MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

As a result of the information triggers from Month One, the proper placement of the program can be established. As current leaders of the organization with executive responsibility for operations, Month Two is dedicated to the determination, and possibly, the prioritization of optimizing processes within business units and/or departments. Larger organizations that are comprised of product and/or service delivery functions, logistics, human resources and training, and information technology units, can have many areas of need for business optimization. It is at this point in the program that the organization establishes buy-in for where this program will first be implemented: At what tier in the organization and which business unit(s)? If at lower departmental tiers within business units, which departments are considered higher priority for the benefits of optimization? Should this program be implemented across departments with multiple starting points, and possibly over multiple years? These are all questions that will be answered as means of proper placement of the program based on priority and how the benefits of the program can provide the best overall impact to the organization.

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Objectives

01. Defining a Need: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Organizational Priorities: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Purpose and Vision: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Prioritization Process: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Identifying and Clarifying Needs: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Define Characteristics of Each Need: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Tackling Needs in Order of Urgency: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. 1 Month
08. Additional Criteria for Needs Prioritization: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Prioritization Tools: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Roadmapping Tools : departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Stakeholder Communication and Buy-in: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Define Stakeholders for Process Improvement Projects: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development. Time Allocated: 1 Month

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Strategies

01. Defining a Need: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
02. Organizational Priorities: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
03. Purpose and Vision: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
04. Prioritization Process: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
05. Identifying and Clarifying Needs: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
06. Define Characteristics of Each Need: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
07. Tackling Needs in Order of Urgency: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
08. Additional Criteria for Needs Prioritization: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
09. Prioritization Tools: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
10. Roadmapping Tools: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
11. Stakeholder Communication and Buy-in: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.
12. Define Stakeholders for Process Improvement Projects: Each individual department head to undertake departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research and development.

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Tasks

01. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Defining a Need.
02. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Organizational Priorities.
03. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Purpose and Vision.
04. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Prioritization Process.
05. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Identifying and Clarifying Needs.
06. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Define Characteristics of Each Need.
07. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Tackling Needs in Order of Urgency.
08. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Additional Criteria for Needs Prioritization.
09. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Prioritization Tools.
10. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Roadmapping Tools.
11. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Stakeholder Communication and Buy-in.
12. Create a task on your calendar, to be completed within the next month, to analyze Define Stakeholders for Process Improvement Projects.

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Introduction

The goal of Workshop 2 is to identify any current significant pain points that your organization may be experiencing. The needs prioritization would probably be focused on a well-known, obvious problem, like persistent logistical errors that are negatively hurting actual sales. Every company will experience problems that need to be resolved, and the goal of this workshop is to identify these problems and acquire the information needed to rapidly and efficiently address them (s). However, depending on the job or position of the user, this application itself is a guide to show people how to effectively assess, prioritize, and manage/implement change across numerous pain points (bottlenecks) inside a department, and/or across departments and/or business units.

Every organization needs what is called a “Hierarchy of Purpose”. It is nearly impossible to prioritize effectively without one.

Strategic and operational prioritization can frequently mean the difference between success and failure. However, a lot of businesses do it poorly.

Let’s use a real-world illustration: a corporation that delivers packages to customers via the postal service. In an era of escalating competition and digital equivalents, the company has been fighting to survive, much like many other postal systems. At a series of town hall meetings, senior management invited staff members to focus on two operational priorities: effectiveness (improving delivery times) and customer satisfaction (ensuring customers had a good experience).

Mary, a worker, understood the message. And all went smoothly until she was out delivering items when an old guy knocked on her door and invited her inside for a short conversation. Mary’s instinct was to see the lonely old man for a while. In addition to being a kind thing to do, it would undoubtedly improve consumer satisfaction. She then froze, though. How about effectiveness? Her delivery timings would suffer if she talked to her customer for even a brief period of time. What exactly was she to do? At this company, thousands of workers had to make comparable decisions every day.

The situation is a common one. The postal company’s senior management believed they had conveyed clear priorities, but in reality, they had produced an operational conundrum as a result of strategic uncertainty.

Compare this to other profitable businesses. For instance, the low-cost airline Ryanair in Europe is quite open about the fact that it is a no-frills business where operational priority is efficiency, which takes precedence above customer service. Ryanair employees are aware of the importance of each task and know how to prioritize their time accordingly.

Prioritizing improves strategic project success rates, senior management team focus and alignment toward strategic goals, operational team confidence in decision-making, and, most importantly, fosters an execution attitude and culture.

Of course, there are times when leaders just select the incorrect priorities and make the wrong decisions. However, in many cases, the issue seen more frequently is that leaders don’t actually make any obvious judgments. They don’t make it clear what they mean when they say, “it matters.” Simply put, they lack priorities.

Companies with highly developed perceptions of priorities include Apple, Amazon, Lego, Ikea, and Western Union, and the benefits are significant. Companies that start prioritizing can see significant cost savings as less important tasks are eliminated and redundant efforts are combined.

An organization’s list of priorities can be very telling. A senior executive team will typically have a generous portfolio of priorities if their risk appetite is very low (or if they lack the ability or desire to make the difficult decisions); they don’t want to take the risk of not being compliant, missing a market opportunity, not having the newest technologies, etc. However, based on many observations, the most effective executives tend to take more risks and have a laser-like focus on a select few priorities. These business leaders are cognizant of current and future issues. At its most extreme, this may involve focusing only on one priority. More concentration is preferable.

