From chaos to order - Ascertain your CSFs

I was first introduced to critical success factors by the talented people who wrote the KPI manual for AusIndustry (an Australian government department). They defined critical success factors as:

“The list of issues or aspects of organisational performance that determine ongoing health, vitality, and well-being.”  

I have always seen these as operational issues or aspects that need to be done well day-in day-out by the staff. Critical success factors are about what the staff inside the entity can do and should do every day.

It is the CSFs, and the performance measures within them, that link daily activities to the organisation’s strategies. This alignment, as shown in Exhibit 1.1, is I believe the El Dorado of management.

Stephen Covey talked in “First things first” about putting “the rocks” in first every day, before we work with the pebbles and the sand. We can liken the operational CSFs as the rocks that staff need to focus on every day. They should be the driving force behind prioritization throughout the organisation. They are very directional to operational staff who are focused on current demand, current production and current delivery of products and services. 

Where the operational CSFs are not widely known, each manager will have their own view as to what is important and prioritize work accordingly. Many counterproductive activities will thus occur based on the premise “What is important to me is important to the organisation”. For a chief executive officer to steer the ship, everybody needs to know the journey, what makes the ship sail well, and what needs to be done in difficult weather. The term critical success factors could be a major missing link in balanced-scorecard and other methodologies.

I have just finished the new edition of my toolkit "Finding Your Organisation’s Critical Success Factors" I will be posting some extracts from the toolkit in a short series.