Hi there. Matts Rhenstrom here, Shaper of Business Excellence. I’m standing here in front of my poster, the Business Excellence Component, Relationship Chart, showing all the components that we need to work with in order to succeed in our improvement work, building a better business.
In this video I’m going to talk about the critical success factors and the critical success factors is connected directly to these strategic goals I talked to in the earlier video, I talked about strategic goals and the strategic goals are those that make sure that we’re heading in the direction of the vision so we have our vision and when that’s over there and we have our strategic goals taking us in that direction so we ensure that we’re heading in the right way, but without the critical success factors, identifying these critical success factors. We have a hard time to understand what we need to do in detail in order to reach to or towards the goal. That will help us to the next goal, to the next goal, and the next goal, and reaching then towards the vision.
Without Success Factors, There Will Be Confusion and Fuzziness
So again, without them we have still, my favorite word, I think confusion and fuzziness. Uh, we don’t really know, oh, it, if I’m doing this, is that bringing us closer to this goal or not? That will help us towards the vision. We don’t really know which means that I do this because maybe someone told me I need to do this, but if this activity doesn’t really bring us towards our vision, in that case, these can take us farther from our vision and that is not a meaning.
How to Create Strategic Goals
In that case, we say, wait a minute, I’m not going to do this activity because it’s sabotaging what we’re wanting to accomplish. So what do you need to do then regarding the critical success factors is to look at the strategic goals that we worked with or we talked about in the earlier video. So if you have these strategic goals now, then you need to break them down and understand what factors, what areas do you need to work with in order to move towards that goal.
- Out of the Strategic Goals, identify what factors that are critical to work with to reach the goals
- Identify the activities you need to perform within each critical success factor to move towards the Strategic Goals
So it’s like if we have a large span like this, here’s the vision and here’s where you are today, the vision. You divide that up to several strategic goals, but each strategic goal, if we zoom in, then you have critical success factors here that you need to work with in order to take you towards and fulfilling the strategic goal.
So look at it, write these areas down and when you have identified these critical success factors that will ensure you the success of reaching that strategic goal, then you will, in the end, find activities that will take you further because we have identified the critical success factors, doesn’t move you from where you are to where you want to be. It just identifies the step stones that you need to walk on, but then you need to take action as well. And that can be several actions in one area, several actions in another area or we get back to these areas in an upcoming video where I’m talking about balanced scorecard or balanced a measurement and so on.
So now you have your vision, you have your business idea, you have your vision, you have your strategic goals. Now you also have the critical success factors. In the next video, I’m going to take that further and talk about goals and measurement that will make you tick off exactly so that you’re moving in the right direction in your business with your improvement work as well.
How Do You Find Your Critical Success Factors?
So how do you find your critical success factors in your business? Do you already know areas that you really, really need to work with in order to succeed and go towards your vision? Please leave a comment down below.
Also if you like to have a copy of this poster so you can follow along within this video series in a better way, then click here and you will be taken to a webpage where you can download this poster for free. And then you can then follow along better. Until the next video where we’re talking about the goals and measurement, let’s go and shape our business for excellence.