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The Hierarchy of Purpose

The Hierarchy of Purpose, a simple framework developed by Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, is a tool that executive teams can use to help them prioritize strategic initiatives and projects:

• Purpose. What is the purpose of the organization and how is that purpose best pursued? What is the strategic vision supporting this purpose?

• Priorities. Given the stated purpose and vision, what matters most to the organization now and in the future? What are its priorities now and over the next two to five years?

• Projects. Based on the answers to the first two points, which projects are the most strategic and should be resourced to the hilt? Which projects align with the purpose, vision, and priorities, and which should be stopped or scrapped?

• People. Now that there is clarity around the strategic priorities and the projects that matter most, who are the best people to execute on those projects?

• Performance. Traditionally, project performance indicators are tied to inputs (e.g., scope, cost, and time). They are much easier to track than outputs (such as benefits, impact, and goals). However, despite the difficulty companies have in tracking outputs, it’s the outputs that really matter. What are the precise outcome-related targets that will measure real performance and value creation? Reduce your attention to inputs and focus on those instead.

The strategic dialogue and alignment at the top of the company are best improved by prioritizing. From that point, it then cascades to the remainder of the organization. Priorities become ingrained in the business and its corporate culture if you successfully guide the leadership team to comprehend this.

Consider the priorities of your organization. Are all of your varied activities prioritized for the organization’s overall success? What is the best way to utilize the company’s current and foreseeable financial and operational resources? What would become more important to you in the event of a rapid economic downturn?

Most projects and initiatives in an organization are aligned with its strategies when organizational priorities are understood and well-communicated. However, organizations are considerably more complex in reality than most people realize. Strategic goals can occasionally be hazy or absent entirely. Between the corporate strategic objectives and those of the various business units, divisions, or functions, there is frequently a disconnect and lack of alignment.

It is actually not viable to align all of an organization’s initiatives and programs with its strategic goals. For example, it is more feasible to guarantee that at least the 20 most crucial projects and programs are completely in line with the strategic goals.

Executives realize that shifting priorities are a reality of corporate life by using the Hierarchy of Purpose. In fact, whenever a company drops a priority, the company becomes more focused. Every objective that is dropped presents an opportunity to grow and improve moving forward. Only when senior management makes difficult decisions can priorities change and have the power to radically alter organizations.

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Prioritizing Organizational Wants vs. Needs and How to Tell the Difference

Strategic planning often forces leaders to choose between alternatives. Before making any judgments about action planning, it is crucial to identify which alternatives are optional and which are actual business necessities. It might be challenging to distinguish between organizational wants and needs and to rank them in terms of importance. Strong knowledge of the existing company environment, clear long-term goals, and opportunity cost analyses for each option all facilitate the process.

Basic Analysis Information

Without initially doing a thorough analysis of the existing business environment and establishing long-term company objectives, it is impossible to pinpoint organizational needs or rank them in terms of importance. Information about the environment comprises both internal and external variables that could have an impact on the company. This involves an examination of the state of the economy, a market study, and the findings of an internally generated analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT). With this knowledge, the business owner can create broad goals that span three to five years and are in line with the organization’s vision.

Opportunity Alternatives

Long-term objectives have been created as the source of opportunity options. Depending on each company’s desired long-term emphasis, many options are available, including as creating new revenue streams, breaking into new markets, expanding sales regions, or perhaps buying another company. As an illustration, setup, advertising, and upkeep options are potential alternatives coming from a revenue stream target to build up a website. The site might be built from scratch internally or with a custom design as setup options. Utilizing the present company logo in its current form or altering it to better suit the website are two other options.

Distinguishing Wants Vs. Needs

A leader or executive can discern between a wish and a necessity by using an opportunity cost analysis, which calculates the costs of selecting one choice over another. The criteria used to assess opportunity value most frequently is which choice will result in the highest profit. Among the variables that may be employed are time, labor, or worker productivity. For instance, while comparing several options for website setup, consideration can be given to development time, employee productivity, and overall cost to the company. The business owner must decide whether lost employee productivity and a corresponding overall reduced setup cost are more relevant than no lost productivity, but a significantly higher setup cost, when determining whether to construct a website from scratch internally or have it custom-built. The requirement is for whichever choice is eventually the most profitable, regardless of the desire of the business owner. For purposes of this study, a desire is defined as a course of action that does not increase business revenues or further strategic objectives.

Prioritizing Wants and Needs

Needs are usually given priority over wants when setting priorities. Prioritizing needs in accordance with the importance of their parent strategic objectives is a frequent starting point. Building the website comes in first, if finding new money sources is the main strategic goal. Other chance possibilities that have been identified as wants within this target include incorporating the current company logo exactly as is, setting up click-based advertising, and creating a website newsletter. If time and resources permit and once all needs have been satisfied, more opportunities designated as desires might be added to the website in accordance with the priority order in which they were assigned.

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Prioritizing Your Business Goals

For a firm to succeed, a lot of effort and sacrifice must be made. Successful companies don’t just appear out of nowhere. The first step in growing your business is to set goals and order them by priority . Setting and achieving business goals will help you make sure that your company is headed in the proper direction.

Short-term objectives created for the business are known as business goals. Every organization has goals that are specific to how it operates, and no two organizations will necessa