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Francesca Toolkit
Circular Maturity Tool
The Circular Maturity Tool helps organisations in the furniture sector assess their current readiness and capability for circular business model transformation. It provides a structured self-assessment across nine capability dimensions — from strategic leadership and product design to digital infrastructure and organisational culture — and translates raw scores into a personalised maturity profile, a visual radar chart, and targeted toolkit recommendations. The tool is designed to be completed at the beginning of the circular innovation journey, prior to business model ideation. This ensures that all subsequent toolkit activities are grounded in an honest, evidence-based picture of the organisation’s circular starting point and that recommendations are appropriately calibrated to its actual capability level.
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Phase
Format
Expertise
Objective
The Circular Maturity Tool helps organisations in the furniture sector assess their current readiness and capability for circular business model transformation. It provides a structured self-assessment across nine capability dimensions — from strategic leadership and product design to digital infrastructure and organisational culture — and translates raw scores into a personalised maturity profile, a visual radar chart, and targeted toolkit recommendations.
The tool is designed to be completed at the beginning of the circular innovation journey, prior to business model ideation. This ensures that all subsequent toolkit activities are grounded in an honest, evidence-based picture of the organisation’s circular starting point and that recommendations are appropriately calibrated to its actual capability level.
What the Tool Is
The Circular Maturity Tool is an Excel-based diagnostic self-assessment. It is structured as five interconnected worksheets, each dedicated to a distinct stage of the assessment and results flow. The tool contains five worksheets:
- Cover – tool overview, purpose, and step-by-step instructions for navigating the workbook.
- Assessment – 27 diagnostic statements grouped into nine capability dimensions, each scored 0–3 using dropdown menus.
- Results – automated summary displaying average scores, maturity level labels, and interpretations per dimension, plus an overall Circular Maturity Score.
- Radar Chart – visual spider chart representing the organisation’s capability profile across all nine dimensions.
- Recommendations – priority capability gaps and corresponding FRANCESCA toolkit tools to use next, automatically flagged based on dimension scores.
When to Use the Tool
The Circular Maturity Tool is particularly useful when organisations are:
- Establishing a circular baseline before strategy definition or business model innovation work begins
- Identifying organisational capability gaps that need to be addressed before circular pilots or transformation programmes
- Prioritising which dimensions of circularity to focus on during a facilitated workshop or co-design process
- Communicating the current state of circular readiness to management, funders, or innovation programme partners
- Selecting the most relevant FRANCESCA toolkit tools based on the company’s actual maturity level
- Benchmarking progress by re-applying the tool after a period of circular capability development
Expected Output
Completing the tool produces:
- Average scores per capability dimension on a 0–3 scale
- A maturity level label per dimension: Not in place, Emerging, Developing, or Leading
- An overall Circular Maturity Score reflecting the aggregate across all nine dimensions
- A radar chart visualising the organisation’s relative capability profile
- A prioritised list of capability gaps with recommended FRANCESCA toolkit tools per dimension
- A structured starting point for Phase 4 Ideation activities, calibrated to the company’s actual circular readiness
The tool is designed to be used in sequence, starting from the Cover sheet and working through each worksheet before reviewing consolidated outputs. Each step below corresponds to a distinct activity within the tool.
Read the Cover sheet.
Open the Cover sheet first. It explains the tool’s structure, purpose, and five-step navigation sequence. Familiarise yourself with the sheet layout and the meaning of the four-step workflow (Score, Review, Visualise, Act) before entering any data.
Complete the Assessment sheet.
Open the Assessment sheet. It contains 27 diagnostic statements grouped into nine capability dimensions. For each statement, use the dropdown in column D to select a score from 0 to 3. Score each statement based on the organisation’s current reality — not its aspirations or plans. All 27 questions must be scored before proceeding to the Results sheet. The scoring scale is:
0 = Not in place | 1 = Emerging | 2 = Partially implemented | 3 = Fully implemented
Review the Results sheet.
Once all 27 questions are scored, open the Results sheet. It automatically calculates the average score per dimension and displays a maturity level label (Not in place, Emerging, Developing, or Leading) alongside a brief interpretation. The overall Circular Maturity Score at the bottom reflects the average across all nine dimensions.
Interpret the Radar Chart.
Open the Radar Chart sheet. It displays the capability profile as a spider chart with one axis per dimension, each scaled from 0 to 3. A larger shaded area indicates higher overall circular maturity. Use this visual to facilitate team discussion about which dimensions are strong and which are structural gaps requiring attention.
Consult the Recommendations sheet.
The Recommendations sheet automatically flags any dimension scoring below 1.5 as a Priority Area and maps each dimension to the most relevant FRANCESCA toolkit tool. Use this output to sequence subsequent toolkit activities — the dimensions scoring lowest indicate which tools to prioritise first.
The tool assesses circular readiness across nine capability dimensions. Each dimension captures a distinct and strategically important aspect of an organisation’s capacity to design, implement, and sustain circular business models. Together, the nine dimensions provide a holistic view of the organisation as a circular system.
Contract furniture manufacturer: A contract furniture manufacturer assesses its circular maturity and finds that, while its products are durable and well made, it lacks the reverse-logistics systems and refurbishment processes needed to recover used furniture and return it to the market.
Resources