is the world ready for your idea?
Dealing with Difficult People
four. An insight into whether your idea is going to work or not.
There are a few concepts that keep coming up again and again in the MBA. An MBA is, in essence, a series of different lenses that you can use to examine the world, and (hopefully) the skills to make sense of the information that comes along with these lenses.
One concept that we returned to a number of times over the degree, including in the "Managing People and Organisations" subject, was the PESTEL analysis. Beyond thinking about whether you can actually make your idea into a business, this tool helps you work out whether the business will be able to operate successfully in a particular area.
This video sums it up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCdcdf-b8AU
PESTEL stands for Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural, Technological, Environmental and Legal. Whether you're looking to get started, expand into a new location or context, or just examine your strategy to make it more solid, this is a useful list to work through. By taking each consideration each of these list items in the place you're looking to operate, you can identify opportunities and threats, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
One way to use the analysis is to pick one of the six areas, and consider how a change in that space could help you achieve your goals, or make it impossible to achieve them.
For example: you're running an in-person training facility, and you're looking to operate during a pandemic. What will happen:
Political: changes to the government priorities away from in-person education (negative).
Economic: reduced discretionary spending (negative).
Socio-Cultural: preferences to be learning in-person are reduced (negative)
Technological: less relevant for an in-person training facility. (neutral)
Environmental: preference to reduce travel and avoid spaces with shared airflow. (neutral)
Legal: significant changes to who can work in an in-person training context (negative).
Even from this quick analysis you can see the usefulness of the PESTEL in opening up your blind spots, and making your strategic thinking more robust.
Have you ever heard of the PESTEL analysis before? What could you use it on this week?
Hit reply and let me know.
Dave.
Work. Study. Dad.