Identifying and leveraging your organizational strengths is a key skill for effective leadership. It can help you enhance your performance, improve your competitive advantage, and foster a positive culture. But how do you find out what your strengths are and how to use them to your benefit? Here are some of the best methods for doing so.
The first step is to evaluate your current situation and identify the areas where you excel and where you need improvement. You can use various tools and frameworks to help you with this, such as SWOT analysis, VRIO analysis, or balanced scorecard. These methods can help you analyze your internal and external factors, such as your resources, capabilities, opportunities, and threats. You can also gather feedback from your stakeholders, such as customers, employees, partners, and suppliers, to gain a deeper insight into your strengths and weaknesses.
Before you assess your current situation, think about why you are doing what you are doing. If you don't have a unifying objective, common cause, or mission and vision, it becomes difficult to assess your strengths and weaknesses. You may be able to see an Opportunity or Threat, as those are typically external, but you need to have a strategic view of what you are trying to accomplish. Also, organizational strengths and weaknesses may be due to individual strengths and weaknesses, but I would argue that process improvement can help in the improvement of weaknesses, as well as the requirement for "Heroic" strengths from the individuals in your organization.
A la hora de identificar fortalezas, considero una buena herramienta, el método de factores críticos. Empecemos listando una serie de factores que consideramos indispensables que todo buen competidor en la industria o mercado en el cual nos encontremos deba poseer para realmente ser fuerte y eficientemente; estos pueden estar ponderados por importancia para realizar una evaluación de cuales de ellas poseemos como organización y cuales deben aun ser trabajadas, considerando que estas fortalezas pueden ser realizadas de igual, mejor o peor manera por la competencia.
Organizational strengths are vital in creating, preserving and strategically projecting values to stakeholders at every level. Understanding the nature, essence and vision of the organization is critical in identifying and leveraging its strength. Different operational units of the organization must be evaluated with respect to how well their respective objectives are achieved in line with the broad organizational goal. Exceptional results from the oragnization should be traced to specific team, section or members and such team should be further motivated to do more. The team should also be used as examples to encourage other segments of the organization to upscale their value delivery and enhance the image of the organization.
Ask inside, ask outside! Both internal (employees) and external (clients, partners) stakeholders have a perspective on your organizational strengths. Make sure that, as a leader, you aren’t making assumptions. Your stakeholders can confirm your initial thinking, or they can point you in a new direction.
SWOT Analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) - Key Performance Indicators - Stakeholder Feedback - Internal Audits - Analysing Financial Statements ....
The next step is to define your core competencies, which are the unique and valuable skills, knowledge, and abilities that distinguish you from your competitors. Your core competencies should align with your vision, mission, and goals, and provide a sustainable competitive advantage. You can use the following criteria to identify your core competencies: they should be rare, valuable, inimitable, and non-substitutable. You can also use the core competency matrix to map your competencies against your products or services.
Core competencies and the definition of the processes by which you execute these core competencies can really help you message what you do, and how you do it. Keeping these points as simple as possible can also facilitate communication and understanding of processes within your organization.
The third step is to develop your strengths and make them even stronger. You can do this by investing in training, coaching, mentoring, and learning opportunities for yourself and your team. You can also use the 70-20-10 model to guide your development, which suggests that 70% of learning comes from on-the-job experience, 20% from social interactions, and 10% from formal education. You can also use the SMART framework to set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals for your strength development.
SMART goals are great, but individual strengths and weaknesses are different than organizational strengths and weaknesses. If you have your people operating outside their strengths, you may be sapping them of their energy and they may not last. Aligning individual strengths with the needs of the organization and keeping people operating where they will thrive will make your organization stronger.
The fourth step is to leverage your strengths and apply them to your work and challenges. You can do this by aligning your strengths with your tasks, projects, and roles, and delegating or outsourcing the areas where you are less proficient. You can also use the SOAR framework to leverage your strengths, which stands for strengths, opportunities, aspirations, and results. This framework can help you create a positive and action-oriented vision for your future, based on your strengths and potential.
The fifth step is to communicate your strengths and showcase them to your stakeholders. You can do this by creating a compelling value proposition that summarizes your strengths and how they benefit your customers, partners, and employees. You can also use the STAR method to communicate your strengths, which stands for situation, task, action, and result. This method can help you tell stories that demonstrate your strengths and achievements in specific contexts.
People only get 10% of what they hear typically, so as a leader you need to be continually communicating. Also communicating your capabilities needs to be communicated to make stakeholders feel good about themselves. Making others the hero in their stories. See @StoryBrand for more on this.
The sixth step is to review and refine your strengths and keep them updated and relevant. You can do this by monitoring your performance, measuring your outcomes, and soliciting feedback on a regular basis. You can also use the PDCA cycle to review and refine your strengths, which stands for plan, do, check, and act. This cycle can help you implement, evaluate, and improve your actions based on your strengths and goals.
An unconventional thought would be to build data and to understand your weaknesses to better understand your strengths or places to fortify your organisation. One way to do this is by involving your people; i.e. employees, customers and clients. Your employees would normally be able to easily identify your weaknesses and share some areas of strength and needs taken into account. Many organisations have gold on their fingertips but can't or don't readily identify it. Beyond this space having random surveys with the wider public and audience helps to have a sandwich approach with the fillings. Remember to always keep it simple.
I'll be straightforward with you. If you want to retain your people and leverage their powers, move away from "CORPORATE" logic and adopt a "COMMUNITY" based mindset. Business strategy is but a method. Analytical community is the way.
Methods for identifying and leveraging organizational strengths include conducting SWOT analysis, engaging employees for insights, analyzing performance data, benchmarking against competitors, gathering customer feedback, conducting market research, seeking expert opinions, fostering internal collaboration, aligning strategic planning, and pursuing continuous improvement.
In my view, measuring financial performance and segment analysis can shed insights where stand. Later , the reason for each positive or negative attribute needs to be further studied with the involvement of stakeholders, including staff, management, clients, and others as applicable. This method will reveal in detail things to consider leveraging on, expand, and those to improve, correct, or require divestment.
Understand your target audience. Ask yourself, if I am the customer to my business., would I purchase the product or offer the service