Can You Complete the 15 Minute Business Challenge?

If you cannot write out the plan for where you are taking your business in 15 minutes or less, chances are, you do not have a plan!

If you don’t have a plan then you and your business are just floating through time and you are at the whim of the marketplace and all of your competitors! Basically, if you cannot articulate what you are building or why you are building it then how do you know what you are doing or where you are going?

For those that regularly read my posts, you know that Thinking Business has a very detailed business blueprint that you can download (from our Business Tools) and apply to your business. We call it the Thinking Business Blueprint. It takes you through all aspects of your business to ensure that your business model and strategy are defined clearly at all levels.

However, I was recently challenged by a client to come up with a simple, high level, tool that would allow a business leader to summarize their business and their strategy in one simple page. This one-page tool must be simple to implement yet powerful enough to capture the very essence of an organization. A leader must then be able to take the completed tool and easily communicate it to any and all of it’s stakeholders.

To meet this challenge, I have come up with the “15 Minute” Business Blueprint described below.

What Has Made Our Nations (and Businesses) Great

Everyone knows about Trump’s election promise to “Make America Great Again” but does anyone understand what this means?

I suspect that there are as many opinions on this as there are people! What does “Great Again” mean? How far back do we need to go to determine what was great and what wasn’t? Who determines what was great and what is their decision based on?

Founding Values

Both Canada and the United States were established on Judeo-Christian values hundreds of years ago although we both took different routes to get there. The US was established through their revolutionary war against the British while Canada chose a somewhat longer but more peaceful path to independence.

So, what does this have to do with making our countries great and what does it have to do with business?

Foundation of our Nations

Judeo-Christian values established the foundation on which we have built our nations at every level; our governments, our judicial systems, our correctional systems, our economies, and our system of business.

Our success as democratic and free-enterprise nations could never have been built on the values of totalitarian systems like; communism, fascism, socialism, dictatorship, or an extremist religion based regime. These regimes simply cannot and do not provide the fundamentals necessary to create an environment that fosters a strong economy and nation.

One does not have to look to far to see failed totalitarian states like the old Soviet Union, North Korea, Iraq, Eritrea, Sudan, Syria, Yemen, and the current destruction being wrought by regimes like ISIS!

So, what are the Judeo-Christian values that established the foundation for our great countries?

Why Business Dynasties Fail and How to Avoid It

What causes a highly successful business, that outperforms the stock market by 6.9 times for over a decade, to all of a sudden become irrelevant and fail?

Jim Collins’ book, “How the Mighty Fall” takes a detailed look at companies that were great companies as defined by Collins’ previous book “Good to Great” but fell to irrelevance. Collins defines a great company as one that had to significantly outperform the market for at least 15 years in a row. On average, the companies that Collins studied as great companies outperformed the general stock market by at least 6.9 times.

. . . And then, they failed!

There were quite a list of companies that were studied for this book but some of the more dramatic failures include:

WARNING: What Fuels Your Business May Be Killing It!

12 Steps to Business Transformation – Step 9

Over the last eight weeks, I introduced my Ebook 12 Steps to Business Transformation and I defined the first 8 of the 12 transformational steps. This week we are going to talk about step 9.

Step 9 in my new Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation” is very simple yet many businesses fail to complete it! Step 9 is where you take the Vision, Mission, Values, Strategies and Goals and feed them into the Operations Engine. Essentially, you are providing the “fuel” to power your Operations Engine and substandard or contaminated “fuel” can kill your business!

Why You Need To Download This Powerful Strategy Tool

12 Steps to Business Transformation – Step 7

Over the last six weeks, I introduced my Ebook 12 Steps to Business Transformation and I defined the first 6 of the 12 transformational steps. This week we are going to talk about the Strategy Summary.

Completing the Strategy Summary for your business is step 7 in my new Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation.”

The Strategy Summary is a tool that records your entire organization’s vision, strategy, goals and key business metrics in one easy to use and easy to communicate form. Basically, you are recording the first six steps of the 12 step business transformation into one powerful tool.