“Organisational health is the single greatest competitive advantage in any business.” Patrick Lencioni

It is easy to get caught in day-to-day business operations, but it is essential to take time out to work on the business. Just like going to a doctor’s appointment to check a minor ailment before it leads to a further complication, booking time in your diary to do periodic health check on your business is just as important for the same reason.

2020 has been a testing year for most businesses; many have experienced chronic symptoms like starvation of cash and market paralysis, brought on by lockdown and lack of support funding. However, an effective treatment programme finds the root cause of an illness rather than just focussing on the symptoms. No amount of cash injection can cure a business if it has fundamental issues with its structure or ability to adapt to change.

 

What does a business health check involve?

We send you two digital diagnostic tools (GPS & Change Success) for you to complete prior to the session. These provide us with confidential insights around your business and change readiness that we will discuss during the meeting.

 

The session itself will introduce you to our “Now-Where-How” framework, which is the cornerstone of our business strategy plans.

 

These diagnostics will also allow us to paint a picture specifically with the NOW opportunities and challenges in mind. This could lead to us identify some potential quick wins to improve the short-term health of your business and facilitate a conversation about a wider strategic plan.

 

The Growth and Profit Solutions (GPS) tool measures your performance across 10 key success factors: marketing, sales, people, implementation, strategy, profit, leadership, innovation, technology, and systems. It will highlight your three strongest and three weakest areas, which provides insight into what is and is not working. From there you can identify some key issues that need to be addressed.

 

The Change Success tool measures your business’ current readiness to change. This is quantified as a percentage of change potential. This tees up a discussion to find ways to improve your score by identifying potential blockages that inhibit you from making change in your business.

 

We also use a tool called the Vision Map, to understand WHERE you want to be in the future and look at the vision for the business. The map is split into 5 elements: finance, market, product and services, people, and passion and challenges you to consider what these elements will look like in the future. We can then gain an understanding of WHERE you want to be in the future and attach some metrics to it.

 

Once the NOW and the WHERE are covered we then move onto the HOW. This is where we can start to map out some strategies to link the two together. The first step in this process is to prioritise the top three issues identified in your diagnostics discussion. Again, we have tool to assist in that ranking process. From there we then map where you are now, where you want to be in 6 months’ time and then detail sub-actions as to How you will get there. These actions are attributed to individuals in your business who are given deadlines to hold them accountable.

 

What do you get out of it?

The “Now-Where-How” framework is a simple yet powerful strategic tool, which coupled with our holistic approach, will show you that we are different to standard accountants.

You will get useful insights into where your business is now. You will understand what you do well and what needs to be improved. You may gain an understanding of why previous attempts to make change failed and how to maximise the success of future change.

You will also have an outline of where you want your business to be at certain points in the future.

Ultimately, you will walk out of the meeting with a six-month action plan to help overcome issues currently facing your business.

Book a 90minute business health check here