis. It is better suited to micro-businesses/SMEs and larger enterprises and would ideally be done as a team or teams.