By Chally Kacelnik
When you’re caught up in just getting the work done, it can be hard to see whether the work itself is contributing effectively to meeting your strategic vision and goals. More than that, it can be hard to admit that this is something you need to think about at all, because it can feel a lot like dismissing or undermining your hard work.
Struggling is just a step on the road to effective, however, and it’s where the crucial lessons lie. We help our clients find and apply the learning. This is done by determining not only how to do things right, but also how to ensure that the right things are being done. We come at this from two sides:
- Strategic analysis: this is to determine the extent to which operations are contributing to the strategic organisational vision. Organisation-wide, this analysis looks at how each service contributes to the long term plans and how the resources allocated to it are being used. This involves an assessment of its performance and contribution to the strategic plans. It’s also a great opportunity to examine the efficacy of your strategic plans, and whether they are well expressed
- Operational analysis: this concerns the operations of the organisation on a service by service basis. Depending on your focus, it may include such factors as: process and resource analysis, activity-based costing, deep dive into systems and service provision, review of position descriptions against activities
Taking a top down and bottom up approach will allow you to get a broad and deep picture of how you’re going against how you’d like to be going. It’ll provide the evidence base and the inspiration for designing a fit for purpose operating model, redesigning service delivery methods, re-engineering processes, and consolidating your systems. It’s work that enables you to set a course and move in the right direction with minimal frustration in the future.
At LKS Quaero, we help our clients to understand where they are and get where they want to be. Visit us at lksquaero.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.
