Are you skimping on any of these strategic elements? Don’t do it! Every single one is critical.

Marketing

Who is your target customer? What are their real needs, both physical and emotional? Do your products and services truly meet their needs? Do you have an effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to relate to them in an organized way? Does your brand help guide your decisions? Is your message effective? Is it getting through?

Your People

Your fundamental engine. Are they proud to work for your company? Do people down the organization have the authority and the resources they need? Are they clear on their responsibilities? Are they well-paid? Do you treat them like highly capable adults? What’s your annual turnover rate?

Values

Have you had the values conversation with your leadership team? Not the wordsmithed PR version; the real values that you hold deep in your heart and gut.

New Products

Do you have a reliable process for creating new products? New products are your future life blood.

Operations/Lean

Are your production and delivery systems efficient by your industry’s standards? Are your gross margins acceptable? Do your processes enable excellent delivery and customer delight? Have you implemented Lean? Is your throughput time compatible with your customers’ needs and your values?

Quality

Is your failure rate acceptable? Do your products lead to referrals and repeat business? Are you proud of what you’re doing?

Profit

A measure of your total overall contribution. Take a deep dive, understand all the vectors that add up to your bottom line metric. Same goes for your Balance Sheet: where are your assets, how is your Operating Capital, can you weather a storm?