The Self-Assessment test you find on this website is based on an easy-to-understand idea, namely that if you want to shift your business up a gear, you need to aim for balance between the most important elements of your business.
Here are twelve suggested steps you can take towards this goal:
- Clarify what you want out of life and the financial security you need from your business to sustain your chosen lifestyle.
- Identify small things to do to improve your communication with others and observe yourself doing these with the aim of strengthening your relationships.
- Make sure your work environment is conducive to your productivity and use the tools at your disposal effectively, such as your to-do-list and email inbox.
- Describe your clients and prospective clients in detail so that you can focus your sales efforts on those most likely to do business with you.
- Clarify your unique offering compared to your competitors and keep an eye on their movements.
- Make sure your suppliers are adding real value to your business and do not hesitate to change to new suppliers who offer more value.
- Describe your various business processes in flow diagrams so that all your staff can understand how they fit into the business; and organise tasks in the workflow into individual job descriptions.
- Appoint competent staff, trust them to get on with things and agree with them to assess their performance at set intervals.
- Use financial ratios and variances to monitor the health of your business and always plan your cashflow in detail.
- Monitor the quality of each business process output by comparing the performance with the desired level indicated by key measures; then investigate discrepancies and solve the causes of problems without delay.
- Keep gathering information on market trends or innovations, and use this information in your planning for the continuous development or refinement of your product or service.
- Clarify the purpose of your business as a contributor to the greater good of the community and improving the environment it operates in.
In taking these steps, you may well find that you are not best suited to take full responsibility for all of the areas in your business that need attention. Therefore, see this as an opportunity to focus on what comes naturally to you and look for other business partners or staff to attend to those areas that just seems to be hard work to you.
In building your team you may find it useful to use tools such as Wealth Dynamics entrepreneurial profiling.
