Would you like to know how healthy your business is? You most certainly would! Then you must take the time to read through and answer this survey in its entirety.

• Do you have a clear idea of the benefits customers seek from your products/services?
• Do all the day to day activities in your business contribute towards creating the benefits your customers seek? In other words, does everything you do add value (as the customer sees it)?
• Do you have measurements in place to let you know how well you’re doing in the major areas of your business? For instance do you measure your
  1. Customer acquisition activities
  2. Goods/services creation activities
  3. Goods/services delivery activities
  4. Employee satisfaction ratings
• Do you know what your organisation’s constraint is at this point? What one thing would have the greatest impact on your revenue generation?
• Is your business focused on making the most of this constrained resource?
• Is there a clear documentation of procedures/processes such that within reason, your employees can easily fit into each other’s roles?
• Is there a clear connection between your day to day activities and your long term vision for your business?
• Are rewards in your organisation deliberately designed to make your workers act in the best interests of the business?
• Do you have a dependable and organisation-wide process for solving complex problems and creating breakthrough solutions?
• Do you step back from time to time and take a hard look at your processes and policies to ensure they are still aligned and relevant?

If you answered no to any of the above questions, your business is performing below its potentials. Systematically improving the areas of deficiency could lead to 30%, 50%, 100%, even 500% or 2000% jumps in revenue and profits! Imagine what it would mean for your business to be able to perform at its peak…

• an innovation process that generates hard to match product and service offerings

• delighted customers who become your most fanatical sales men and women

• financial stakeholders reaping solid and growing returns on their investments…

In previous articles we have highlighted tools for improving your processes. More recently we presented a number of true stories illustrating the application of the 2000 Percent Solution method in creating breakthrough solutions. If you would like to find out more about applying any of these tools and techniques to your situation, you may reach us through the cotact page on our website.

Samuel Okoro is the CEO of Leapfrog Alliance Ltd, a management training and consulting firm that helps organisations to reduce costs and improve quality through better business processes. His personal passion is to help move Third World business to world-class levels. For further details please visit http://leapfrogalliance.com/resources.html