Conducting Your Organizational Assessment
Now that you have gained some clarity through your discovery phase, you’ll want to focus your attention on an internal audit that will identify what your organization needs to strengthen itself internally based on all the data you gained.
When you conduct this internal audit, you are going to translate and then prioritize your gaps and weaknesses.
A good organizational assessment gives us honest answers to telling us where we are falling short in delivering our mission. These are often not failings on the organization’s part, but may be because of the learnings you gained during your PESTLE analysis.
When you assess yourself, be truthful, but not critical. Remember that this is simply another part of your analysis that will help you build a solid and achievable 3-5 year strategic action plan. You probably gained the data you will need to translate the weaknesses you have from your stakeholder interviews/surveys. Look for patterns. But do not use the data to simply tell you what’s wrong. Instead analyze it for the opportunities to improve systems and structures that can move you forward. Look for answers to these questions:
Where are we falling short in delivering on our mission?
What is limiting our impact or growth?
What do we not have (skills, systems, resources) that we need?
Where are we overextended or under-resourced?
What capabilities will we need to reach our next level of impact?
I like to think of this as a giant chart because my brain works best in an excel format. But your brain probably (hopefully) works differently. Either way, you’ll want to ask those 5 questions for each of the following key areas: :
Programs: effectiveness, quality, alignment with mission
People: staff skills, leadership, capacity, burnout
Systems: technology, data, processes, infrastructure
Funding: sustainability, diversification, fundraising capacity
Partnerships: strength and alignment of collaborations
Strategy: clarity, focus, and execution
Awareness: marketing, communication, external and internal relationships
When you translate each of these weaknesses into a specific need, you will end up with a prioritized list of organizational capacity needs that will clarify what is holding you back from success. This information will give you direction for future resource allocation. But since not everything can be resourced (wouldn’t it be nice if it could be!), you’ll need to prioritize your needs.
I’ll be honest. This assessment is my favorite part of strategic planning. It is from here that you get to define your goals and tactics because you will clearly see the actionable needs that you should focus on as long as you don’t avoid the hard truths about your gaps. So enjoy this! It’s sort of like finding out that eating spinach isn’t just good for you, but it actually tastes good with a bit of garlic.
