Wheel of Business
Last week we discussed Areas of Focus—the primary categories of a person’s life—and explained the value of identifying these categories to see what’s out of balance.
How about the Areas of Focus in your business? Doesn’t your business—even if you’re a one-person operation—have specific categories that are vital for the growth and sustainability of your enterprise? What might those Areas of Focus be? Here are a few general categories:
- Marketing, Sales, Branding
- Operations, Finances, Administration, Accounting, Legal
- Customer Service
- Innovations, R&D, Product & Service Development
- Leadership, Team Development, Management
- Digital, Web
How many categories you create for your business depends on the needs of your enterprise. Generally, the larger the business, the more complex it is and hence the need for more Areas of Focus. For example, Marketing, Sales, and Branding can represent three distinct Areas for a marketing executive; in fact, Marketing can be broken down further into categories like Advertising Effectiveness, Strategic Planning, Media Buying, Promotions, Digital Media, and so on.
For a small business owner or a solo entrepreneur, as a rule, less is preferred. There’s power in simplicity. Keep in mind that each Area you identify will require constant results planning, tracking, monitoring, and adjusting.
Peter Drucker highlighted three primary categories of business: Marketing, Innovation, and Operation. If you want to keep it simple, you can start with just these three.
Marketing represents how to create new business by attracting new customers.
Innovation is about finding ways to better serve your customers through your products and services.
Operation is how you run your business.
Following the same procedure outlined last week, identify the key Areas of Focus for your business and then rank how you’re doing on a scale from 1 to 10. Once you’ve identified the areas for improvement, ask, “What has to happen to make considerable improvement in this Area?” If you rated your marketing category at a 4, what has to happen to bring it up to an 8 in the next 90 days? Asking this question will activate your mind to think of strategies for improvement instead of simply suppressing your frustration or holding unconscious guilt about underperformance.
Ultimately, this process is designed to put you in a proactive space where you’re empowered to continuously find ways to improve, grow, and evolve—both within your business and yourself.
Related posts:
