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Leadership - As the saying goes, "It all starts at the top". What is your leadership style? Is it enabling you to effectively achieve your personal and business goals? What type of culture has your leadership created in your company? Are you completely leveraging the talent and drive possessed by your key employees? Do all decisions still route through you? Has your company outgrown this structure? Who is your successor? How comfortable would you be leaving your company in the care of your management team for a week? A month? A quarter? Who do you talk to when you need objective and experienced advice?
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Business Strategy - What is your current business strategy? Is it achieving the goals you set for the quarter? For the year? How about over the past three years? When was the last time you reviewed and modified your business strategy based on changing economic, market, or competitive conditions? Can your employess, stakeholder's, and key customer's accurately explain your strategy? Does your strategic plan contain enough detailed information to allow its successful execution? How do you monitor and measure its success?
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Growth Strategy - Setting growth targets is the easy part. Achieving growth targets is harder. Achieving growth targets while maintaining or improving profitability requires the optimization and alignment of all your company's strategies followed by crisp execution. What is your growth strategy? Is it driven by internal development, strategic partnership, licensing, or a combination? What is your company's strategic core competence? Are you maximizing it as part of your growth strategy? Failure to adequately plan for and execute a growth strategy can result in profit erosion and severe cash flow issues, which for early to mid-stage companies can be fatal. There are two types of growth strategy - reactive and proactive. Which one are you employing?
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Market Strategy - Your market strategy is the foundation of your growth strategy. A growth strategy based on an inaccurate or incorrect market analysis is doomed to failure. Your market strategy will focus and drive your technology commercialization, product development, and operations strategies. Do you really understand your market? Most markets are constantly evolving due to changing global and economic conditions. Are you keeping up with these? Are there any developments on the competitive front? Do you have a comprehensive market strategy to successfully launch your next product? Does your market strategy drive maximum profit margins?
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Product Development/Technology Commercialization - Is it a science project or a product? Is there a market? More importantly, is there demand? Can this technology be scaled into production quantities? Can it be reliably manufactured? Can it be priced to achieve acceptable margins? What is the competition for this technology? One of the toughest competitors for new technology is the customers decision to maintain the status quo. Do you have the right team in place to develop this technology? Are there more efficient and effective methods to enter this market other than internal development? Is this development aligned with your growth and market strategies?
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Operations Strategy - How will you manufacture and distribute this product? Do you plan to outsource any or all of the manufacturing steps? How do you decide which steps to accomplish internally versus outsourced? What skill sets will you need to develop to manufacture this product? Will the manufacture of this product require specialized assembly or testing equipment? Is it more effective to license this technology versus operating as an OEM? Will this product be introduced into a cyclical market? What is the best strategy to minimize the effects of these cycles on my business model? What is the most cost effective process to manufacture this product?
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Profitability - How do I set achievable profit goals for my company? How can I monitor and maintain profitability during the product development process? What is the relationship between market strategy and profitability? What steps can I take to maintain or improve profitability? What steps can I take to mitigate profit erosion? What are the major risks to achieving profitable growth? What are the best ways to minimize costs without impacting quality or customer service?
