Welcome to Balance
Supporting the social economy
Over the past twenty years, Manchester Met has engaged with the social economy through a number of initiatives such as business growth programmes, mentoring and action learning.
One aspect of this support has been through Dr. Mike Bull and colleagues in the Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre, Department for Strategy Enterprise & Sustainability that have supported the development of the North West’s social enterprise movement through access to our diagnostic tool Balance.
Balance is a ‘Performance Diagnostic & Strategic Management Analysis Toolkit’.
Balance is an online ‘Organisational Diagnostic & Strategic Management Analysis Tool’ that provides a fast and simple way to comprehensively evaluate and assess different parts of an enterprise in just 30 minutes.
Balance is a questionnaire based self-assessment tool, which includes a supporting Action Plan.
Balance has been developed by Dr Mike Bull and colleagues at Manchester Metropolitan University in collaboration with Greater Manchester Social Enterprises and Adrian Ashton.
Developed particularly for small and medium sized social enterprises (trading charities, social businesses, and co-operative and mutuals), Balance analyses the level of complexity attributed to different aspects of an organisation. Balance provides an innovative way of assessing core areas of a social enterprise. As a Performance Diagnostic it doesn’t require any evidence or hard data to support your answers. Balance is about your opinion – your ‘gut feel’. You are asked ‘how capable is your organisation’? We ask users to answer questions as honestly as they can to get the best use of the tool.
Balance asks you a number of questions for critical reflection across a comprehensive range of areas of your operations:
✓ Stakeholder Perspectives
✓ Multi-Bottom Line
✓ Internal Activities
✓ Learning
✓ Governance
✓ Income Diversification
✓ Visioning
Through instant graphic representations of the results Balance allows an organisation leader or advisor to evaluate areas for development in how an organisation operates.
Balance stimulates critical reflection by asking key questions about an organisation. The assessment asks participants to answer questions:
- What systems do you have in place for measuring social impacts?
- How do you engage with your stakeholders?
- How strategic is your organisation?
- How diverse are your income streams?
- How does your Board make decisions?
- What activities are privileged over others?
- How balanced is an organisation?
- Where does time and effort get spent?
Key aspects:
- Self-assessment (individually or in discussion with advisor)
- Critical reflection
- Instant snapshot
- Builds knowledge and evidence
- Encourages critical thinking
- Creates pathways for change
- Sets milestones for strategic development
- Through the analysis organisations may refocus their strategic priorities in the future.
- Using Balance can help plug current gaps, improve performance, save time and effort.
- Most importantly, Balance is designed to raise fundamental awareness of the maturity of organisational practices.
- Through the results the toolkit supports the consultation interview process to help
advisors evaluate an enterprise. - The toolkit provides an enterprise of where it is today – and at the end of the intervention process on re-assessment it can track the distance travelled in developing an enterprise with the support of the consultant.
As a Strategic Management Analysis toolkit the Action Plan supports your organisational development and strategies for change.
To launch Balance you need a username and password.
Existing users please log in using the log in on the right.
New Users please request username and password for your organisation by contacting Dr Mike Bull on balance@mmu.ac.uk
Why should you use it?
Balance offers a way of viewing current business concepts and supports critical thinking and reflection about core issues that affect your organisational performance. The exercise encourages management and Board of Directors to think independently about their organisation by reflecting on a number of ‘business scenario’s’ or ‘aims’ covering various business activities.
In each scenario you are asked to position where you see your organisation now in relation to a scaled number of options, from 1 (novice) through to 5 (expert).
The results are analysed and the software generates your assessment in a graphically represented format and a written Action Plan report offering learning opportunities – direction and advice on how improvements can be made across these activities, should these be considered strategically important. Our concept, and research, suggests that successful social enterprises focus across a number of organisational issues and strive to achieve a balanced foundation to their enterprise.
Balance is a tool to support organisational development though a focused business analysis. Balance helps identify your capabilities, reviewing core areas of a social enterprise. This encourages a critical review of the way the organisation is organised and may prompt action that can have significant effects on your organisational performance.
This exercise primarily seeks to capture the current state of play in your enterprise – please be as frank as possible and reflect and participate in the experience as this process in itself is a learning journey.
At the end of your individual assessment you may choose to invite others in your organisation to take part and then compare your results against theirs. This is one of the ways in which we recommend you getting the best out of Balance. Everyone in your organisation can use the same log in and password, and Balance keeps all of your organisational assessments together for easy retrieval.
Using Balance can help to identify current gaps, improve performance, save time and effort. Most importantly, Balance is designed to raise fundamental awareness of where time and effort is best spent in a social enterprise, at whatever stage of your growth.
Who should use it?
Balance is typically used by management and Boards of Directors. It can also aid group decision making in social enterprises. We also see a role for social enterprise support providers, see below.
When should we use it?
Balance could be used as a one-off diagnostic. Although we suggest it should be used every 12 months involving both Board and management team as an annual diagnostic assessment. Balance can also support your decision making in difficult decisions and problematic business situations on an ad hoc basis.
For social enterprise support providers
Balance can be used to support social enterprise consultants during an intervention programme. Through an organisation’s results Balance supports the consultation interview process to help advisors evaluate businesses similarly across geographical locations, no matter what size, what location, consultants can use the same framework to evaluate their clients. Moreover, Balance provides a benchmark of an organisation as to where it is today – and at the end of the intervention process on re-assessment it can track the distance travelled during a support intervention from the consultant.
…strength through analysis.