Logical Method

Business gets tougher in some ways all the time for many of us. More businesses are at risk today than ever before. The dreadful economy, greater complexity, greater competition, advancing technology, higher costs, shifting sands and similar challenges are really making it challenging to survive, much less thrive.

One major issue is that many businesses are just so much more complicated to operate now. Complexity not only translates to higher costs, but it just makes it harder to be organized enough to get everything done so that a business owner or manager can have the time needed to focus on their core business.

What can a business owner do to make sure that the right things are done and the wrong things are avoided? Good question.

Is there a simple answer?

Well, to some extent, for most business owners, there are a couple of things that do help a great deal. In fact, these answers are common sense (see the previous article on business and common sense).

Fact: Most businesses have no written goals. Does your business? How about a simple strategy document, checklists for critical routine activities, a corporate calendar, a well organized corporate computer drive with routine backups?

While these business tasks may seem too simple to even suggest, I have found that even the largest companies I have worked with often don’t do a very good job of these executing these critical elements of success. Conversely, many times big businesses have so many different kinds of these documents and processes that they often create a bigger mess than they were trying to organize in the first place.

How can this be? Most any small business owner will say yes to the question “Is your business worth a few minutes a week to you?”.

Most of the time I get the “yes” answer but that they are already working 60 to 80 hours a week. So, I guess the answer must truly be yes. But, I find over and over again, businesses that most are tragically missing a a few very simple, quick and easy tasks that literally could easily cost them their business or at the least a lot of waste and frustration.

Over the next few articles I will be laying out these simple critical elements that I have seen so many businesses, large and small, simply not do an adequate job of.  Most of the time it eventually costs them dearly. Sometimes it costs them their business.

Again, the question really is, “Is your business worth a few minutes a week managing a few things that will save you hours of effort and maybe even your business. Think that’s not possible? Think again and check back for future posts.

And, check out the section on Goals, Strategies, Tactics and Tasks/Experiments.  I think many of you will be glad you did.

It seems clear to most that targets are easier to hit if you know what they are. Business Goals should be thought of as targets. If you don’t know what your goals are, your odds of hitting them is not very good.

Think goals first, then strategies. In this context a good business goal will be an objective with a time component and at least one other measurable aspect. For the purposes of business goals, soon is not a time and some is not an amount.

Here are a few examples of well structured business goals:

• Double sales margins by the end of third quarter.
• Increase subscription rates by 30% next month.
• Generate enough revenue to cover your burn rate by the end of the year.

Goals can be at different levels for different purposes in an organization. Often times I think I have a goal and it becomes a strategy beneath a higher goal. I am getting better at this process by simply going through the process and you can too.

The important thing is to start to define what your goals are in quantifiable terms of time and measure. At least you will know more about the goal(s) and also where you are with respect to success as the date approaches.

Next, we will move on to defining strategies to meet your business goals.

A Strategy Map is basically a spreadsheet or list of  your Goals, Strategies, Tactics and Tasks/Experiments. Imagine you are in a new city and need to get somewhere. The more complicated your trip, the more a map and some “where you are’” information might help. If anyone develops a GPS for business goals, please let me know.

In the last post I briefly covered goals. This entry will cover the next level down: Strategies. To help with this, let’s use a real example.

Goal – Increase the number of Page Views on my website by 10 times by 12/31/10.

Sounds good. Now, how do I make that happen?

Strategies, Tactics, Tasks and experiments.

One strategy might be to “Increase traffic from Search Engines through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”.

Another might be “Increase traffic  through traditional marketing methods”

A third might be “Increase traffic through paid advertising”

There might be more strategies but about three is enough to manage for most efforts. Are these my final strategies? No, but this is a good starting point.

Before we move on to the Tactics Level, let’s address using Brainstorming as a tool you can use with others, or just by yourself, to help further define this Strategy Map to give you a good tool to help meet your goals.

You can start the Strategy Map just about anywhere and work from there. I suggest you start with Brainstorming for undefined goals or use it once you have your Strategy Map framed out a bit to add ideas to the mix.

Tactics – That’s next.

Here is where we are so far:

Goal – Increase the number of Page Views on my website by 10 times by 12/31/10.

• One strategy might be to “Increase traffic from Search Engines through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)”.
• Another might be “Increase traffic  through traditional marketing methods”
• A third might be “Increase traffic through paid web advertising”

So we have one measurable and clear Goal and three suggested Strategies. Now we can list some Tactics under each Strategy that we think will help us reach our stated Goal. This is good time to review the efforts of the brainstorming task to see what task ideas there might be from that and use the Strategies to organize them.

Let’s just pick the second strategy as it might be most familiar and list some off the top of the head things we might want to consider:

Strategy – Increase traffic  through traditional marketing methods

• Increase efforts to publicize our website through our existing marketing efforts
• Advertise our website
• Review our competition and see what is working and not working for them
• etc.

You likely can list more tactics for this strategy pretty easily. The web is a great resource for researching these kinds of things.

You might take a look at Google for PDF files for “Top Ten Marketing Tips”. Click Here to do that search.

Anyway, go through your list as you wish and get at least a few Tactics for each Strategy.

Next, we take a look at the Tasks/Experiments level.

Once you have a draft of your strategies and tactics, you are now at the task/experiment level. The reason I suggest the phrase task/experiment is that it is so helpful to think of tasks and experiments a little differently, even though they are at the same level in the Strategy Map.

For example, a task might be to call a trusted adviser and ask what they think you should do (by the way, calling a trusted adviser is one of the most effective easy things to do for most people). Calling a trusted adviser is more of a task than an experiment as you know you can make a call and get through typically. And if you have done it before you likely know that it often helps.

An experiment is more of something that you are trying to see if it works that you are not familiar with. An example might be to place a trackable ad that you can monitor the results and see if it had a return on investment or showed promise. The important component of an experiment is that you measure the results to see the results.

This task or experiment might be a fine line for some people but it helps some of us to try to separate them philosophically, even though they are at the same level of the Strategy Map. If so, just consider anything you can do and review to be at the level of a task.

Continuing our example, here is what adding a few tasks/experiments might look like:

Strategy – Increase traffic  through traditional marketing methods

• Increase efforts to publicize our website through our existing marketing efforts

1. Call our trusted adviser, Bill Smith, and ask him what he thinks we should do for this Tactic.
2. Place an ad in our monthly magazine for our new offering with a discount if they provide the coupon code and act by the end of the month.
3. etc..

• Advertise our website

1. etc.
2. etc.

• Review our competition and see what is working and not working for them

1. etc.
2. etc.

Go through all your strategies and tactics and list the tasks and experiments that you think might be a good idea. Putting this information into a spreadsheet format and assigning tasks with due dates really gives you a pretty good way to know where you are in trying to meet your goals, how you might get there and how you are doing.

Like a lot of documents for organizing, the Strategy Map should be a “living document”. This just means that you created it, refer to it regularly and then update it when you have more refined or different ideas.

A Strategy Map should provide some quick clarity to the Goals you have set for your business. It can really help you to know how things are going and provide new ideas that you can try and then measure the results.

Good luck and questions and comments are encouraged.

LM