Which situation is this?
Where does it hurt most?
Pick the heading that fits, then the question. Two clicks, and you are on the playbook.
Money
- Losing money and not sure where?Find out whether each sale makes money, where the losses gather and what is throttling output, before anyone proposes an initiative.
- Can we afford it?Four frameworks for the question every owner asks before every decision, in the order that stops the answer being a guess: when the cash runs short, what the thing has to earn, what the accounts say you can carry, and whether it beats doing something else.
- Setting a price?Find the job you are hired for, price the value rather than the hours, check the sums, then imagine it has gone wrong.
- Which of our businesses deserve the cash?Ask what holds them under one roof, map where the cash is made and where it goes, judge each on its merits rather than its history, then set how much of today you will spend on tomorrow.
Customers and the market
- Not sure who to sell to?Choose whom to serve and whom to decline, learn the job they hire you for, then walk their whole journey.
- Launching something?Work out what customers would hire it to do before your enthusiasm spends the budget.
- Going into a new market?Read the weather, judge whether the industry can pay you, name the risk you are really taking, then choose with your eyes open.
- Setting a price?Find the job you are hired for, price the value rather than the hours, check the sums, then imagine it has gone wrong.
People
- A team that is not working?Find the layer that is actually broken, tell a fault from a phase, check the team was built for the work, then coach rather than tell.
- Leading a change?Diagnose the culture underneath, respect the physics of unfreezing, run the programme in the right order, and land it person by person.
- Who decides, and who checks?Settle who owns risk and who oversees it, pin decision rights to names, then put the risks on one page.
A decision, or the direction
- A big call the spreadsheet cannot settle?Work out what kind of problem it is, rehearse the futures, price the branches, then fail it on paper while you still can.
- Choosing between options?Make sure you are choosing between the right things, weigh the big choices in the open, sort the long list by what it would do against what it would cost, then agree what gives way when time runs out.
- Do we actually have a strategy?Test whether what you have is a strategy or a vision statement, find what you own that is a real advantage, make the one choice most firms avoid, then turn it into measures so it survives the year.
- Planning the year?The board wants a plan and you have a list. Four frameworks that turn the list into choices, including what you will stop doing.
How things run
- Something keeps going wrong?Agree what the process is before you argue about it, get every plausible cause onto one page, drill the likely ones to the root, then test the fix small and hold the gain.
- Who decides, and who checks?Settle who owns risk and who oversees it, pin decision rights to names, then put the risks on one page.
- Leading a change?Diagnose the culture underneath, respect the physics of unfreezing, run the programme in the right order, and land it person by person.
None of these, or more than one