Section 4: Environmental analysis
What goes on in your area of responsibility?
Having looked at the world outside your organisation, we can now look at the processes that take place within it. You can then compare what you do, how you go about it and how successful you are. This indicates where effective management actions can take place to ensure the best possible results are achieved.
The two types of transforming resource are:
- people - supporting or directly involved in the transforming process (also referred to as 'labour')
- facilities - land, buildings, machines and equipment (often called 'capital').
How you as a manager deploy, manage and control these will determine the success of your area of responsibility in the organisation, by transforming inputs into outputs that are fit for purpose.
The transformation process model is one way of examining this. It offers a very powerful way of understanding what you do and can be expanded to allow insights into performance improvements and removal of 'waste' from the process. The basic model is shown in the figure below.
Note the inclusion of the feedback loop in the diagram. This allows information about the outputs to be fed back to the start of the process allowing either a change in inputs (for example, higher-quality components) or of the transformation process itself.
The inputs and outputs may be:
- tangible or intangible
- a product or service
- produced within the private, public or not-for-profit sectors.
Click to see an example. This shows a bus station and may help you to gain an understanding of how the model can be used.
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