List your critical success factors: the handful of things a business must get right to win in your market, not a generic list of virtues. Mark how critical each is, then rate your capability now and the level you need. The ranking is criticality × gap, so a small gap on a critical factor can outrank a large gap on a standard one. Gaps of zero don't rank.
New to this? What each column means and how to score
You're ranking the few things your business has to get right to win, by how big a gap you have against how much each one matters. Every capability is scored 1 (weak) to 5 (excellent). Plain English below.
- List your critical success factors: the handful of things a business genuinely has to get right to win in your industry. Rename the examples or add your own with + Add factor.
- Set how critical each one is: Critical, Important or Standard.
- Rate your capability Now and the level you Target, each 1 to 5. The gap between them is the fixable distance.
- Read the ranking. It's criticality times gap, so a small gap on a critical factor can outrank a large gap on one that barely matters. Gaps of zero don't rank.
- Critical success factor
- One of the few things a business simply has to get right to win in your specific industry, rather than a generic list of virtues. Name the ones that actually decide who wins in your market.
- Criticality
- How much winning in your market depends on this factor. Critical = you can't win without it. Important = it matters a lot. Standard = useful, but not decisive.
- Now (capability)
- How good you honestly are at this today. 1 = weak or unreliable. 5 = excellent.
- Target (capability)
- The level you actually need to reach, on the same 1 to 5 scale. It doesn't have to be 5; aim at what winning requires.
- Gap
- Target minus Now: the distance you'd need to close. 0 = already where you need to be, so it won't rank.
- Priority
- Criticality times gap. A small gap on a critical factor can beat a large gap on a standard one, which is the whole point of ranking this way.
Example inputs are loaded. Replace them with your own figures to explore your scenario.
| Critical success factor | Criticality | Now | Target | Gap | Priority |
|---|
Suggested areas to investigate
The highest criticality-weighted gap. Not always your biggest raw gap.
This result uses the figures and judgements entered above. Check the assumptions before acting, particularly where an input is uncertain or several effects overlap.
Your gaps, ranked by what your industry rewards
The reorder
Sorted by criticality times gap, the order differs from raw gap size. That difference is the whole point.
Your current-capability scores read naturally from the Business Health Check; a Commercial Assessment adds the outside read a self-score can't, and the APG Platform turns the top-ranked gaps into owned, valued initiatives.
A ranking is only as good as the factors behind it. The hard part is upstream of the arithmetic: naming the factors that genuinely decide who wins in your market, and judging their criticality honestly. A list built for the industry you wish you were in will point you confidently in the wrong direction. Current capability is a self-rating, and self-ratings flatter, so treat a confident score on a critical factor as the place to seek an outside view. Weights mirror APG's (critical 1.5, important 1.0, standard 0.5). Not financial advice.
The thing you're worst at is frequently not the thing to fix first.
Ranking capability gaps by what your market rewards, rather than by raw size, is what keeps improvement pointed at winning. A Commercial Assessment builds it from evidence.
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