Building strategic capacity
Licence to operate
Some of what your organisation does wins no thanks from a customer, yet gets noticed the moment it slips. The safety checks are done, the accounts filed on time, the room clean. They won't set you apart, but get them wrong and it costs you.
This is your licence to operate: your entry ticket, your baseline. Without it you can't compete; clear the line and you've only drawn level with your competitors.
Here you set your whole licence to operate on one page: the items, their standard, where you stand, and who owns each.
Your own list first
What does your business have to get right just to be in the running? Rough notes are fine, one per line.
Regulators, safety, contract terms: the things that make the news.
The work so expected that no one mentions it.
If it only surfaces when it goes wrong, it's probably one of these.
A few things about you
A little context sharpens the next step.
Customers, commissioners, funders, members, some mix.
A regulator, a licensor, a dominant customer, a community.
The sort
These are things organisations commonly have to get right to stay in the game. Where the line falls, though, is different for everyone: one company's licence to operate is another's edge. So this isn't about a right answer, it's about registering what counts as a baseline for you and what genuinely sets you apart.
Pay closest attention to anything you'd forgotten. Once a standard becomes a given it stops being watched, and that is often where delivery quietly slips. Challenge each card in turn, and add your own, because no common list knows your contracts, your regulator, or the thing that nearly went wrong two years ago.
Mark any card as one you'd forgotten as well, whichever pile it sits in.
A rule of thumb
Take each card and ask two things. Would failing it cost you customers, or bring in a regulator? Would doing it brilliantly win you nothing, no one paying more or even noticing?
If both, it's a licence to operate. If people would choose you for it instead, it sets you apart.
Tap a card, then choose its pile.
What wasn't on your list
Your first list sits beside where the cards landed. Anything under "we'd forgotten this" deserves a second look.
The things you can't see are the ones best placed to hurt you, because nobody is watching the line. They're usually the oldest: work done well for so long it has disappeared into the walls. Once you can see a thing, you can decide about it.
What you wrote at the start
Where the cards landed
In yourself. Notice which cards you wanted to argue into "sets us apart". Pride attaches to work we do well, and it may be the case that some of your best work is simply what's expected. Well isn't the same as different, and letting that be true releases money and attention for the things that do set you apart.
Your licence to operate, on one page
Pin each one down: the standard, where you stand, and who owns it.
| Item | What good enough looks like, and who sets it | Where are you? | Who owns it |
|---|
Before you close
Two rules for holding this.
Meet the standard, reliably, at a cost you can sustain. Reliability is the whole job here; excellence is invisible.
Don't overdo it. Money spent above the line is money not spent on what sets you apart.
The line rises. What wins you business at one point in time can end up merely keeping you in the game, and the shift can happen fast. A question worth returning to, perhaps yearly: what used to win us business that now just keeps us in it? This page is a living document, not a certificate.
The exception exists, as a choice. Occasionally an organisation chooses to turn one of these items into the thing that sets it apart, by doing it far better than anyone else. It can work. It's rare, expensive and deliberate, a decision made with eyes open rather than a habit drifted into. If you're above the line anywhere on your page, the honest question is which of those two you're looking at.
What this feeds. This page holds what gets you into the game. The next piece of work looks at how you're funded, and what that asks of you. After that comes purpose: why you exist.
Download your page to keep it, or start again.