Know one's strengths and weaknesses

Some enterprises are pulled by the Customer, others by the Product (technology enterprises). The former first wonder about customer needs, the latter focus first on the Product and then look for a Customer... For them, know-how is key.

We cannot be the best at everything. Common sense has to lead the enterprise to position itself on markets where its qualities give it a competitive advantage and where its weaknesses will not hamper it too much. But that presupposes that we can clearly see our strengths and weaknesses.

As an Enterprise is only a Model executed by Resources, we have to analyze the whole Enterprise Model and its Resources, as they have been described earlier, to identify our strong and weak points.

• Offer Model
  • Is the Offer adapted to new Markets, for which Values?
  • Is the Product Offer overabundant?
  • Is the Product quality good enough?
  • Is the Product Usage easy and consistent?
    
• Operation Model
  
  • Is the Distribution Model innovative?
  • What is the Production cost compared to the competitors'?
  • What weight do the procedures have in the decisions?
    
• Transformation Model
  
  • Is the speed of the Transformation quick enough?
  • Do we have project managers capable of managing all the dimensions of a Transformation and do we know how to retain them?
  • Is a powerful Foundation team in charge of the overall coherence?
• Image
  • traditional or innovative?
  • Product quality or competitive prices?
    
• Culture
  • Proud of our model or fear of the competition?
  • Have the staff understood that there needs to be a profound change?
  • Capable or not of taking risks?
  • Antagonisms or positive collaboration between Business and IT?
    
• Human Resources
  • Is change accepted by the Operational staff?
  • Organization by project or by competence?
  • Do we have enough quality Transformers? Do we know how to retain them?
    
• Information Resources
  
  • Do we have enough Customer information?
  • Do we have enough feedback on the level of satisfaction of Products and Services?
  • Is the management information pertinent?
    
• Financial Resources
  
  • Can we give ourselves the means to Transform deeply?
    

External opinion is as important as internal opinion: customers and partners are the best source of information.

Once again, we feel that the biggest strength is the ability to reinvent ourselves quickly: what counts above all else is Enterprise Agility. On the opposite, whatever its current competitive advantage, the greatest weakness is not knowing how to change in time. Who would have believed, several years ago, that the likes of Kodak, Blackberry, Nokia, Sony, Peugeot... would have difficulties.

The story of George the Baker is made available under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution - NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

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