Simplifying business growth with four quadrants

Published 10:00 am Thursday, March 5, 2020

Building a great business that grows profitably can be overwhelming. There are always a million things you could be working on to make the business better.

Today I want to talk to you about simplifying the process of building a great business.

Life is complicated. Business is complicated. Our job as business advisors is to take the complicated stuff and serve it back to our clients in a way that is easily understood and actionable.

We have found there are Four Quadrants that great businesses focus on improving. If you can steadily improve in these areas, you will greatly increase your likelihood of success.

Finance

We always start with finance because cash is oxygen for your business. Cash is the dry powder you need to grow. We help you improve your margins to improve your cash flow and shareholder return.

Customers

Businesses exist to meet a human need. The better you meet that need, the more engaged your customers are, the more likely they are to buy from you at higher prices and tell others about you.

Employees

Once you get out of the mom and pop stage, the only people who can love on your customers are your employees. Attracting, retaining and engaging great people is tough, but required for success.

Clarity

The biggest problem I see in business today is not bad employees or a bad business model, but confusion. Clarity answers the questions – Where are we going? How are we going to get there? How will we behave on the journey? What is a win for us? What is a win for me?

Four things – Finance, Customers, Employees, Clarity. If you will measure and improve your performance in each of these areas, you will be well on your way to building a great business.

Don’t forget to measure in each area. Business is a fun game and it is a lot more fun when all the players are watching the same scoreboard.

Lastly, you don’t have to improve all of these at once. Pick one and focus all your team’s extra bandwidth on improving performance in that area. Once the improved processes have become a part of your organization’s culture, you can move to the next most important quadrant.

We love helping leaders build great businesses. If you’d like to learn more you can check out our great free resources at www.valuesdrivenresults.com/resource-library/ or give us a call at 229.244.1559. We’d love to help you in any way we can.