Main Idea:
Have you looked at your business from a customer, a vendor, an employee or someone else’s eyes? When you look at your business do you see the same things? Do you get stuck in ruts on which reports you look at? Do you think you have done everything you can to fix your problem?
Expansion of the Idea:
On Tuesday morning I was working from home and I received a call from my 5 year old grandson on Facetime. He asks me:
Papa, do you want to play Legos?
This caught me so off guard that I said yes. Of course, my grandson lives 120 miles away and I didn’t have any Legos nearby. But I was able to play Legos with him for about 20 minutes. (It also gave his mom a short respite.) He was perfectly happy and we had a good time. I could have spent a year thinking about what to do with him over Facetime and I would never have come up with his simple solution.
The same is true for a lot of our businesses. Sometimes asking questions like a 5 year old is the best idea for our businesses. He didn’t think of the reasons why it would not work. He just asked.
With all of the craziness in the world, are there questions that can help solidify (or save) your business. Here are a few that might get you started.
Should we get rid of our offices?
Should we hire more people as opposed to cutting back?
Should we change our supply change even if it will cost us money?
Should we get rid of our biggest customer?
Should we go after lower dollar customers?
Is there better technology for us?
Should we discontinue a product or service line?
Should we spend more in certain areas?
There are a lot of additional questions. I am not looking to commit financial suicide with this. But some answers lead to some surprisingly counterintuitive results. These types of questions can frequently be brought up when doing a strategic planning session or SWOT analysis. But it is a process that can be spread throughout your whole team. They can cover any of the following:
Planning
Finances
Operations
Human Resources
Vendors
Customers
Marketing
Product or Service Lines
Relationships
Technology
All of these areas have some sacred cows that no one even thinks to question. And most of the times, they are sacred cows because they are the right answer. But not always. And that is the point. When we can ask the right question, probe in the right area, explore systems and basically verify everything, we can sometimes find some gold in our businesses that can be used to really push the business forward. The key is to start looking.
What is Your Surprise Question?
Next Steps
Are there areas in your business that are struggling?
What are the critical assumptions in that area?
Brainstorm with your team.