Mapping business factors

Your strategy map can include a representation of the internal and external factors that can impact the success of your business strategy.

  1. Identify the strengths that your organization possesses that can help in achieving your strategic goals. For example, you might want to list competitive advantages or specific resources that your company has, such as a specialized workforce, or existing facilities that will help in achieving your goals. Add these strengths to your diagram as strengths, which are represented with the icon.
  2. Identify the weaknesses of your organization that might hinder you in reaching your goals or targets. For example, there may be some financial constraints that your company is under, or you might be lacking the capabilities required to carry out certain aspects of your strategy. Add these weaknesses to your diagram as weaknesses, represented with the icon.
  3. Identify the external opportunities that could help assist you in meeting your goals. For example, your implementation of your strategic plan might coincide with an important occasion, such as a centenary, or your strategy might be complemented by a recent trend in the industry. Add these elements to your diagram as opportunities, represented by the icon.
  4. Identify the external threats that pose a risk to your strategy. For example, you might list market volatility, or the risk of poor weather conditions, as threats to your plan. Add these elements to your diagram as threats, which are represented by the icon.
  5. You might want to link a business factor to a related goal in your business strategy map. For example, if one of your competitors has gone out of business, you might flag this as an opportunity that could be linked to a goal that envisions your company taking over the competitors client base. On the other hand, if a competitor has decided to expand into a market that figures into one of your own strategic goals, this could be flagged as a threat that is related to that particular goal in your strategy.
Results
After you have identified and modeled the business factors that impact your business strategy, you might want to use color-coding to identify areas of focus or to visually group factors in your map.
Related tasks
Adding links between maps and map elements