Start fixing things sooner by identifying the right priorities now

#Strategy

I’m going to share with you a tool I use to quickly assess your business and help prioritize your next steps. This technique was introduced to my audience at a recent webinar and has helped many of my current clients break through their mindset obstacles and make significant progress more quickly.

Here’s the problem: The average business owner has one hundred pressure points that can take up space in their brains on any given day. They all seem important and urgent, but some are just better at getting your attention. 

Think about your home. You bought a great house in the perfect location. There are ten rooms, a garage, a pool, a yard, a garden, and everything needs regular attention and maintenance. 

The areas you enjoy the most probably get the most love, but sooner or later the others will detract from your enjoyment of your home if they don’t receive tending. 

When I examine your business, I see the results of your work, for better or worse. They may not be the results you want or need, but that’s the purpose of this assessment. Where should you spend more time? What can be ignored for now? 

Do you, as the owner, make the highest and best use of your time?

This assessment list could be in any order, but for my purposes, I process in the order that I generally perceive things. In other words, I examine a company results from the outside inward. We’re not looking for perfect or even excellent results. The standard we measure against is “skews towards affirmative.” Each review standard has a counter-qualifier, which serves as a tie-breaker. 

The ideal results are as follows:

Positive Brand Image

What does your website, logo, social media footprint, and value proposition say about you? Is it intentional and well-considered? Is your intended target apparent? Is the brand accessible to them? 

Counter-qualifier: Would more focused attention on brand image yield significantly better results?

Reliable Sales Funnel

Does this business know where its next job is coming from? Can it quantify future income? Is it aware of market trends and how they affect the sales funnel? 

Counter-qualifier: Would a redesign of the sales funnel significantly improve results?

Scalable Processes

Are there named processes and identifiable process owners in position to manage or evolve those processes? Are those processes designed to deliver good results when the company is busy or slow? 

Counter-qualifier: Would improvements to scalability increase efficiency and/or profit?

Consistent Strategy

Does the team all use the same language and prioritize the same strategic results? Is there healthy strategic conflict, or smoldering contention? 

Counter-qualifier: Would clearer strategic prioritization smooth the way to other improvements?

Predictable Profit

Does the owner and management know their numbers? Can they explain outliers in their results? Is there a fiscal budget and is it used as a tool or an obstacle? 

Counter-qualifier: Has the business done everything it should to make profit predictable? 

There’s always room for improvement. The question is, which focused activity will provide the best results, including allowing other areas of the business to thrive?

Prioritization

A well-balanced business should be able to apply steady pressure on all fronts and grow revenue, market share, and profit without compromising process, brand image, or strategy. Even the best-run companies struggle to meet this ideal 100% of the time. 

When reviewing your company, consider your list of pain points. Here are three examples:

An owner recently came to me with an urgent need to fill the sales pipeline. Before we dove into the selling process, pricing, and proposals, I insisted that we do a quick assessment. Everything seemed to point to the sales pipeline being top priority until we looked at the financials.

Profit was not there. Job cost was not scalable. This owner didn’t need to fill the sales pipeline until pricing and costs were under control. 

Another client came to me with big frustrations about growth. The management team all seemed busy but failed to meet growth goals. Directives to improve workflow were not getting attention. The owner’s sense of urgency was not being heeded.

Normally this would diagnose as a Process issue in that the managers were too bogged down in tactical work. Closer examination, though, showed that this was a Strategy problem. Management was not sold on the business strategy the owner felt they should be implementing. 

I spoke with a prospect just yesterday who seemed to have her act together. Sales were booming, outreach was working, pricing and margins were on track, the team was churning out great service — but the process was painful.

The default state of the team was reactive. They saw no need for being more proactive since everything seemed to get done eventually.

Process problems? Nope. A quick look at their website showed there was no brand and no value proposition. In fact, you couldn’t decipher what the business actually did for its customers. Apparently, the team didn’t understand either.  

Reevaluate

Prioritization is just the beginning. This assessment informs what areas of your business have the most to gain from your attention and which you can ignore for now. Remember, steady pressure on the weakest link in your business model will yield tangible improvements, and soon, the next priority will reveal itself. 

In each of the examples above, the owner needs to “pump the brakes” on across-the-board improvements and focus on the problematic weakness. No need to screech to a halt; just place a few initiatives on pause.

When you narrow down your list of priorities, you increase your chances of actually getting something done in a reasonable amount of time. 

For instance, redesigning a job-costing methodology might take six months when done alongside everything else. The actual task can be done in a week if you put low-priority projects on hold.

After you address your pain point, reevaluate. Return to this list of ideal results and see what should come next. Making these improvements in the right order will greatly reduce your labor intensity, shorten the time to completion, and optimize your results.