Four Must-Ask Questions
by Ana L. Palles
Whether you’re in business for yourself, work in a small company, or are part of a huge multinational corporation, these four basic business steps are essential for success. They’re easy and can be applied at a micro level as well as the macro.
It starts by honestly asking and answering these four basic questions.
- What is our purpose?
- What did we do right?
- What could have been done better?
- What can we do to change?
If you are self-employed, you can either do this exercise yourself or gather a couple of your favorite friends and associates. Don’t be afraid to ask for input. People enjoy being asked their opinions and the discussion that ensues can yield some very valuable brainstorming information.
If you have a whiteboard or even an old fashioned chalkboard, pull it out of the closet, and get your markers or chalk at the ready. Have some sticky notes or index cards and a good supply of pens.
Make sure that you have a set of agreed upon ground rules before you start. They can be very brief, but you want these to be written down and in plain sight as a good reminder. One of the best ground rules for this type of exercise is that there are no bad ideas, and not to interrupt one another. You want fresh insights and, in order to receive the information, it is important to setup an environment that invites honest appraisals and active ideas.
A pitcher of water, coffee or tea and you’re set to start.
- What is our purpose? It sounds basic but it’s important to state your original business purpose. This should be a succinct one sentence statement like, “Our purpose is to provide the best web design service in the state” or be brutally honest and play around with something like, “Our purpose is to provide quality
- What did we do right?
- What could have been done better?
- What can we do to change?
Good business executives perform quarterly business planning reviews with their staff. It’s a great opportunity to take an assessment of where you are and whether you are still on the path to your goals or if it looks like you're taking alternate roads.
But large companies are not the only ones that need to do this review. It is just as important for an independent business owner to take this same step. Small business owners are often using their personal funds to fuel the enterprise and their margin for error can be razor thin. It is critical to take the time to assess so that appropriate adjustments can be made.
On individual sticky notes, index cards or even just a piece of paper, make a list of three things that your business did right in the past year. Feel free to have more than three, but try to have at least 3 per person.
These will go up on the white board under its own column heading. Proceed to the third question.
Often this is the hardest question of all to answer because we each have our blind spots. This is why it is important to have an environment that invites the free expression of ideas. It doesn’t mean that everyone will agree, but it is important to get a list of those things that over the course of the year, could have been improved upon.
For example, a particular marketing effort was perhaps beautifully conceived and delivered, but maybe it went to the wrong audience. Try to be specific when identifying these items. Did you perhaps get customer feedback during the year that would be useful to bring up at this time? Did you have a lot of complaints? Did you have traffic to your website but failure to convert that traffic to a customer?
These are business critical questions to ask if you intend to remain viable.
Once you’ve figured out what you are here to do, what you’re doing right and what you’re not, the next step in this exercise is to come up with ideas on how to change those things that you identified in #3 and continue in your business growth. Are there perhaps some areas of investment that did not pan out? Maybe you believed in a product that was ahead of its time or needs to be presented to a different audience group. Use your lists to understand your strengths and weaknesses.
Ask yourself if the idea is worth pursuing, what can be done to change the approach or presentation to increase exposure, sales, acceptance?
Remember, all ideas are good, but some do not leverage your strengths. Write everything down until you’ve exhausted the pool and then go back and begin threading the mission or purpose through the strengths, weaknesses and solutions.
But it doesn’t end with just listing what you can do to change. This last question pushes action. That means coming up with a list. Call it an action plan, task list or simply a to do list, the point is the same.
You want to finish by producing an assignment. It means that we don’t just sit around and ask questions that we can then ponder. It means we make the decision to take some kind of action. Even if we choose to make small, subtle changes, a change will still result in a shift.
And ultimately, that is the goal: objectively reviewing and making small adjustments to one's business dials, stopping to check on the effects, and then making more adjustments until you’re where you want to be as a business.
Take one last look at your very first question. Do the shifts you plan on making keep you aligned with your mission or purpose? If not, then perhaps the mission itself has changed over time or you must re-think those areas that result in conflict.
Once you’ve arrived, you’ll realize that it then becomes even more important to continue the cycle. Achieving success and staying there are not static or passive states. These are continuously flowing and moving with the daily currents we all navigate. To business entrepreneurs and leaders, this alone is reason enough to come to work in the morning!