Techniques of Business Analysis

MOST Analysis

Contents for Disussion:

 Introduction
 Significance of Using MOST Analysis
 Helps in Forming a Business Plan
 Helps in Avoiding Conflicts
 How to Conduct MOST Analysis
 Mission
 Objectives
 Strategy
 Tactics
 Where to Use the MOST Analysis
 Planning of Career
 Analysing Present and Future Strategy
 Time to Time Evaluation
 Case Study: MOST Analysis Practical Application
 Final Word: MOST Analysis

Introduction
Business plan is one mantra for success. It will help run the company, and it will inform a lot of the
decisions that company make along the way. The business plan should outline all of the goals, both short-
term and long-term.

Business plan should also cover how to achieve these goals. It needs to focus on solid financial
projections and a timeline for each goal to be achieved to meet those financial projections.

A business tool exists that constructs a business plan for businesses in the most structured way. It creates
a business plan that includes the company’s mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics to carry out the
missions successfully.

This essential tool is called the MOST Analysis that provides a roadmap to companies and gives them a
sense of purpose and capability.

Every other company is bound to use the MOST analysis to sort out its direction by identifying its mission
and objectives. The analysis also helps formulate appropriate strategies and tactics to achieve the goals.

“MOST” is an acronym for

 Mission
 Objectives
 Strategies
 Tactics

This business tool is responsible for analyzing the internal environment of a company by analyzing all
four factors within the company.
The MOST analysis is highly effective in helping you realize your business’s potential. These well-tailored
insights help you create an integrated business model that will enable you to reach your goals in a
planned manner.

Significance of Using MOST Analysis

After gaining some insight about the MOST analysis, we will discuss why to use this business tool to make
your operations run smoothly.

1) Helps in Forming a Business Plan

A business plan is essential for a business as it provides a pathway to the business. Therefore, MOST
analysis is considered a very well-structured business tool that helps in forming the business plan of a
business.

With this tool’s help, businesses can state the business’s mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics.
Stating them helps cover a significant part of the business plan.

2) Helps in Avoiding Conflicts

As we have discussed earlier, the MOST analysis provides a pathway to businesses. This helps in avoiding
day-to-day conflicts that arise due to differences of opinion.

The findings of the MOST analysis unite the workforce to achieve the desired mission and objectives
through specific strategies and tactics.

How to Conduct MOST Analysis

After discussing the significance of this amazing business tool and making you realize its importance in
business, let’s learn how to use it to analyze your internal business environment.

As we discussed earlier, the MOST analysis consists of four elements. First, it highlights the mission of a
business. It sheds light on the goals a business wants to achieve.

Then it analyses the objectives of a business. In other words, it brings forward why a business wants to
achieve the set goals.

Besides highlighting the goals of a business, it also tells how to achieve the set goals by formulating the
right strategy and tactics to implement the planned strategies.

Mission
Your mission is essential in defining the reason for your business. Your mission will help guide you as you
create the rest of your business plan. It should also be clearly articulated and set far beyond creating just
a written document. You need to go into great detail in defining what you want to achieve.

For example, imagine you run a coffee shop. Stating a mission like you want your coffee shop to serve the
best coffee in the world is a vague mission to set since it won’t provide you with a direction.

Instead, you can set your mission to become the coffee shop that sells the best coffee in the city. This
mission is more practical, and it could be the first step to becoming the best coffee-selling shop in the
world later.
Objectives
Your objectives are a collection of your individual goals, and they help to guide you in the right direction
to achieve the mission of your business. The objectives set by a business help it to analyze whether the
achievements are in line with the objectives or not.

For example, your prime objective is to make money from your business. Imagine your business starts
carrying out welfare projects. Although it is an achievement to do so. However, the achievement is not in
line with the objective.

Strategy
Forming strategies clarifies what you need to do to accomplish your mission and objectives. Strategies
are what you decide to do to reach your goals.

To clarify the role of strategizing, we’ll combine the examples used earlier. For example, suppose your
mission is to make your coffee shop the best-selling coffee in the city while making sums of money. In
that case, you’ll form a strategy that ensures the mission and objective are achieved.

In this case, you form a strategy to make the best coffee in the city and increase your customer base to
increase revenue. In this case, you’ll succeed in achieving both the mission and the objective.

Tactics
This is the final element of MOST analysis. Tactics help in breaking down the strategy into small steps. It
provides small details about how the strategy will be implemented.

