Over the past twenty or so years, Manchester Met has engaged with the business community through a number of initiatives, such as business growth programmes, mentoring and action learning.

One aspect of this support has been through Dr. Mike Bull and colleagues in the Department for Strategy Enterprise & Sustainability, alongside Business Consultant Adrian Ashton, that have supported the development of start up’s, SMEs and social enterprises through our diagnostic toolkits.

Our online ‘Organisational Diagnostic & Strategic Management Analysis’ toolkits provide a fast, simple and innovative way to comprehensively evaluate and assess different parts of an enterprise in just under an hour. Our toolkits analyse the level of complexity attributed to different aspects of an organisation.

On return, we email users a snapshot of results that provides leaders, advisors, with a visual picture – which identifies areas for strategic discussion and targeted change in how your organisation operates.

As a Performance Diagnostic they do not require any evidence or hard data to support your answers. Our toolkits are about your opinion – your ‘gut feel’. You are asked ‘how capable is your organisation’? We ask users to answer questions as honestly as they can to get the best use out of the tools.

Across our toolkits we ask you a number of questions for critical reflection across a comprehensive range of areas of your operations, such as:

✓  Stakeholder Perspectives

✓  Multi-Bottom Line

✓  Internal Activities

✓  Learning

✓  Governance

✓  Income Diversification

✓  Visioning

Our toolkits stimulate critical reflection by asking key questions about your organisation. The assessment asks participants to reflect on:

• How strategic is your organisation?
• What activities are privileged over others?
• How balanced is an organisation?
• Where does time and effort get spent?

Key aspects:

• Self-assessment (individually or in discussion with advisor)
• follow up snapshot emailed to you within approximatly 2 working days
• Critical reflection
• Builds knowledge and evidence
• Encourages critical thinking
• Creates pathways for change
• Helps sets milestones for strategic development and change
• Through the analysis organisations may refocus their strategic priorities in the future
• Using our toolkits can help plug current gaps, improve performance, save time and effort
• Our toolkits are designed to raise your awareness of your organisational practices
• Through the results the toolkits can support the consultation interview process to help
  advisors evaluate an enterprise
• The toolkit provides an enterprise of where it is today – and at the end of the intervention process on re-assessment it can track the distance travelled in developing an enterprise with the support of the consultant

Why should you use it?

Our toolkits offer ways of viewing current business concepts, supporting critical thinking and reflection about core issues that affect your organisational performance. The exercise encourages leaders to think independently about their organisation by reflecting on a number of business scenario’s or aims covering various business activities. In each scenario you are asked to position where you see your organisation now in relation to a scaled number of options, from 1 to 5.

The results are analysed and we email you a snapshot graphic highlighting areas that you may reflect and consider as strategically important. Our concept, and research, suggests that striving to achieve a balanced foundation is a staretgy for success.

Our toolkits help identify your capabilities, review core areas of enterprise to encourages a critical review of the way the organisation is organised, which may prompt actions that can have significant effects on your organisational performance.

This exercise primarily seeks to capture the current state of play in your enterprise – please be as frank as possible and reflect and participate in the experience as this process in itself is a learning journey.

At the end of your individual assessment you may choose to invite others in your organisation to take part and then compare your results against theirs. This is one of the ways in which we recommend you getting the best out of our toolkits.

Using our toolkits can help to identify current gaps, improve performance, save time and effort. Most importantly, they are designed to raise fundamental awareness of where time and effort is best spent, at whatever stage of your development.

Who should use it?

Our toolkits are for strategic leaders, aiding decision making. We also see a role for support providers, see below.

When should we use it?

Our toolkits could be used as a one-off diagnostic. Although we suggest they should be used every 12 months, involving everyone on your management team as an annual diagnostic assessment. Our toolkits can support your decision making when faced with difficult decisions and problematic business situations on an ad hoc basis.

For business support providers

Our toolkits can also be used to support business consultants during an intervention programme. Through an organisation’s results the toolkits support the consultation interview process, thus helping advisors evaluate and understand your business practices, providing consultants with a consistent framework to evaluate their clients organisations. Moreover, our toolkits provide a benchmark of an organisation, as to where they are today – and at the end of the intervention process on re-assessment our toolkits track the distance travelled during a support intervention from the consultant.

…strength through analysis.