Strategy Survival Guide

Strategy Survival Guide Version 2.1
Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit
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Strategy Skills
> Building an Evidence Base
Analysing data - Organisational analysis
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Organisational analysis aims to generate an understanding of the organisational structure and culture of the
system the project is looking at. This can help in understanding the ease or difficulty with which new
strategies can be adopted.
Resource Analysis
A resource audit should be carried out to identify the quantity and quality of resources available to the
organisations that will be involved with the implementation of the new strategy. The key areas to assess
include:
• Availability of and sources of finance
• Skills: organisational, leadership, technical expertise
• Availability of physical resources e.g. buildings offices etc
• IT capacity
• HR capacity.
There are also some intangible organisational assets which should be assessed such as:
• goodwill
• branding
• contacts
• image etc.
The audit should be comprehensive, but should concentrate on identifying resources that are critical to the
organisation's capabilities.
It can also be helpful to conduct historical analysis, looking at the deployment of resources of the
organisation by comparison with previous years. This can help identify any significant changes and reveal
trends which might not otherwise be apparent. Benchmarking to other similar organisations both in the UK
and other countries can also help put the organisation into perspective.
Finally, it may be beneficial to undertake analysis as to the extent to which the organisation's resources are
balanced as a whole. The three key aspects of resource balance analysis are:
• the extent to which various activities and resources of the organisation complement each other
• the degree of balance of the people within the organisation in terms of individual skills and
personality types
• whether the degree of flexibility in the organisation's resources is appropriate for the level of
uncertainty in the environment and the degree of risk the organisation is likely to take.
Cultural Mapping
The aim of cultural mapping is to understand how an organisation’s culture will affect its ability to change and
adapt to new policies or environments.
Faced with similar environments organisations respond differently. The collective behaviour of managers and
employees is determined by frames of reference (the paradigm) which are created by the culture of the
organisation (deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs). The purpose of a cultural audit is to:
Strategy Survival Guide – Strategy Skills
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