The Operating Environment

I hope you’re really enjoying this. We have a few slides. We’re not too far away from finishing. I know the time, I did say there’s a lot in it. Please head to chat. And if there’s any questions before you head off it’d be great for you to hang around for another 10 minutes to get through the the rest of the information. But I certainly hope this is helping you think about your organisation and what questions you may have. And I hope the handouts have been really, really valuable for you and that toolkit. I’m sure when you sit down and you have some time to absorb all of the questions in there, and note that some of those questions, for those of you who are more strategic, who do have a large staff or resource space, there may be some questions they’re a little operational. So again, just think, “Hmm, is that something that would be valuable for me to know?” but I certainly hope you’re enjoying the webinars so far. 

So let’s look at the operating environment. One of the great things we’ve got to think about competitors. Don’t we? So our competitors, I always say, are only that if, if that’s a label you give or the label they give you. In actual fact it’s an opportunity for collaboration. If you’re doing similar things, we’ll let’s join together. It would be fantastic. So, if there is an opportunity for that, that’s great. But we need to know who is in the environment. What’s our external environment and who our competitors are? How do we differ from similar organisations? What’s our unique value that we offer to our clients or the community and the people that we’re serving? Another really great question. 

I think for us to take an honest reflection of our organisation, is what are our strengths weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This is often an exercise you do in strategic planning. And I think for new board members to be very well aware of what this is, is actually really valuable. If it’s not in the strategic plan ask if you’ve done this exercise. If you haven’t, then what a great opportunity to work through that with your community group. The other thing is how are you updated on industry trends and competitors shifts? So as an example of a service, I was on a board with, we had every board meeting, we actually had an agenda item which was just simply core trends and shifts. 

And the CEO manager was the title, would actually report to us on some key things they were noticing about how the the industry and how the competitive environment the external environment was actually shifting a little. And that can be really valuable information to help you make future decisions.