The core (Vision, Mission and Values)

At this stage, you need to define what your organization exactly does.

1. Define your organizational vision and mission. Check with your stakeholders whether the organizational vision and mission statement is still current and has their support. If it's getting out of date, discuss any necessary changes or refinements.
    
2. Define or re-define your organizational values. Review the organizational values to support the vision and mission statement. If you don't have them, it's your job to get your leadership team to write them.
    
3. Define your core business very clearly, so clearly in fact that you can use it to define what you don't do. Modern trends in business management focus on core business where you can be most competitive, concentrate your resources, and develop your organizational capability. Back in the 1970s, businesses didn't want a core business. They wanted to spread their business risk by diversifying into other industries. But they often lost money when they expanded into industries about which they knew very little. The current way of spreading risk is to maintain a range of products within your core business.
    
4. Define your business model. A business model defines how money will flow so that you can make a profit. It needs to be robust enough to convince others that you will make adequate profit.
    
5. Make a list of Critical Success Factors (CSFs). These are things you must get right for the idea to work.