General Business

1. Aligned Senior Management Team

Is the senior management team in clearly delineated positions?

Are they in the right positions?

Are people happy in their positions?

Are they accomplishing their goals on time?

Are they developing outstanding managers and other key personnel?

2. Balanced, harmonious, effective, aware teams

Have you taken time to understand the unique personalities and work styles of the each member of your management team?

Have you designed specific systems to help people understand each other?

Are you placing people in positions where they use their natural talents?

Are you creating balanced teams where varied points of view prevents teams from having blind spots?

Do you use this understanding of your teams and culture to select management team members of the future who will balance and complement your store teams?

3. Owner/leader time and responsibility commitment/happiness level

How much time are you putting into running your business?

Do you enjoy this schedule?

Would you prefer to have more time to pursue other interests, family, recreation, leisure, travel or other business opportunities?

Do you feel you have “bought yourself a job” or “that is the way it is in business – you have got to be there all the time”?

Would you prefer to find another way?

Is the organization too reliant on your leadership?

Is this stifling potential growth of managers in your company, or do you have the wrong managers in place?

4. Focus on People: Customers and Employees

Is your management team focused on customer experiences and employee morale?

Is there a system for measuring success in these important aspects of your business.

Does management have a history of initiatives that improve customer experiences and employee morale ?

Can they point to sales increases, employee retention and productivity as a result of their efforts?

5. Managers functioning at their place of highest use

Are the people at each level of your company only handling issues that reflect their highest use?

Are they in the right positions?

If not, what could be delegated to the next level to speed development of new talent, and free up time for other to focus on what is really impactful in moving your company forward, accomplishing goals, and establishing new ones, developing plans to get there?

6. Profitability/Money being left on the table

What are the profitability and revenue levels of your current product lines and overall organization?

How does that compare to your competitive set?

If all of the previous items were accomplished in a positive harmonious and productive way, what impact would that have on your bottom line?

7. Core competence identification/bolstering blind spots

What is the strongest part of your organization, the competency, skill and talent that has built your brand and made your business profitable?

How can you bolster the other aspects of your company to perform as strongly as your core competencies in order to increase the quality of the guest experience, employee morale and commitment, and profitability?

8. Conflict in Management Teams

Is there conflict in your organization between ownership, senior management, unit managers or their subordinates?

Have you decided that there is nothing you can do about this and it is impossible to get a team on the same page; “that’s just the way it is”, or even ” conflict is good – keeps people on their toes”?

What is the true cost to your business to put all this energy into conflict?

Have you taken steps to address the conflict directly and arrive at an agreed up on plan with universal buy in?

9. Rate of Growth

What is the percentage of revenue increase in your company this year? Last 3 years?

How does this compare with growth you projected?

What size revenue increase do you project in the next 24 months?
Next 48 months?

Do you have the infrastructure and capital to make that happen in a way that will not risk the success of your current business?

Are you concerned that you are unprepared for growth?

Are you suffering from having grown too fast?

10. Defined Corporate Culture

Is your corporate and concept culture defined?

If you stop an owner, management team or staff member, will they be able to explain the culture using common language?

Will they have evidence that they lived the culture today in their interactions with customers, co workers, and suppliers?

11. Key Company Position

Are department managers leaders who are innovating and piloting programs? Or are they overly dependent on a corporate supervisor to do their jobs?

Are they developing the managers of the future?