Hindrance to Growth & Sustainability – Major questions

After writing http://aji.techshu.com/cents-to-dollars-growth-sustainability-business/ I thought to summarize the post here.

  1. Ask if the owners/founders/management the bottleneck? Are you micro managing? Are you pissing off good people? Are you thinking small? Are you unable to pass on the vision? Are you not able to motivate your team to live the vision together? Are you the bottleneck?
  2. Are you in the right market with the right offering? This is important to ask, sometimes we might go wrong, its good to go back and start it again. http://community.tiekolkata.com/profiles/blogs/sabeer-bhatia-3-questions-to-ask-for-any-product
  3. Is your company’s vision (Direction follows vision) well defined? Is your company a company that is focusing on improving some part of the society? Are you passionate about improving your customer’s lifestyle by solving the problem to best level? (This is so so important: Whenever I hear, “How client doesn’t understand”, “Client can’t freeze the requirement” … I will repeat .. “Thats the problem, we are trying to solve, lets solve it better next time” … Focus is not on shouting at people and client but to solve the problem every day. Making life better.
  4. Is your company a company where people want to excel? Or Is your company a company where its only about revenue and work? Excellence brings revenue. Excellence attracts good people and clients/customers.
  5. Is your company focusing on developing people? (Even if they leave your company, they will stay the ambassadors to your company, “Give when you can  & Ask when you need it”)
  6. Is your company a company where good people want to join? How are you selling your company to new prospect recruits? Are they buying your work culture, your business model, your challenges? (Grrr … Most good people don’t want to join government jobs …)
  7. Is the company focusing on financial management? (Visibility is important, focusing on building the finance is important but it comes secondary to me, it is needed but a good combination of PEOPLE, RIGHT MARKET, RIGHT OFFERING should bring in money, why shouldn’t it? Many disagree here but I still believe, money follows)
  8. Who all are thinking about?
  1. Innovation
  2. Value addition
  3. New opportunities
  4. Team members life improvements (This is major) Point #10 http://aji.techshu.com/11lessons-entrepreneurs/
  5. Customer/Client relationships
  6. Process
  7. Cost cutting
  8. Revenue improvements
Please keep adding to it.