Capability-based Planning in 7 moves! (4/7)

Move #4: Analyze the capability landscape

After the previous move…

You must combine the results of maturity assessment and strategic importance evaluation into a unified view. This is called ML-SI Matrix and is created as follows (given that you have used a 5-value range, 0 to 4, for both assessments):

1)????Draw a 5x5 matrix, with a horizontal axis for maturity level (ML) and a vertical axis for strategic importance (SI). Divide each axis into 5 units to make 25 cells of the matrix;

2)????Put each BC in the appropriate cell according to the corresponding ML and SI index;

Following is an example of the resulting matrix:

A quick glance at the ML-SI matrix could reveal an interesting insight into the as-is status of the enterprise’s capability landscape: BCs on the upper left side of the matrix main diagonal of the matrix (red line), are those with ML below SI index. Thus, these BCs are potential weak points of the enterprise that could make the strategies fail. In contrast, BCs on the below right side of the diagonal are those with ML above SI index, with a low risk of being a bottleneck of strategy execution.

Let us divide the ML-SI matrix into 3 regions, in order to get a more clear view of the landscape:

1)????Gap Zone: upper left part of the ML-SI matrix, where being a BC in this area means that BC has an ML index less than enough to fulfill its participation in strategy execution;

2)????Comfort Zone: lower right part of the ML-SI matrix where being a BC in this area means that BC may cause low risk to strategy execution because it has low SI or is of high ML.

3)????Acceptance Band: the area around the main diagonal of the matrix, where corresponding BCs are of enough ML to perform their role in strategy execution.

Location of BCs on ML-SI matrix essentially guides the needed improvements in ML, in the next move…