In the previous section, we gave an example of forming a strategy to make the best coffee and increase
the customer base, but we didn’t say how is that possible. Tactics will provide us with a complete
roadmap for effectively implementing our planned strategy.

For example, tactics will analyze that you must hire the best coffee maker to make the best coffee in the
city. Moreover, to increase the customer base, use practical tools such as marketing and innovation.

Where to Use the MOST Analysis

The MOST analysis is considered to be a very user-friendly business tool. It can be used in different
phases of planning.

Planning of Career
Very effective use of the MOST analysis is while planning the career. At this stage, using MOST analysis
can be beneficial as it will help in planning the career by first analyzing the mission and objective. Then
by providing a suitable strategy and tactics to implement that strategy.

For example, the MOST analysis highlights that a clothing brand wants to become the world’s top clothing
brand and have high revenue. Further, it also provides strategies and tactics to achieve this goal. See?
Didn’t just the brand’s entire career get planned with the help of MOST analysis?

Analysing Present and Future Strategy

MOST analysis can also be used while analyzing the current and future strategies that are to be made.
Since the two elements of the MOST analysis analyze the strategy and tactics of a business, the business
tool will also help in forming current and future strategies.
The strategy section in the MOST analysis will represent the business strategy in the long run. However,
the tactics highlighted by the MOST analysis will shed light on the steps to be taken immediately to
implement the future strategy.

Time to Time Evaluation

Businesses evolve with time but what keeps them committed to their mission and objectives is the
evaluation of their business after a certain period. Businesses can use the MOST analysis to evaluate their
business from time to time to see whether their operations are in line with the mission and objectives set
or not.

Moreover, they can evaluate their performances while comparing them with the findings of the MOST
analysis and see if any changes are required.

Case Study: MOST Analysis Practical Application

This a story about a giant food manufacturing company that used the MOST analysis to get “manager
free.”

Morning Star, a food manufacturing giant that generates more than $700 million annually and has more
than 400 employees, decided to eliminate the manager role and introduce a new “manager-free” system.

All the employees in the company now operate and evaluate their jobs on their own. No bosses or
managers are present to dictate to the employees; they make their own decisions.

How did all of that happen? Of course, with the help of MOST analysis. The employees of Morning Star
now follow missions provided by the MOST analysis instead of following managers’ orders.

Since MOST analysis provides objectives, strategy, and tactics too, all these are implemented by the
employees on their own. The employees coordinate with each other to review the practices and
determine if they are succeeding or failing.

Not every business can adopt this model, but the purpose of discussing it is to highlight how important it
is for a company to have a well-defined mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics, and all of the business
elements mentioned are provided by MOST analysis. So now we hope you do understand the significance
of MOST analysis.

Final Word: MOST Analysis

The MOST analysis is a business tool used to analyze the internal environment of a business. This
business tool helps businesses by providing them with a roadmap and a structured pathway to follow.

The MOST analysis consists of four business elements. First, the letter M in the word “MOST” represents
the business’s mission. In other words, this highlights what the business aims to achieve.

The letter O represents the objectives of a business. Mission and objectives have to be aligned to achieve
growth. One of the common problems among businesses is that, at times, they fail to understand the
objectives to be achieved. However, MOST analysis caters to this problem by clearly identifying the
objectives of a business.
The third letter, S in the word acronym MOST, stands for the strategy that must be implemented to
achieve the set mission and objectives. The MOST analysis highlights how a business can achieve the
goals set.

The last element of the MOST analysis, tactics, represents the steps necessary to implement the strategy
to achieve business goals.

The MOST analysis is considered an essential business tool since it plays a vital role in forming a business
plan with proper structure. Moreover, it helps businesses keep the working environment reasonable by
avoiding conflicts and disagreements.

MOST analysis can be used during different business processes. For example, MOST analysis is a helpful
tool for planning a business career. Moreover, it helps businesses to analyze current and future business
strategies. It also plays a vital role in helping businesses evaluate their performance after a certain
period.

The application of MOST analysis is not limited to theory. Many companies like Morning Star have proved
that MOST analysis is helpful in practical life if implemented right.

Now that we have discussed every aspect of the MOST analysis, we hope you guys are now aware of how
it helps businesses in identifying their mission, objectives, strategies, and tactics. We hope that besides
getting know-how about the MOST analysis, you guys will now be able to conduct MOST analysis for your
businesses and make the most out of it.

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