Service Snapshot: Current State Health Check

This review enables the leadership team to gain a shared perspective of where they are, how they got there and the threats and opportunities that lie ahead and how they can take advantage of change.

Challenge

Leadership teams need to ensure that they understand the complexity of the issues facing them in a number of different situations when they:

• sense change but do not have a handle on external forces that they know are happening because they do not have the capacity to assess them or the risk/opportunities

• might be facing some very real problems in terms of staff issues, strategic direction, operational issues.

• are subject to prospective take over or themselves want to acquire or merge with another organisation (and need better to understand their own culture and strengths and weaknesses)

• are wanting to and likely to grow but would benefit from a clearer vision of themselves in order to move forward

Whether this is required across the whole organisation or for specific parts of it, it is important that whilst the review has to be thorough it should be of relatively short duration, so it is vital that it focuses on key issues.

Solution

Whilst all organisations are different and no single approach will work in all situations, there are a number of processes and systems which are vital to accelerate and sustain current and future performance. 

The Penumbra Current State Health Check is designed to provide a Board or management team, through an independent and objective review, with a clear understanding of where they stand today, what they do well and what they could do better and what actions they should take.  It also identifies what is happening in the client’s world, what impact this might have on their future aspirations and what they should to do to take advantage of changing circumstances.

Our review can be undertaken as a stand-alone exercise or as the precursor to a strategic review with a view to refining an existing strategy or developing a new one. 

Our systematic approach is designed to be light on your peoples’ time through the use of a mix of desk research, electronic diagnostic tools and qualitative research methods.

Depending on the nature and scope of the project our review would investigate a range of activities:

Strategy

• Shared vision for the future

• Strategic and operational plans

• Organisation structure

People

• Leadership and communication

• Culture, values and behaviour

• Stakeholder engagement

• Knowledge, skills and competencies

• Appraisal and reward

Governance

• Board structure, balance, roles, responsibilities, committees, service contracts and management

• Risk and performance management

• Policies and codes of practice

• Knowledge management and practice

• Decision implementation and management feedback

Business development

• Marketing and innovation

• Sales and order fulfilment

• Customer service

Operations

• Processes

• Technology

• Licence to operate

External

• Reputation perceptios

• Political, economic, social, technological, environmental and legal issues

• Social responsibility

• Regulatory requirements

• Human rights

Financial performance

Analyst review

Benefits

• Comprehensive assessment of both the current state of the organisation or parts of it

• Identifies what is done well and not so well and what action is needed

• Assesses implications of external change and ability of organisation to take advantage of this

• Addresses the intangible as well as the tangible aspects of organisation

• Ensures Boards really understand risks that they are managing

• Identifies how best to invest for the future