Literacy Basics - Community Literacy of Ontario

Assessing Your External Environment

External Assessment

Assessing the external environment in which the agency operates is the next critical step. The external environment includes everything that impacts the agency for better or for worse from outside the walls of the organization.

For every agency there are unique forces and trends that are related to things such as:

• changes in the political climate
• social or economic issues for a particular group of clients
• changes in technology
• changes in adult education
• changes within the local community

These kinds of outside factors play a significant role in the agency's planning and decisions for the future, so information-gathering about these issues is necessary. You need to think through how you are going to respond to these external opportunities and threats. Are there key opportunities your agency needs to pursue either right away or in the near future? Are there threats that your agency needs to address and take action on? Opportunities tend to vanish but threats rarely go away of their own accord.

Coming back to the SWOT analysis introduced earlier (where you analyze organizational strengths, weaknesses and opportunities and threats), we now look at the external factors (opportunities and threats). These represent the opportunities and threats that exist beyond the walls of the agency that have an effect on the agency's success.

Opportunities are positive in nature. They are those chances that come our way, or doors that open up, that can lead to new ventures and possibilities for the agency. An example might be a new business or industry opening up in your community which could result in your literacy agency starting up a new training program.

Threats are negative in nature. They are any external events or factors that have a detrimental affect on an agency's success. An example of this might be another organization or business that opens and offers similar programming to that of your agency.

Conditions and events that happen in the world around the agency create the positive and negative forces that influence the agency's decision-making. Agencies need to be conscious of the trends that are taking shape and be discerning in reading the signs if they are to make the best decisions on how to respond to the external environment.

The reason behind all this information-gathering is to become well enough informed so that your agency can make decisions for the future that will result in a positive contribution towards its mission and its local community. You want to become aware of the important external factors both positive and negative that you must take into account when looking for opportunities for moving forward.

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What you are looking for when collecting data on the agency's external environment?

Specifically, agencies want to be able to predict with some degree of accuracy what they can expect with regard to things like:

• The changing landscape of literacy
• Changing government priorities in adult education
• New development and emerging needs in the local community
• Literacy learners: who they are, where they come from and what they need
• Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities: internal restructuring and changing role with literacy agencies
• Changing roles and responsibilities within Employment Ontario
• New initiatives in other provincial government ministries and in the federal and municipal government
• Current and potential sources of funding
• New relationships and opportunities with other streams and sectors
• Opportunities for other external partnerships
• New developments with your competitors, including both competitive and collaborative forces
• What skills are available in your area? What skills are employers looking for?
• Changes in education levels and high school drop out rates in your community
• Other educational opportunities in your area

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