How to determine development objectives: 3 easy steps

This post explains how to determine development objectives for capabilities in your organization.

Organizations deploy capabilities to execute their activities. Generally, stronger capabilities lead to better organizational results. In three easy steps, you can determine development objectives for capabilities in your organization.

How to determine objectives
Development objectives

Steps to determine development objectives

Determine development objectives for a particular capability in your organization as follows:

  1. Identify the advantage the capability would bring.
  2. Determine the direction for developing the capability.
  3. Set the priority of developing the capability.

Advantage

To identify the advantage that a particular capability would bring to your organization, you can perform a VRIO analysis to determine four relevant properties of the capability:

  • Valuable: able to tackle opportunities and threats.
  • Rare: scarce and difficult to obtain.
  • Inimitable: hard to mimic.
  • Organized: able to take full advantage of resources.

You can use the outcomes of the VRIO analysis as follows to identify the advantage a particular capability brings:

VRIO decision table to derive the competitive advantage of an organisational activity
VRIO decision table to derive the competitive advantage that a specific capability provides.

Direction

Determine a course of action for developing a particular capability in your organization as follows:

  • If it brings a disadvantage, then disinvest to make room for another capability.
  • If it brings an equal advantage, then specialize so it will be rare.
  • If it brings a temporary advantage, then merge with other capabilities so it will be inimitable.
  • If it brings an unused advantage, then secure in your organization design so it will be organized.
  • If it brings a strategic advantage, then maintain in your organization so it will sustain.

Priority

There are several ways to prioritize activities. What way is best depends on your way of working. When pursuing Agile, set a priority for developing a particular capability as follows:

  • Now: do this activity first.
  • Next: do this activity directly after the first.
  • Later: do this activity after the next.