Evaluate your organisation’s operating environment

This standard is about evaluating your organisation's operating environment. You engage with colleagues, team members and stakeholders to support the evaluation. You also monitor political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental trends and developments in addition to the needs of customers to evaluate the impact on your organisation. You benchmark performance against comparable organisations and consider the ability of your organisation to respond to opportunities and threats. In addition, you develop and maintain systems to manage knowledge and expertise in accordance with organisational policies, legal requirements and codes of practice.

This standard is for all managers and leaders.

1.      engage your colleagues and team members to support evaluation of your organisation's operating environment

2.      engage stakeholders to support evaluation of your organisation's operating environment

3.      monitor political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental trends and developments and evaluate their impact on your organisation

4.      monitor needs, behaviours and expectations of existing and potential customers and evaluate their impact on your organisation

5.      monitor the activities of existing and potential competitors and collaborators and evaluate their impact on your organisation

6.      monitor and evaluate the impact of trends and developments within your organisation

7.      benchmark your organisation's performance and practices with comparable organisations nationally and internationally, where appropriate

8.      compare the strengths and weaknesses of your organisation to respond to opportunities and threats in existing and future work

9.      assess the implications or consequences of future scenarios

10.   specify the assumptions made and risks involved to understand future scenarios

11.   organise information and knowledge in a way that supports the strategic planning and decision-making

12.   structure information to facilitate organisational knowledge management

13.   develop systems to gather information and knowledge within agreed timescales and ethics

14.   maintain systems to manage information and knowledge

15.   identify the internal and external political factors that impact on your organisation's operating environment

16.   identify systemic issues and mitigate their impact on organisational performance

17.   assess future scenarios based on the analysis of trends and developments

18.   explore and assess the range of future scenarios within the environment in which your organisation operates

19.   follow the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role when evaluating your organisation's operating environment

General knowledge and understanding

1.      how to engage colleagues and other stakeholders in evaluating your organisation's operating environment

2.      the sources of information on customers and competitors and how to use them

3.      how to measure and review your organisational performance

4.      how to analyse organisational culture and the impact this has on performance

5.      how to carry out benchmarking to identify good practice in relation to an organisation's performance and practices

6.      how to undertake a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis

7.      how to undertake an analysis of the political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) factors in the external environment

8.      how to analyse stakeholder interests

9.      how to build future scenarios and assess their implications

Industry and sector specific knowledge and understanding

10.   the sources of information on trends and developments in your sector, including those at a global level and how to access these

11.   the current and emerging trends and developments in your sector internationally, nationally and locally

12.   the legal, organisational, codes of practice and policies relevant to your role and the activities being carried out

Context specific knowledge and understanding

13.   your organisation's structure and culture

14.   your organisation's performance and the factors that influence this

15.   the factors in the international, national and local market in which your organisation operates

16.   your organisation's existing and potential customer base on the market

17.   the needs and expectations of your existing and potential customers and other stakeholders

18.   your organisation's actual and potential competitors, including their activities and relative performance levels

19.   your organisation's actual and potential partners, including their activities and relative performance levels

1. Analysing
2. Benchmarking
3. Communicating
4. Consulting
5. Customer focused
6. Decision-making
7. Evaluating
8. Information management
9. Monitoring
10. Networking
11. Planning
12. Presenting information
13. Reporting
14. Reviewing
15. Managing risks
16. Scenario building
17. Thinking critically
18. Thinking strategically
19. Thinking systematically