Decisions, strategies and setting goals

• Can you smile happily, knowing that the business is achieving the things you set out to achieve with it, or might your smile be hiding some frustration ?
• Why do you feel this way ?
• What important decisions did you take in the last year which had a really positive effect on your business ? What decisions were less successful ? How do you feel about making these tricky, ‘need to get it right’ decisions ?
• Do you have a clear vision and strategy for your business? Who knows about what you want to achieve ? Would it help to involve more people in taking important decisions ? Why ?
• If you wanted to sell your business tomorrow, how ready would you be and could you put a value on it ?
• What one specific action could you take to improve your decision making and goal setting capabilities ?

Creating personal drive

• Is your get up and go still there or has it nearly got up and gone – just how motivated have you felt in the last year ? Why do you feel this way ?
• What things in the business perk you up and make you really want to make things happen ?
• What things just sap your drive, confidence and willingness to keep pushing the business forward ?
• What one specific action would increase your get up and go still further ?

Communicating with others

• Have you got the ‘gift of the gab’ or do you find it difficult to communicate with others ?
• How well do you communicate with staff, customers and others ? Do they buy into your vision and are they inspired to think the world of you and your business ?
• What one specific action would improve your communication with others ?

Motivating others

( Feel free to skip this area if you have no staff )

• Do your staff enjoy their day at work or are they watching the clock ? Why is this ? What is your staff turnover ? Is this too high ?
• Are you and your staff team players or can you occasionally spot a knife in the back or a solo performance that leaves the rest of the team in disarray ?
• Are you putting enough into developing your staff ? What opportunities are provided for them ? What one specific action would improve your ability to pep up your team ?

Delegating to others

( Feel free to skip this area if you have no staff )

• How well do you manage your time ?
• If you either had to ( for example – illness ) or chose to ( for example – a holiday of a lifetime ) take three months away from the business, what would your business look like when you came back ? How happy would you be with this ?
• What examples can you give, over the last year, when you’ve delegated to others ? How did it go ?
• What one specific action would improve your delegation ?

Winning business

• What made the difference between the best deals you struck this year and the ones you’d rather forget ?
• Are you doing as much as you can to win and keep customers ? Why is this ?
• What one specific action would improve your ability to win and keep business ?

Keeping control of quality and administration

• If ‘wow’ is for super-efficient, all singing, all dancing and ‘yuk’ is for ‘seat of the pants’ not very efficient ways of keeping everything going – do your systems feel closer to ‘wow’ than ‘yuk’ ? Why is this ?
• Do you feel happy that your systems protect you from disaster or someone robbing you of your data or dosh ?
• Is the Internet and e-business doing the business for you ? If not, why not ?
• What one specific action would improve the performance of your quality and administrative systems ?

Dealing with money

• How comfortable do you feel dealing with your accounting and finance ?
• How do you feel outsiders like banks judge your finances ?
• What one specific action would improve your control of money?