Prioritizing Your Critical Issues

Every business is faced with issues that effect the level of success they will and can achieve. Some of these are positive and can drive the overall growth of the company, while others are negative and left unattended, will ultimately hinder this growth. As an owner, it is important you fully understand the forces that are guiding your business before you begin to try and address them.

The first thing you need to do is list everything you can think of that is having an effect on your business. The goal in this step is to identify what is working and what is not. Write down some opportunities that exist as well as the obstacles you need to overcome to take advantage of them. Determine which activities are productive and need to be increased and which ones are not, and need to be eliminated. Remember, there are many issues that influence your business, this exercise is designed to identify the ones you can control and change if needed. If you complete a thorough examination of your current state of affairs, you should end up with a fair amount of items on your list.

Next comes the hard part, prioritizing your list. The goal here is to identify the top four or five issues that are having the biggest impact on your business. These will then become your company's "critical issues". These are the ones that obviously need the most immediate attention in order to keep or get you back on track. The other items on the list cannot be ignored, but they will not demand the same amount of energy your critical ones will.

Both of these steps require the proper time and commitment on your part in order to derive the most benefit from this analysis. You need to be willing to make an in depth and honest evaluation of the issues you currently face. You are probably going to find things you didn't realize were so bad, as well as find some that are better than you thought. The whole goal is to identify what is making your company run and what needs to be done to make it run better.